Natania Meeker
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823226962
- eISBN:
- 9780823240944
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823226962.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
If there is one eighteenth-century materialist whose work appears to stand at the juncture of literature and philosophy—a writer who most impressively seems to occupy the space where the pleasures of ...
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If there is one eighteenth-century materialist whose work appears to stand at the juncture of literature and philosophy—a writer who most impressively seems to occupy the space where the pleasures of figure intersect with a dynamic and hedonic materialist science—it is Denis Diderot. Not coincidentally, Diderot has also often been read as an exemplary Enlightenment inheritor of the Lucretian legacy, as well as perhaps the most crucial translator of a potentially archaic materialism that he animates anew with playfulness and flexibility. On the other hand, Diderot regularly turns, in his literary works, to Lucretius as the originator of an intricate and richly poetic materialist thematics.Less
If there is one eighteenth-century materialist whose work appears to stand at the juncture of literature and philosophy—a writer who most impressively seems to occupy the space where the pleasures of figure intersect with a dynamic and hedonic materialist science—it is Denis Diderot. Not coincidentally, Diderot has also often been read as an exemplary Enlightenment inheritor of the Lucretian legacy, as well as perhaps the most crucial translator of a potentially archaic materialism that he animates anew with playfulness and flexibility. On the other hand, Diderot regularly turns, in his literary works, to Lucretius as the originator of an intricate and richly poetic materialist thematics.
Ann Jefferson
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691160658
- eISBN:
- 9781400852598
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691160658.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter considers how a link was established between genius and genius in a manner that sidelines the public. It explores arguments which claims that the public—now deemed “vulgar”—lacks the ...
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This chapter considers how a link was established between genius and genius in a manner that sidelines the public. It explores arguments which claims that the public—now deemed “vulgar”—lacks the requisite sensibility to respond to genius, and is bracketed out of a relation that now goes exclusively from genius to genius. Genius remains self-evident, but only to the man who is already endowed with it: he alone is equipped to recognize it, whether in himself or another. As the burden of recognition is shifted from reader-spectator to genius itself, the continuity between reader-spectator and genius is broken, and the self-evidence of genius begins to wane.Less
This chapter considers how a link was established between genius and genius in a manner that sidelines the public. It explores arguments which claims that the public—now deemed “vulgar”—lacks the requisite sensibility to respond to genius, and is bracketed out of a relation that now goes exclusively from genius to genius. Genius remains self-evident, but only to the man who is already endowed with it: he alone is equipped to recognize it, whether in himself or another. As the burden of recognition is shifted from reader-spectator to genius itself, the continuity between reader-spectator and genius is broken, and the self-evidence of genius begins to wane.
Steven Connor
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198184331
- eISBN:
- 9780191674204
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198184331.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This chapter offers, as a kind of afterthought, a reference to Tertullian’s account of genital speech. The reference here is to Denis Diderot’s Les Bijoux indiscrets of 1748. It tells the story of ...
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This chapter offers, as a kind of afterthought, a reference to Tertullian’s account of genital speech. The reference here is to Denis Diderot’s Les Bijoux indiscrets of 1748. It tells the story of Mangogul, the bored sultan of an imaginary oriental kingdom. Diderot’s conception forms a intriguing compromise between archaic and modern conceptions of ventriloquism. During the 18th century, attention shifted away from the experience of the one possessed towards the powers of the ventriloquist who is believed to be capable of capturing others' voices through imitation and then ‘throwing’ his or her (but almost always his) imitations away from himself and into others. This is a move from a voice that enters to a voice that is thrown or projected. During the 18th century, the dominant explanation of ventriloquism as the appropriation of one’s voice by another shifted to the idea of the appropriation of another’s voice for oneself.Less
This chapter offers, as a kind of afterthought, a reference to Tertullian’s account of genital speech. The reference here is to Denis Diderot’s Les Bijoux indiscrets of 1748. It tells the story of Mangogul, the bored sultan of an imaginary oriental kingdom. Diderot’s conception forms a intriguing compromise between archaic and modern conceptions of ventriloquism. During the 18th century, attention shifted away from the experience of the one possessed towards the powers of the ventriloquist who is believed to be capable of capturing others' voices through imitation and then ‘throwing’ his or her (but almost always his) imitations away from himself and into others. This is a move from a voice that enters to a voice that is thrown or projected. During the 18th century, the dominant explanation of ventriloquism as the appropriation of one’s voice by another shifted to the idea of the appropriation of another’s voice for oneself.
Mechthild Fend
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780719087967
- eISBN:
- 9781526120724
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719087967.003.0003
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
This chapter looks at skin, sensibility and touch in painterly practice and the art literature on the one hand, and in medical as well as philosophical discourse on the other. It argues that the new ...
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This chapter looks at skin, sensibility and touch in painterly practice and the art literature on the one hand, and in medical as well as philosophical discourse on the other. It argues that the new medical understanding of organic substances as textured joined a special attention to brushwork in mid-eighteenth-century French art practice and theory. This conjuncture prompted attempts to imitate the skin's tissue with an appropriate facture produced by the artist’s hand. The chapter takes the medical metaphorisation of skin as a ‘nervous canvas‘ in the 1765 article ‘sensibilité‘ of Diderot's and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie as its guide to discuss relations between artistic and medical visions of skin in mid-eighteenth-century France. It focuses on the so-called portraits de fantaise by Jean-Honoré Fragonard and argues that the carnations in these paintings are as much about flesh as they are about the materiality and vitality of skin. Pivotal for the analysis of the interconnections between the fields of medicine and the arts, are the writings by philosopher and art critic Denis Diderot as he thought about skin, flesh and the sense of touch his reviews of the Salon exhibitions, in his writings on physiology, as well as in his fictionalised account of the latest medical theories in his Rêve de d'Alembert.Less
This chapter looks at skin, sensibility and touch in painterly practice and the art literature on the one hand, and in medical as well as philosophical discourse on the other. It argues that the new medical understanding of organic substances as textured joined a special attention to brushwork in mid-eighteenth-century French art practice and theory. This conjuncture prompted attempts to imitate the skin's tissue with an appropriate facture produced by the artist’s hand. The chapter takes the medical metaphorisation of skin as a ‘nervous canvas‘ in the 1765 article ‘sensibilité‘ of Diderot's and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie as its guide to discuss relations between artistic and medical visions of skin in mid-eighteenth-century France. It focuses on the so-called portraits de fantaise by Jean-Honoré Fragonard and argues that the carnations in these paintings are as much about flesh as they are about the materiality and vitality of skin. Pivotal for the analysis of the interconnections between the fields of medicine and the arts, are the writings by philosopher and art critic Denis Diderot as he thought about skin, flesh and the sense of touch his reviews of the Salon exhibitions, in his writings on physiology, as well as in his fictionalised account of the latest medical theories in his Rêve de d'Alembert.
Stephen Gaukroger
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- January 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199594931
- eISBN:
- 9780191595745
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199594931.003.0008
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, General
In the course of the eighteenth century, natural philosophy began to take on a new cultural standing, emerging as the paradigm bearer of, and the standard for, cognitive values. It was Fontenelle who ...
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In the course of the eighteenth century, natural philosophy began to take on a new cultural standing, emerging as the paradigm bearer of, and the standard for, cognitive values. It was Fontenelle who had established the standing of natural philosophy in France as a worthy and useful form of inquiry, but it was Voltaire who had elevated its standing further by making it into the model for cognitive grasp per se. In d'Alembert's preliminary Discours to the Encyclopédie, a more elaborate statement of the archetypal role of natural philosophy in cognitive enquiry was set out.Less
In the course of the eighteenth century, natural philosophy began to take on a new cultural standing, emerging as the paradigm bearer of, and the standard for, cognitive values. It was Fontenelle who had established the standing of natural philosophy in France as a worthy and useful form of inquiry, but it was Voltaire who had elevated its standing further by making it into the model for cognitive grasp per se. In d'Alembert's preliminary Discours to the Encyclopédie, a more elaborate statement of the archetypal role of natural philosophy in cognitive enquiry was set out.
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226749457
- eISBN:
- 9780226749471
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226749471.003.0009
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
Too many historians have recognized Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert's Encyclopédie as the defining text of the French Enlightenment. Just as many have argued that the project's initial ...
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Too many historians have recognized Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert's Encyclopédie as the defining text of the French Enlightenment. Just as many have argued that the project's initial publication, scandalous reception, and eventual prohibition were the key catalysts in the formation of the Enlightenment as a French social movement. What has not often been stressed, however, is that these undeniably transformative events also completed a half-century process of intellectual and social change in France. This coda proposes, not a reinterpretation of the history of the Encyclopédie, but a retelling of this familiar story in ways that highlight how it served both as the climax of Isaac Newton's reception in eighteenth-century France and, seamlessly, as the final stitch between this reception and the beginning of the French Enlightenment.Less
Too many historians have recognized Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert's Encyclopédie as the defining text of the French Enlightenment. Just as many have argued that the project's initial publication, scandalous reception, and eventual prohibition were the key catalysts in the formation of the Enlightenment as a French social movement. What has not often been stressed, however, is that these undeniably transformative events also completed a half-century process of intellectual and social change in France. This coda proposes, not a reinterpretation of the history of the Encyclopédie, but a retelling of this familiar story in ways that highlight how it served both as the climax of Isaac Newton's reception in eighteenth-century France and, seamlessly, as the final stitch between this reception and the beginning of the French Enlightenment.
Shirley A. Roe
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226608402
- eISBN:
- 9780226608426
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226608426.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
During the eighteenth century, the specter of atheism was a major concern among many intellectuals (known as philosophes) in Europe. Many of the leading figures of the period such as François-Marie ...
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During the eighteenth century, the specter of atheism was a major concern among many intellectuals (known as philosophes) in Europe. Many of the leading figures of the period such as François-Marie Arouet de Voltaire (1694–1778) refuted atheism at every turn. These debates centered on living organisms, particularly questions about generation (reproduction). Efforts to explain the process of generation raised biological, religious, and political questions. One popular theory put forward to address the question of generation was preformation, the belief that “germs” had been in existence since God created the world. This chapter first discusses the rise of preformationist thinking in the late seventeenth century before turning to the biological evidence that challenged preexistence in the mid-eighteenth century and analyzing the reaction it triggered among the preformationists. It also examines the work of Voltaire and Denis Diderot to illustrate how the generation debates are linked to the materialism question. The chapter concludes by showing how these controversies about nature and biology became entangled with politics in eighteenth-century France.Less
During the eighteenth century, the specter of atheism was a major concern among many intellectuals (known as philosophes) in Europe. Many of the leading figures of the period such as François-Marie Arouet de Voltaire (1694–1778) refuted atheism at every turn. These debates centered on living organisms, particularly questions about generation (reproduction). Efforts to explain the process of generation raised biological, religious, and political questions. One popular theory put forward to address the question of generation was preformation, the belief that “germs” had been in existence since God created the world. This chapter first discusses the rise of preformationist thinking in the late seventeenth century before turning to the biological evidence that challenged preexistence in the mid-eighteenth century and analyzing the reaction it triggered among the preformationists. It also examines the work of Voltaire and Denis Diderot to illustrate how the generation debates are linked to the materialism question. The chapter concludes by showing how these controversies about nature and biology became entangled with politics in eighteenth-century France.
John H. Zammito
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780226520797
- eISBN:
- 9780226520827
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226520827.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
The stimulus of French vital materialism was decisive in provoking key developments in German life-science. The paradigm shift associated with the ideas of Buffon, Maupertuis, Diderot and La Mettrie ...
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The stimulus of French vital materialism was decisive in provoking key developments in German life-science. The paradigm shift associated with the ideas of Buffon, Maupertuis, Diderot and La Mettrie around mid-century dramatically re-oriented the focus of natural inquiry in the direction of a non-mathematical physical science, or experimental Newtonianism. Crucial in this was the “Buffonian Revolution” in natural history, which aimed to elevate inquiry into life forms from the descriptive and classificatory approach of traditional natural history to the explanatory ambitions associated with natural philosophy. Diderot and Maupertuis were crucial allies of Buffon in this revolution and La Mettrie carried it into metaphysical arenas by proclaiming the ascendancy of the médecin philosophe who alone could resolve traditional philosophical issues based on a physiological understanding of human nature. There would be no room for supernatural explanations in such inquiry. This naturalism was linked to Epicurean materialism and “Spinozism,” alarming the conservatives of the day in France. Such metaphysical provocations proved as pivotal to the conflict between Buffon and Réumur over the future of natural history as did their methodological differences.Less
The stimulus of French vital materialism was decisive in provoking key developments in German life-science. The paradigm shift associated with the ideas of Buffon, Maupertuis, Diderot and La Mettrie around mid-century dramatically re-oriented the focus of natural inquiry in the direction of a non-mathematical physical science, or experimental Newtonianism. Crucial in this was the “Buffonian Revolution” in natural history, which aimed to elevate inquiry into life forms from the descriptive and classificatory approach of traditional natural history to the explanatory ambitions associated with natural philosophy. Diderot and Maupertuis were crucial allies of Buffon in this revolution and La Mettrie carried it into metaphysical arenas by proclaiming the ascendancy of the médecin philosophe who alone could resolve traditional philosophical issues based on a physiological understanding of human nature. There would be no room for supernatural explanations in such inquiry. This naturalism was linked to Epicurean materialism and “Spinozism,” alarming the conservatives of the day in France. Such metaphysical provocations proved as pivotal to the conflict between Buffon and Réumur over the future of natural history as did their methodological differences.
Ernest Campbell Mossner
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199243365
- eISBN:
- 9780191697241
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199243365.003.0033
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
One of the first philosophes that David Hume met at Paris, the German-born Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d'Holbach, was devoting all his efforts and his great wealth to the interests of the arts and ...
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One of the first philosophes that David Hume met at Paris, the German-born Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d'Holbach, was devoting all his efforts and his great wealth to the interests of the arts and sciences. Skilled in languages, ancient and modern, and well read in modern literature, philosophy, and science, he had contributed articles on metallurgy to the Encyclopédie and was a patron of its general editors, Denis Diderot and Jean D'Alembert. Holbach's house on the rue Royale, Butte St Roche, was the meeting place – facetiously named the ‘synagogue’ – of the leading intellectuals, and sumptuous dinners with costly wines were served every Sunday and Thursday. D'Alembert was Hume's favourite among the philosophes. To a foundling exposed near the church of St Jean le Rond in Paris was given the name of Jean Le Rond, to which was later added the surname of D'Alembert. Educated in philosophy and theology by the Jansenists, he acquired higher mathematics by himself.Less
One of the first philosophes that David Hume met at Paris, the German-born Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d'Holbach, was devoting all his efforts and his great wealth to the interests of the arts and sciences. Skilled in languages, ancient and modern, and well read in modern literature, philosophy, and science, he had contributed articles on metallurgy to the Encyclopédie and was a patron of its general editors, Denis Diderot and Jean D'Alembert. Holbach's house on the rue Royale, Butte St Roche, was the meeting place – facetiously named the ‘synagogue’ – of the leading intellectuals, and sumptuous dinners with costly wines were served every Sunday and Thursday. D'Alembert was Hume's favourite among the philosophes. To a foundling exposed near the church of St Jean le Rond in Paris was given the name of Jean Le Rond, to which was later added the surname of D'Alembert. Educated in philosophy and theology by the Jansenists, he acquired higher mathematics by himself.
Elisabeth Le Guin
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520240179
- eISBN:
- 9780520930629
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520240179.003.0004
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
This chapter examines the peculiarities and visuality of Luigi Boccherini's works. It uses Denis Diderot's works and Gasparo Angiolini's descriptions of pantomime dance to uncover the pictures in ...
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This chapter examines the peculiarities and visuality of Luigi Boccherini's works. It uses Denis Diderot's works and Gasparo Angiolini's descriptions of pantomime dance to uncover the pictures in Boccherini's music. It analyzes some of the music's stylistic features, in particular its evocations of serious opera and of Madrilenian musical cultures. It suggests that Boccherini's career is particularly interesting for the course he took and for the philosophical issues that swirl in his wake. Issues of text and performance, authority and permeability and the limits of the legible are most interestingly demonstrated in his relation to his own virtuoso status as a performer.Less
This chapter examines the peculiarities and visuality of Luigi Boccherini's works. It uses Denis Diderot's works and Gasparo Angiolini's descriptions of pantomime dance to uncover the pictures in Boccherini's music. It analyzes some of the music's stylistic features, in particular its evocations of serious opera and of Madrilenian musical cultures. It suggests that Boccherini's career is particularly interesting for the course he took and for the philosophical issues that swirl in his wake. Issues of text and performance, authority and permeability and the limits of the legible are most interestingly demonstrated in his relation to his own virtuoso status as a performer.
Sunil M. Agnani
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780823251803
- eISBN:
- 9780823253050
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823251803.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
Hating Empire Properly produces a novel attempt to think the eighteenth-century imagination of the West and East Indies together, arguing that this is how contemporary thinkers Edmund Burke and Denis ...
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Hating Empire Properly produces a novel attempt to think the eighteenth-century imagination of the West and East Indies together, arguing that this is how contemporary thinkers Edmund Burke and Denis Diderot actually viewed them. This concern with multiple geographical spaces is revealed to be a largely unacknowledged part of the matrix of Enlightenment thought in which eighteenth-century European and American self-conceptions evolved. By focusing on colonial spaces of the Enlightenment, especially India and Haiti, this book demonstrates how Burke's fearful view of the French Revolution—for many the defining event of modernity—was shaped by prior reflection on these other domains. Exploring with sympathy the angry outbursts against injustice in the writings of Diderot, it nonetheless challenges recent understandings of him as a univocal critic of empire by showing the persistence of a fantasy of consensual colonialism in his thought. By looking at the impasses and limits in the thought of both radical and conservative writers, this work asks what it means to critique empire “properly.” Drawing out a method from Theodor Adorno's quip that “one must have tradition in oneself, in order to hate it properly,” it proposes a critical inhabiting of dominant forms of reason as a way forward for the critique of both empire and Enlightenment.Less
Hating Empire Properly produces a novel attempt to think the eighteenth-century imagination of the West and East Indies together, arguing that this is how contemporary thinkers Edmund Burke and Denis Diderot actually viewed them. This concern with multiple geographical spaces is revealed to be a largely unacknowledged part of the matrix of Enlightenment thought in which eighteenth-century European and American self-conceptions evolved. By focusing on colonial spaces of the Enlightenment, especially India and Haiti, this book demonstrates how Burke's fearful view of the French Revolution—for many the defining event of modernity—was shaped by prior reflection on these other domains. Exploring with sympathy the angry outbursts against injustice in the writings of Diderot, it nonetheless challenges recent understandings of him as a univocal critic of empire by showing the persistence of a fantasy of consensual colonialism in his thought. By looking at the impasses and limits in the thought of both radical and conservative writers, this work asks what it means to critique empire “properly.” Drawing out a method from Theodor Adorno's quip that “one must have tradition in oneself, in order to hate it properly,” it proposes a critical inhabiting of dominant forms of reason as a way forward for the critique of both empire and Enlightenment.
Sabine Arnaud
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780226275543
- eISBN:
- 9780226275680
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226275680.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
Men and women of letters used the description of vaporous fits to exemplify the relationship between body and mind irrespective of medical concerns. This chapter examines how the Republic of Letters ...
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Men and women of letters used the description of vaporous fits to exemplify the relationship between body and mind irrespective of medical concerns. This chapter examines how the Republic of Letters itself adopted and challenged the theme of vapors. In works by Diderot, La Mettrie, C.J. de B. de Paumerelle, Le Camus, and Chassaignon, vapors and hysteric affections were called upon to name inner turmoil, distress, embarrassment, and physiological disorders. These terms were also ways to consider modernity, the human species, women, or even literary creation. Because of their spectacular symptoms, the vapors are repeatedly invoked in these texts as an ideal tool to manipulate either the sufferer’s entourage or his or her own faculties, which are pushed into unexplored domains. The force of the vapors is made to exemplify or stimulate the role of the body in sensibility and creativity. Using these notions, men and women of letters were participating in a move to fashion sensibility and acknowledge contradictory conceptions of physiological phenomena.Less
Men and women of letters used the description of vaporous fits to exemplify the relationship between body and mind irrespective of medical concerns. This chapter examines how the Republic of Letters itself adopted and challenged the theme of vapors. In works by Diderot, La Mettrie, C.J. de B. de Paumerelle, Le Camus, and Chassaignon, vapors and hysteric affections were called upon to name inner turmoil, distress, embarrassment, and physiological disorders. These terms were also ways to consider modernity, the human species, women, or even literary creation. Because of their spectacular symptoms, the vapors are repeatedly invoked in these texts as an ideal tool to manipulate either the sufferer’s entourage or his or her own faculties, which are pushed into unexplored domains. The force of the vapors is made to exemplify or stimulate the role of the body in sensibility and creativity. Using these notions, men and women of letters were participating in a move to fashion sensibility and acknowledge contradictory conceptions of physiological phenomena.
Leslie Tuttle
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195381603
- eISBN:
- 9780199870295
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195381603.003.0008
- Subject:
- History, European Early Modern History, Political History
Eighteenth‐century French writers became convinced that France was depopulating; this public concern was the context in which the French royal government would revive its pronatalist policy to reward ...
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Eighteenth‐century French writers became convinced that France was depopulating; this public concern was the context in which the French royal government would revive its pronatalist policy to reward fathers of large families between 1760 and 1789. This chapter begins by surveying the evolution of thinking about population and of reproductive behavior since the seventeenth century. By the mid‐eighteenth century, French writers increasingly noted that large families were rare. They wrote nostalgically about the natural, rustic family values that contraceptive practices had corrupted. The second part of the chapter examines the royal government's renewed interest in rewarding large families during the last four decades of the Old Regime. During this period, royal administrators distributed tax reductions and payments to hundreds and perhaps thousands of fathers with many children every year, to households that ranged from the very poor to comfortable noblemen.Less
Eighteenth‐century French writers became convinced that France was depopulating; this public concern was the context in which the French royal government would revive its pronatalist policy to reward fathers of large families between 1760 and 1789. This chapter begins by surveying the evolution of thinking about population and of reproductive behavior since the seventeenth century. By the mid‐eighteenth century, French writers increasingly noted that large families were rare. They wrote nostalgically about the natural, rustic family values that contraceptive practices had corrupted. The second part of the chapter examines the royal government's renewed interest in rewarding large families during the last four decades of the Old Regime. During this period, royal administrators distributed tax reductions and payments to hundreds and perhaps thousands of fathers with many children every year, to households that ranged from the very poor to comfortable noblemen.
Sabine Arnaud
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780226275543
- eISBN:
- 9780226275680
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226275680.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
The fifth chapter examines the increasing role, from the 1750s, of literary and medical narratives in inscribing physiological disorders into a coherent progression. In novels by Lennox, Godwin, and ...
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The fifth chapter examines the increasing role, from the 1750s, of literary and medical narratives in inscribing physiological disorders into a coherent progression. In novels by Lennox, Godwin, and Diderot, the body’s manifestations appear as a code, a truth, or a manipulation, depending on the author’s specific narrative demands. They are presented as a language of the body, marking turning points in the progression of feelings, and function as a means to question the relationship between identity and representation. In narratively structured manuscript reports by correspondents of the Société Royale de Médecine and observations published in medical treatises, hysteria is often presented as a fascinating, at times a bewildering, pathology. Toward the end of the century, the observations increasingly become a place to see the pathology as a testament to the patient’s education, way of life, and emotions. Such narrative claims not only to identify the diagnosis, but also to make it intelligible, grounding the diagnosis in the patient’s past emotional and physiological experiences.Less
The fifth chapter examines the increasing role, from the 1750s, of literary and medical narratives in inscribing physiological disorders into a coherent progression. In novels by Lennox, Godwin, and Diderot, the body’s manifestations appear as a code, a truth, or a manipulation, depending on the author’s specific narrative demands. They are presented as a language of the body, marking turning points in the progression of feelings, and function as a means to question the relationship between identity and representation. In narratively structured manuscript reports by correspondents of the Société Royale de Médecine and observations published in medical treatises, hysteria is often presented as a fascinating, at times a bewildering, pathology. Toward the end of the century, the observations increasingly become a place to see the pathology as a testament to the patient’s education, way of life, and emotions. Such narrative claims not only to identify the diagnosis, but also to make it intelligible, grounding the diagnosis in the patient’s past emotional and physiological experiences.
Pierre Saint-Amand
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691149271
- eISBN:
- 9781400838714
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691149271.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
We think of the Enlightenment as an era dominated by ideas of progress, production, and industry—not an era that favored the lax and indolent individual. But was the Enlightenment only about the ...
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We think of the Enlightenment as an era dominated by ideas of progress, production, and industry—not an era that favored the lax and indolent individual. But was the Enlightenment only about the unceasing improvement of self and society? This book examines moral, political, and economic treatises of the period, and reveals that crucial eighteenth-century texts did find value in idleness and nonproductivity. Fleshing out Enlightenment thinking in the works of Denis Diderot, Joseph Joubert, Pierre de Marivaux, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Jean-Siméon Chardin, this book explores idleness in all its guises, and illustrates that laziness existed, not as a vice of the wretched, but as an exemplar of modernity and a resistance to beliefs about virtue and utility. Whether in the dawdlings of Marivaux's journalist who delayed and procrastinated or in the subjects of Chardin's paintings who delighted in suspended, playful time, Pierre Saint-Amand shows how eighteenth-century works provided a strong argument for laziness. Rousseau abandoned his previous defense of labor to pursue reverie and botanical walks, Diderot emphasized a parasitic strategy of resisting work in order to liberate time, and Joubert's little-known posthumous Notebooks radically opposed the central philosophy of the Enlightenment in a quest to infinitely postpone work. Unsettling the stubborn view of the eighteenth century as an age of frenetic industriousness and labor, this book plumbs the texts and images of the time and uncovers deliberate yearnings for slowness and recreation.Less
We think of the Enlightenment as an era dominated by ideas of progress, production, and industry—not an era that favored the lax and indolent individual. But was the Enlightenment only about the unceasing improvement of self and society? This book examines moral, political, and economic treatises of the period, and reveals that crucial eighteenth-century texts did find value in idleness and nonproductivity. Fleshing out Enlightenment thinking in the works of Denis Diderot, Joseph Joubert, Pierre de Marivaux, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Jean-Siméon Chardin, this book explores idleness in all its guises, and illustrates that laziness existed, not as a vice of the wretched, but as an exemplar of modernity and a resistance to beliefs about virtue and utility. Whether in the dawdlings of Marivaux's journalist who delayed and procrastinated or in the subjects of Chardin's paintings who delighted in suspended, playful time, Pierre Saint-Amand shows how eighteenth-century works provided a strong argument for laziness. Rousseau abandoned his previous defense of labor to pursue reverie and botanical walks, Diderot emphasized a parasitic strategy of resisting work in order to liberate time, and Joubert's little-known posthumous Notebooks radically opposed the central philosophy of the Enlightenment in a quest to infinitely postpone work. Unsettling the stubborn view of the eighteenth century as an age of frenetic industriousness and labor, this book plumbs the texts and images of the time and uncovers deliberate yearnings for slowness and recreation.
Remy Debes
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- June 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780199385997
- eISBN:
- 9780199386024
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199385997.003.0010
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy, Moral Philosophy
Most modern discussions of human dignity give historical pride of place to Immanuel Kant and his idea that dignity is grounded in human rational agency or autonomy. This chapter challenges this ...
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Most modern discussions of human dignity give historical pride of place to Immanuel Kant and his idea that dignity is grounded in human rational agency or autonomy. This chapter challenges this practice by articulating a “second story” about dignity—a story that also unfolded during the Enlightenment, but which grounded dignity in human passionate agency. Thus it is suggested that a range of thinkers, including Rousseau, Adam Smith, and Smith’s French translator, Sophie De Grouchey, all seemed to have inclined in this new direction. However, above all others, this chapter lauds Denis Diderot’s contribution to this second story of human dignity. Correspondingly, the essay culminates in an examination of Diderot’s wide-ranging inquiries into human nature, politics, and social theory.Less
Most modern discussions of human dignity give historical pride of place to Immanuel Kant and his idea that dignity is grounded in human rational agency or autonomy. This chapter challenges this practice by articulating a “second story” about dignity—a story that also unfolded during the Enlightenment, but which grounded dignity in human passionate agency. Thus it is suggested that a range of thinkers, including Rousseau, Adam Smith, and Smith’s French translator, Sophie De Grouchey, all seemed to have inclined in this new direction. However, above all others, this chapter lauds Denis Diderot’s contribution to this second story of human dignity. Correspondingly, the essay culminates in an examination of Diderot’s wide-ranging inquiries into human nature, politics, and social theory.
Christopher L. Miller
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780226590950
- eISBN:
- 9780226591148
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226591148.003.0012
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
Denis Diderot designed and executed a literary hoax or mystification that was aimed at only one person, a friend who had left Paris, to induce the friend’s return. Diderot wrote a fake first-person ...
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Denis Diderot designed and executed a literary hoax or mystification that was aimed at only one person, a friend who had left Paris, to induce the friend’s return. Diderot wrote a fake first-person narrative from the point of view of a nun (Suzanne Simonin) held in a monastery against her will. Later published as a novel, the text retains its ability to fool readers, unless they read the préface-annexe (not included in all editions), which is a blueprint of the hoax and its implications. The novel is also an enduring cry for liberty.Less
Denis Diderot designed and executed a literary hoax or mystification that was aimed at only one person, a friend who had left Paris, to induce the friend’s return. Diderot wrote a fake first-person narrative from the point of view of a nun (Suzanne Simonin) held in a monastery against her will. Later published as a novel, the text retains its ability to fool readers, unless they read the préface-annexe (not included in all editions), which is a blueprint of the hoax and its implications. The novel is also an enduring cry for liberty.
Jason Ā. Josephson-Storm
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780226403229
- eISBN:
- 9780226403533
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226403533.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, History of Religion
This chapter takes as its starting point various figures—from Giordano Bruno to Isaac Newton—who have been blamed for the rise of instrumental reason and the disenchantment of nature, and it ...
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This chapter takes as its starting point various figures—from Giordano Bruno to Isaac Newton—who have been blamed for the rise of instrumental reason and the disenchantment of nature, and it demonstrates their respective magical projects. It then recovers two moments often seen as the watershed of modernity—Francis Bacon’s formulation of the scientific method and the French philosophes’ publication of the Encyclopédie—to demonstrate that neither embody the disenchantment usually attributed to them. In so doing, it separate the putative “birth of science” from the death of magic, and shows that the enlightenment project was initially articulated not in terms of a confLict between religion and science or faith and reason, but as a divine science. Nevertheless, it sees in both movements the roots of occult disavowal in the myth of modernity as the end of superstition.Less
This chapter takes as its starting point various figures—from Giordano Bruno to Isaac Newton—who have been blamed for the rise of instrumental reason and the disenchantment of nature, and it demonstrates their respective magical projects. It then recovers two moments often seen as the watershed of modernity—Francis Bacon’s formulation of the scientific method and the French philosophes’ publication of the Encyclopédie—to demonstrate that neither embody the disenchantment usually attributed to them. In so doing, it separate the putative “birth of science” from the death of magic, and shows that the enlightenment project was initially articulated not in terms of a confLict between religion and science or faith and reason, but as a divine science. Nevertheless, it sees in both movements the roots of occult disavowal in the myth of modernity as the end of superstition.
Andrew H. Clark (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780823251384
- eISBN:
- 9780823253029
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823251384.003.0005
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
This chapter examines the manner in which music was seen in the eighteenth century as a common good. In both religious and secular communities it was envisaged as a strategic means to effect and ...
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This chapter examines the manner in which music was seen in the eighteenth century as a common good. In both religious and secular communities it was envisaged as a strategic means to effect and potentially control the public (usually through its effect on a listening body) and to create a sense of shared sentiment, purpose, and citizenship. It explores the ways in which three well-known eighteenth-century Europeans who wrote on music and its effects—Denis Diderot, Johann Mattheson, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau—theorize dissonance in their social therapies and make music speak for specific sociopolitical goals or cures. For each, bodies possess a certain kind of musical instinct that makes them particularly responsive to music. Musical metaphors, such as “dissonance,” were harnessed to articulate and potentially control unspeakable forces and relations visible in animal and social bodies. Whereas writers such as Mattheson and Rousseau tried to minimize dissonance in their social therapies, others such as Diderot saw it as important.Less
This chapter examines the manner in which music was seen in the eighteenth century as a common good. In both religious and secular communities it was envisaged as a strategic means to effect and potentially control the public (usually through its effect on a listening body) and to create a sense of shared sentiment, purpose, and citizenship. It explores the ways in which three well-known eighteenth-century Europeans who wrote on music and its effects—Denis Diderot, Johann Mattheson, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau—theorize dissonance in their social therapies and make music speak for specific sociopolitical goals or cures. For each, bodies possess a certain kind of musical instinct that makes them particularly responsive to music. Musical metaphors, such as “dissonance,” were harnessed to articulate and potentially control unspeakable forces and relations visible in animal and social bodies. Whereas writers such as Mattheson and Rousseau tried to minimize dissonance in their social therapies, others such as Diderot saw it as important.
Pierre Saint-Amand
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691149271
- eISBN:
- 9781400838714
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691149271.003.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
This introductory chapter illustrates individual instances maintaining their distance from the eighteenth century's prevailing trends. In contrast, at the threshold of industrialization, there is a ...
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This introductory chapter illustrates individual instances maintaining their distance from the eighteenth century's prevailing trends. In contrast, at the threshold of industrialization, there is a series of characters set against the grain of utility and functionality, repeatedly contesting the universality of labor and activity. The chapter reconstitutes an other discourse of laziness, a contradictory and oppositional vision that defies what Michel Foucault might call the techno-disciplinary model of mercantile society. Through a number of portraits of homo otiosus, mined from the underside of the laborious eighteenth century, various figures of idleness as a positive value will come to light: the journalist of Marivaux's youthful writings and his philosopher bum, Rousseau as a writer belatedly proclaiming laziness in his final years, and Diderot's famous parasite, Rameau's Nephew.Less
This introductory chapter illustrates individual instances maintaining their distance from the eighteenth century's prevailing trends. In contrast, at the threshold of industrialization, there is a series of characters set against the grain of utility and functionality, repeatedly contesting the universality of labor and activity. The chapter reconstitutes an other discourse of laziness, a contradictory and oppositional vision that defies what Michel Foucault might call the techno-disciplinary model of mercantile society. Through a number of portraits of homo otiosus, mined from the underside of the laborious eighteenth century, various figures of idleness as a positive value will come to light: the journalist of Marivaux's youthful writings and his philosopher bum, Rousseau as a writer belatedly proclaiming laziness in his final years, and Diderot's famous parasite, Rameau's Nephew.