Citizens without Sovereignty: Equality and Sociability in French Thought, 1670-1789

279 Pages·2017·20.998 MB·English

by  Daniel Gordon

CITIZENS WITHOUT SOVEREIGNTY

CITIZENS WITHOUT
SOVEREIGNTY
E Q U A L I T Y A N D S O C I A B I L I T Y I N
F R E N C H T H O U G H T , 1 6 7 0 - 1 7 8 9
Daniel Gordon
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COPYRIGHT © 1994 BY PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
PUBLISHED BY PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, 41 WILLIAM STREET,
PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY 08540
IN THE UNITED KINGDOM PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, CHICHESTER,
WEST SUSSEX
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DAXA
GORDON, DANIEL, 1961-
CITIZENS WITHOUT SOVEREIGNTY · EQUALITY AND SOCIABILITY IN FRENCH
THOUGHT, 1670-1789 / DANIEL GORDON
P CM.
INCLUDES BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES AND INDEX.
ISBN 0-691-05699-4 (CL)
1. FRANCE—INTELLECTUAL LIFE 2. ENLIGHTENMENT. 3. DESPOTISM—
FRANCE—SOCIAL ASPECTS 4 FRENCH LANGUAGE—SOCIAL ASPECTS-
FRANCE. I TITLE.
DC33 4.G62 1994 001.1 0944—DC20 94-5876
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1 3 5 7 9 1 0 8 6 4 2
32101 026b»D//o CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vii
Introduction 3
1
Absolutism and the Ideal Types of Sociability 9
The Well-Policed State 9
Sociability and Democracy 24
FiveIdealTypes 33
2
The Language of Sociability 43
The Enlightenment as a Lexicon 43
Historical Semantics 48
The Rise of "Society" 51
The Concept of Latent Sociability in Natural Law 54
The Amalgamation of Natural Law and Politeness 61
Self-Centered Cosmopolitanism 73
The Religion of Society 76
3
The Civilizing Process Revisited 86
The Varieties of Civility 86
The Rules of Irrelevance 94
The Public Sphere in Apolitical Form 107
The Douceur of the Gentleman 116
Politeness and the Lineage of the Enlightenment 126
4
Sociability and Universal Historv: Jean-Baptiste Suard and the Scottish
Enlightenment in France 129
UniversalHistory 129
France and the Scottish Enlightenment 133
Storm over Suard 137
The Virtues of Being Lazy 141
Ossian: The Savage Poet 145
Robertson: The Progress of Refinement 150
Hume: The Elimination of Politics 160
vi CONTENTS
5
Andre Morellet and the End of the Enlightenment 177
Form versus Substance 177
The Rules of Cnticism 182
The Quest for Integration 189
Public Opinion and Civility 199
The Philosophy of Grain 208
Revolution and the New Liberalism 226
Conclusion 242
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 247
INDEX 267
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
T
HIS BOOK IS A PRODUCT of interests that I developed in the
outstanding intellectual environments of Columbia University and
the University of Chicago. As an undergraduate at Columbia, I had
the privilege of studying modern intellectual history with Laurence Dickev
and hearing Eugene Rice lecture on "the secularization of wisdom" in early-
modern Europe. Marc Raeff also kindled my interest in the early-modern
policc state and the relation between intellectuals and government. At the
University of Chicago, where I wrote the doctoral thesis on which this book
is based, I had the good fortune of being encouraged by three fine super-
visors: Keith Baker, Stephen Holmes, and Frangois Furet. I am grateful to
Frangois Furet for providing a model of theoretical sophistication and for
suggesting that philosophy is important not onlv as the substance of a
particular branch of historv, the history of ideas, but as a method for posing
any historical problem. While I see him as a historian with remarkable
theoretical powers, I regard Stephen Holmes as a political theorist with a
superb understanding of history. I am thankful for his useful criticism and
assistance. Keith Baker made many valuable suggestions both when I was
composing the thesis and when I was revising it for publication. In revising
Chapter 2 in particular, I benefited from the conversations and exchange of
sources that took place at Stanford University in 1991 when he and I began
to collaborate on research into the concept of society. My debt to Keith
Baker, moreover, is not simply due to the help he gave me in this particular
project. His open disposition and critical mind, and his interest in classic
problems and novel solutions, have shaped my attitude toward the histo-
rian's vocation. I have not been able to attain his level of objectivity and
insight, but some standards are not meant to be attained in deed; they are
meant to be internalized in the mind, where they provide a source of inspira-
tion. I am grateful to Keith Baker for providing such a standard.
Two other professors at the University of Chicago deserve my thanks. Jan
Goldstein's course on nineteenth-century French intellectual history was a
highlight of my experience at Chicago and helped me, by way of compari-
son, to think about some of the distinctive aspects of French thought before
the age of democracy. The regular exchange of ideas between the Historv'
Department and the Romance Languages Department is one of the strong
points of the academic environment at Chicago, and it was in this context
that I was able to meet Robert Morrissey, a professor of French Literature. I
am grateful to him for introducing me to historical semantics and the textual
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
database of the Project for Research on the Treasury of the French Lan-
guage, of which he is the Director.
I wish to express my appreciation to Orest Ranum and Melvin Richter,
who read the manuscript of this book and made many useful suggestions,
and to Nathan Alexander, who assisted me in proofreading the text. I would
also like to thank Isrvan Hont and Hans Erich B5deker for inviting me to
the conference, entitled "Unsocial Sociability and the Eighteenth-Century
Discourse of Politics and Society," which took place in Gottingen on June
26—30, 1989. I have profited from many of the unpublished papers pre-
sented at the conference, but especially from the "Preliminary Suggestions
for Discussion," drawn up by Professors Hont and Bodeker themselves.
I have had many useful exchanges with other friends and scholars. The}'
are too numerous to identify in entirety, but David Bell, Ann Blair, Jonathan
Cowans, Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, James Engell, Peter France, Claudine
Frank, Dena Goodman, Patrice Higonnct, James Johnson, Lawrence Klein,
Catherine Kudlick, John Christian Laurscn, Dorothy Medlin, Jeffrey Mer-
rick, Benjamin Nathans, Jeremy Popkin, Bryant T. Ragan, Jeffrey Ravel,
Paul Robinson, Paul Rosenberg, and Pierre Saint-Amand deserve my ex-
plicit thanks. Dena Goodman has been especially receptive to my ideas and
generous in sharing her own. I have gained much from her understanding of
the Enlightenment and from her friendship.
As a graduate student I received a grant from the Georges Lurcv Founda-
tion to study in France, and I am glad to have an opportunity' to thank this
institution for its generous support.
CITIZENS WITHOUT SOVEREIGNTY