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‘TOUCHSTONES OF TRUTH’: THE ENLIGHTENMENT OF JEAN-BAPTISTE-LOUIS GRESSET, LÉGER-MARIE DESCHAMPS, AND SIMON-NICOLAS-HENRI LINGUET

Platon, Mircea Alexandru
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1330711134

Abstract Details

2012, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, History.
My dissertation, “'Touchstones of Truth': The Enlightenment of J.-B.-L. Gresset, L.M. Deschamps, and S.-N.-H. Linguet,” focuses on three key but little studied opponents of the philosophes. I argue that the writer Jean-Baptiste-Louis Gresset (1709-1777), the philosopher François-Léger-Marie Deschamps (1716-1774), and the lawyer and political theorist Simon-Nicolas-Henri Linguet (1736-1794) opposed the philosophes in the name of a set of universally valid principles against what they took to be the philosophes' superficial, self-serving, and haphazard politicization of language, philosophy and the social sciences. These three intellectuals warned that such politicization fostered economic, political, and intellectual inequality as well as cultural alienation., thereby undermining the Enlightenment’s own vision. Gresset supported a "civic republican" political economy of virtue, and warned about the dangers of the consumer culture fostered by the philosophes. The roots of his cultural criticism lay in moral and political concerns that found expression in a patriotic discourse stressing the importance of social "harmony" and the common good while rejecting any temptation to belong to a “party.” In this spirit, Gresset defended the "ancient constitution" against idle monks, royal or ministerial despotism, parlementarian rebellion, and the philosophes. Radically egalitarian and idiosyncratically constructed from elements of scholastic theology and neoplatonic philosophy, Dom Deschamps’ critique of the philosophes’ dependence on the privileged serves as a useful guide for exploring the consistency and the limits of the second or theological phase of the French Enlightenment. Dom Deschamps stood at the center of a circle consisting of active soldiers and army veterans, most of them nobles, who combined cosmopolitanism, a serious knowledge of the natural sciences and of philosophy, political concerns, and a libertine life. Rural, castle-bound, and exclusively male, this Enlightenment was concerned not with reforming society, but with preserving a tradition of liberty and of free inquiry that escaped the philosophes’ consensus. While ultimately aimed at opening up a space for “true” Enlightenment within the Enlightenment, Deschamps’ own social connections shed light on the clandestine patronage networks that challenged both the Old-Regime establishment and the “philosophic” opposition to it. With Linguet, finally, my dissertation explores the political battles that led to the French Revolution. As a lawyer, economist and political journalist of European stature, Linguet argued that the systematic laissez-faire theories of “enlightened” political economists would dissolve the traditional ties of society and that only a politics of subsistence, welfare, and nurture would prevent the coming revolution. Linguet was embraced as a hero by the early French Revolutionary press, only to be executed as a defender of despotism in 1794. The choice of Gresset, Deschamps and Linguet permits my “coverage” to be comprehensive in both a chronological and a thematic sense, given that the French Enlightenment evolved from mainly literary quarrels in the 1730s-1750s, to theological battles in the late 1750s and 1760s, and on to political battles in the 1770s and 1780s. Each of my three characters “belongs” to one of these pivotal moments; collectively they delineate an even more radical Enlightenment than that prevalent in current scholarship.
Dale K. Van Kley, PhD (Advisor)
Alice Conklin, PhD (Advisor)
Nicholas Breyfogle, PhD (Committee Member)
Diane Birckbichler, PhD (Committee Member)
490 p.
Economic History; European History; Foreign Language; History; Literature; Religious History; Theology
Gresset; Dom Deschamps; Linguet; intellectual history; Enlightenment; Counter-Enlightenment; economic anthropology; French Revolution

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Platon, M. A. (2012). ‘TOUCHSTONES OF TRUTH’: THE ENLIGHTENMENT OF JEAN-BAPTISTE-LOUIS GRESSET, LÉGER-MARIE DESCHAMPS, AND SIMON-NICOLAS-HENRI LINGUET [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1330711134

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Platon, Mircea. ‘TOUCHSTONES OF TRUTH’: THE ENLIGHTENMENT OF JEAN-BAPTISTE-LOUIS GRESSET, LÉGER-MARIE DESCHAMPS, AND SIMON-NICOLAS-HENRI LINGUET. 2012. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1330711134.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Platon, Mircea. "‘TOUCHSTONES OF TRUTH’: THE ENLIGHTENMENT OF JEAN-BAPTISTE-LOUIS GRESSET, LÉGER-MARIE DESCHAMPS, AND SIMON-NICOLAS-HENRI LINGUET." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2012. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1330711134

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

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