This article explores Eli Sisters as a reinvigorated rogue who finds his artistic calling in Patrick deWitt’s The Sisters Brothers, published in 2011. With the help of insights from narratology and genre theory, the article provides a textual analysis of Eli’s discourse, perspective and behaviour. Eli casts a critical light on the senseless violence, unbridled greed, ecological devastation, and hyper-masculinity inherent to America’s Frontier myth. As a reinvigorated rogue, he raises questions about what it means to be human and reflects (...) upon morality. With hindsight, the rogue as an artist creates a generically hybrid narrative that parodically imitates and transforms the genre conventions of the Western and the picaresque tale. The article also draws attention to the power that Eli assigns to women in a story about male heroic conquest. These include otherworldly female figures from classical mythology and the brothers’ mother. (shrink)

At first glance, Germaine de Staël and Immanuel Kant evince strikingly different attitudes to aesthetic judgment. Yet she promoted Kant's aesthetics and philosophy. This paper examines both Staël's early literary works and her later De l'Allemagne in order to tease out the relationship between their aesthetic theories.

In "De l’Allemagne", Mme de Staël develops a sophisticated philosophical psychology that centers not on reason, but imagination. She does this by bringing French Enlightenment philosophy, particularly Rousseau and Diderot, into dialogue with German thinkers, including Kant and Herder. For Mme de Staël, imagination transcends the epistemic limits of sensibility and reason by incorporating sentiment.

In the foreword to the Mercure de France edition of de Staël., Chantal Thomas, French historian and writer, writes that this apology in favor of Marie-Antoinette did not help the queen nor the author herself; on the contrary it only made the latter more unpopular. So why did Germaine de Staël write it? Mme de Staël and Marie-Antoinette did not share many interests; however, at the moment of The Women’s March on Versailles in October 1789, the situation (...) had changed. It was at this moment, when Mme de Staël witnessed people’s hatred for the Queen, that she for the first time felt that she was on her side. She had the feeling that the Queen would be a victim to a public opinion that had been “manipulated” in a systematic way, and to which she herself had been a victim. Pursuing some ideas formulated by Reddy and in their work on emotion and empathy in history and philosophy respectively, I hope to offer some suggestions, with the aid of cultural semiotics. More specifically I hope to be able to provide some answers to the question whether Mme de Staël’s apology might be regarded as an act of compassion. (shrink)

One of the most fascinating and influential women in French history was Germaine de Staël. Raised in a stimulating intellectual environment by parents connected to the court of Louis XVI, she became an internationally known writer, intellectual, and political activist. As the engaging, intelligent host of a popular salon in Paris and through frequent travels, she met some of the leading Enlightenment figures of the day, many of whom became her friends and confidants: William Pitt the Younger, Benjamin Constant, (...) Lord Byron, August Wilhelm Schlegel, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, and Czar Alexander I, to name a few. Later in life she gained much notoriety and had to flee the country because of her outspoken opposition to the tyranny of Napoleon Bonaparte. In this engrossing biography, Sergine Dixon traces both the personal and public life of this very accomplished woman. She recounts her early years in the waning years of the French royal court, the turbulent period of the French Revolution, her exiles to Switzerland and England, and her unwavering defense of republicanism during the reign of Napoleon. Analyzing her novels, correspondence, and writings on politics and the intellectual trends of the time, Dixon presents an appealing portrait of the woman whose life and career bridged the end of the Enlightenment and the beginning of Romanticism. (shrink)

En este trabajo se analiza la reflexión de Madame de Staël sobre la felicidad, por qué cree que partimos de una concepción errónea, por qué las pasiones son un factor decisivo y de qué recursos disponemos para ser felices. Atendiendo a esto último, en este artículo se analiza por qué las protagonistas de sus dos grandes novelas, Delphine y Corinne, fracasan, cuál es la posición de los personajes masculinos y si la autora ofrece a las mujeres otros medios para (...) buscar la felicidad. (shrink)

En este artículo se analiza la posición de Madame de Staël sobre la búsqueda de la felicidad, el tratamiento de las pasiones y el papel de la compasión, tres temas centrales en Schopenhauer, pero con los cuales ella articula un camino diferente a la negación de la voluntad y a la mera afirmación de la voluntad. Madame de Staël interpretó la compasión, esa pasión femenina por excelencia en Schopenhauer, también de una manera más amplia y en la que (...) la ética y la política se combinan en relación con el arte de vivir en lugar de negar la voluntad. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Men with Muskets, Women with Lyres: Nationality, Citizenship, and Gender in the Writings of Germaine de StaëlSusanne HillmanOn 23 May 1812 Germaine de Staël (1766–1817), Europe’s best-known enemy of Napoleon Bonaparte, set out from her estate on Lake Geneva to escape to England. In her reminiscences, she reflected on the pivotal event as follows:[A]fter ten years of ever-increasing persecutions [...] I was obliged to leave two homelands as (...) a fugitive, Switzerland and France, by order of a man less French than I. For I was born on the banks of the Seine, where his only claim to citizenship is his tyranny. He saw the light of day on the island of Corsica, practically within Africa’s savage sway. His father did not, like mine, devote his fortune and his sleepless nights to defending France from bankruptcy and famine; the air of this beautiful country is not his native air; how can he understand the pain of being exiled from it, when he considers this fertile land only as the instrument of his victories. [End Page 231] Where is his patrie? It is any country that accepts his domination. His fellow-citizens? They are whatever slaves obey his orders.1In this passage, de Staël deliberately links nationality and citizenship. In her view, citizenship status was acquired simply by being born on French soil. Her family’s tireless labors on behalf of the nation added another irrefutable proof of Frenchness. In addition, growing up in France and breathing the country’s invigorating air had created an emotional attachment that a person raised elsewhere simply could not fathom. We thus have a triad of birth/service/sentiment that connects the deserving individual to his or her nation (in this case la grande nation).In this essay I explore de Staël’s understanding of the twin concepts of nationality and citizenship through the lens of gender. Nationality and citizenship were of perennial concern to her thought, partly because of the turbulent times she lived in, partly because of her personal experience in exile. Influenced by history and literature, she early on admired the gallant men with muskets who heroically sacrificed their lives for the glory of the nation. But it was the exceptional women with lyres who were destined to act as the nation’s unifying agents by recreating the gallants’ deeds in writing. By imagining the nation these women fulfilled the supreme task of citizenship. In what follows I will argue that de Staël conceived of the ideal citizen as a woman writer or artist who served her nation by inspiring its members with enthusiasm and virtue.2 In elaborating her view of the superior woman as citoyenne and national muse she made an important contribution to the debate on the nation and the citizen.The only daughter of Louis XVI’s finance minister Jacques Necker and the salonnière Suzanne Curchod-Necker, of Genevan and Vaudois citizenship respectively, de Staël gained fame and notoriety through her brilliant conversational talents, political intrigues, and unconventional relationships with famous men. Though she considered herself a “true Frenchwoman” (véritable française),3 she was a citizen of Geneva and a Swedish subject by marriage, at least until 1803 when she took advantage of the Code Civil [End Page 232] and officially claimed French citizenship.4 Considering this multiplicity of conflicting loyalties, it is not surprising that her major writings reveal a sustained preoccupation with these issues.Despite their undeniable significance for early nineteenth-century European intellectual history, historians have so far devoted scant attention to de Staël’s writings. In fact, in the US, Staëlien studies have largely been dominated by literary criticism and theory.5 This has had the effect of prioritizing her novels over her non-fiction, downplaying the historical context of her oeuvre and, most grievously, ignoring de Staël’s historical contribution to socio-political thought.6 As a result of the complex ways in which her personal experience informed her writing, her oeuvre is best examined as a unified, though certainly inconsistent, whole. Her writings were rarely “products of intense deliberation, but rather reflections... (shrink)

Germaine de Staël (1766–1817), despite having published a considerable body of work, is seldom regarded as a feminist philosopher. Unlike, for instance, Mary Wollstonecraft of the same period, Staël is not directly arguing for the equality of the sexes. She even, at times, makes surprisingly derogatory remarks about women's nature. I argue that she is nevertheless putting forward a brand of difference feminism, which deserves our attention as a contribution to feminist reflections on gender norms in the early (...) modern era. Staël's contribution takes the form of a plea for the improvement of women's lives that engages with the combined action of nature and society. I clarify the meaning that we should ascribe to Staël's frequent appeals to nature and argue that, for her, society and education should be used to correct (alleged) natural weaknesses instead of reinforcing them. I also give an overview of Staël's political proposals toward the improvement of women's lives, which call for a better form of political regime than the one she lived in, as well as a better access to education and a more egalitarian conception of marriage. (shrink)

In Sandrine Bergès’s article ‘Revolution and Republicanism: Women Political Philosophers of Late Eighteenth-Century France and Why They Matter’ [2021], neo-Athenian and neo-Roman principles of republicanism are fused in order to show the idiosyncratic political position of Olympe de Gouges, Marie-Jeanne Phlipon Roland, and Sophie de Grouchy. As Bergès acknowledges, this amalgamation renders possible republican readings of women’s writings which so far have not been regarded as republican. Through my reading of Germaine de Staël and Mary Wollstonecraft, my aim will (...) be to show how Staël and Wollstonecraft embody the principles that Bergès highlights, but also venture into other areas tied to republican thinking that Bergès leaves untouched: religion and progress. Wollstonecraft and Staël both tie Christianity closely to their republicanism, maintaining that a future republican state will come through divine intervention. In this way, I hope to add complexity to Bergès’s project by expanding our knowledge of female republicans. (shrink)

The diminution of emphasis on the arts and the humanities and the corresponding increased emphasis on business and STEM disciplines has resulted in a normative conception of national progress that excludes aesthetic education. Scholars in the arts and the humanities have responded to this marginalization either by calling for more esotericism or by underscoring the importance of aesthetic education to the future of democracy and humanity. These arguments have failed to capture the public’s attention. In this essay, I argue that (...) there is a third way: aesthetic educators should challenge the normative understanding of national progress. To this end, I return to the dawn of the split between scientific inquiry and humanist understanding to highlight French Enlightenment debates around the understanding of progress. Specifically, I call attention to the writings of the French philosopher Germaine de Staël because in the adaptation of her notion of progress lies possible hope for the future of the humanities and the arts. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article compares different historical accounts of early Christianity written by François Guizot, Benjamin Constant and Madame de Staël and shows that they played a significant role in the construction of their ideas about religious tolerance and political liberty in ancient and modern states. In his 1812 translation of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Guizot used his editorial footnotes to oppose Gibbon’s sceptical representation of the early Church and to assert that the development of Christianity had (...) been crucial in condemning slavery, establishing religious toleration and fostering individual liberty. Benjamin Constant also opposed Gibbon’s representation of early Church history but he argued in his posthumously published Du polythéisme romain that the key achievement of the early Christians had been to revive the idea of individual religious sentiment against the anti-individualist Roman state. As Guizot developed his historical research in the 1820s he rejected this view and came to see the early Christians as demonstrating the inherently social nature of all religious practice. Some of these ideas were anticipated by Madame de Staël in De la littérature, but all three thinkers sought to reintegrate religion into their ideas of modern liberty in ways that merit greater attention. (shrink)

En ces temps où, dans la production éditoriale comme au cinéma, Marie-Antoinette est à la mode, il faut absolument s’arrêter sur cet ouvrage. Le titre exact de ce court pamphlet (30 p.), publié anonymement en août 1793 après le renvoi de Marie-Antoinette devant le Tribunal révolutionnaire, est Réflexions sur le procès de la reine par une femme. Et c’est aux femmes que l’auteure s’adresse en premier, aux « femmes de tous les pays, de toutes les classes de la société » (...) : sensibles, elles ne peu... (shrink)

This paper looks at selected reviews of women’s philosophical (and literary) works by Revolutionary author and politician Pierre-Louis Roederer. This study occasions the following remarks. Women’s works, when they raised political radical and sometimes feminist agendas were not only read and reviewed, but considered part of the general Revolutionary effort to relieve social and political inequalities. Secondly Roederer appears, from these reviews, as committed to convincing the French intellectual community that works by women ought to be taken as seriously as (...) works by men, and to combat the prejudices which meant that they often were not. I will highlight in particular his reading of Mary Wollstonecraft’s Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman as both a fictionalized continuation of the philosophical programme of her Vindication of the Rights of Woman, and as a contribution to the philosophy of emotions – for which he compares it to Sophie de Grouchy’s Letters on Sympathy. I will also look at an unpublished draft in which he compares and contrasts Grouchy, Germaine de Staël, Emilie du Chatelet and Suzanne Necker’s writings on love. (shrink)

Political moderation is the touchstone of democracy, which could not function without compromise and bargaining, yet it is one of the most understudied concepts in political theory. How can we explain this striking paradox? Why do we often underestimate the virtue of moderation? Seeking to answer these questions, A Virtue for Courageous Minds examines moderation in modern French political thought and sheds light on the French Revolution and its legacy. Aurelian Craiutu begins with classical thinkers who extolled the virtues of (...) a moderate approach to politics, such as Aristotle and Cicero. He then shows how Montesquieu inaugurated the modern rebirth of this tradition by laying the intellectual foundations for moderate government. Craiutu looks at important figures such as Jacques Necker, Madame de Staël, and Benjamin Constant, not only in the context of revolutionary France but throughout Europe. He traces how moderation evolves from an individual moral virtue into a set of institutional arrangements calculated to protect individual liberty, and he explores the deep affinity between political moderation and constitutional complexity. Craiutu demonstrates how moderation navigates between political extremes, and he challenges the common notion that moderation is an essentially conservative virtue, stressing instead its eclectic nature. Drawing on a broad range of writings in political theory, the history of political thought, philosophy, and law, A Virtue for Courageous Minds reveals how the virtue of political moderation can address the profound complexities of the world today. (shrink)

This volume re-examines traditional interpretations of the rise of modern aesthetics in eighteenth-century Britain and Germany. It provides a new account that connects aesthetic experience with morality, science, and political society. In doing so, the book challenges longstanding teleological narratives that emphasize disinterestedness and the separation of aesthetics from moral, cognitive, and political interests. The chapters are divided into three thematic parts. The chapters in Part I demonstrate the heteronomy of eighteenth-century British aesthetics. They chart the evolution of aesthetic concepts (...) and discuss the ethical and political significance of the aesthetic theories of several key figures, namely the third Earl of Shaftesbury, David Hume, and Adam Smith. Part II explores the ways in which eighteenth-century German thinkers examine aesthetic experience and moral concerns and relate to the work of their British counterparts. The chapters here cover the work of Kant, Moses Mendelssohn, Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, and Madame de Staël. Finally, Part III explores the interrelation of science, aesthetics, and a new model of society in the work of Goethe, Johann Wilhelm Ritter, Friedrich Hölderlin, and William Hazlitt, among others. This volume develops unique discussions of the rise of aesthetic autonomy in the eighteenth century. In bringing together well-known scholars working on British and German eighteenth-century aesthetics, philosophy, and literature, it will appeal to scholars and advanced students in a range of disciplines who are interested in this topic. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Karl Popper, the Vienna Circle, and Red ViennaMalachi H. Hacohen*A stranger in his homeland even before emigrating in 1937, the philosopher Karl Popper is rarely considered an Austrian. Although he was born in Vienna in 1902 and buried there in 1994, he is known as an Atlantic intellectual and an anti-Communist prophet of postwar liberalism. He first became famous for The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945). 1 He (...) wrote the book during World War II in his New Zealand exile, intending it as a defense of democracy against fascism. The defeat of Austrian socialism and the collapse of Central European democracies were the major experiences informing his analysis. But The Open Society quickly became, with Popper’s full support, a charter of Atlantic Cold War liberalism. His philosophy of science, exemplified best in Logik der Forschung, went through a similar transformation. 2 To be sure, it is commonly debated in the context of logical positivism and the Vienna Circle; but the circle’s emigration and the postwar triumph of analytic philosophy in the Anglo-American academy transformed positivism, too, into an Atlantic philosophy. The “fugue of exile’s disruptions” severed the thread connecting Popper to Austria. 3Yet Popper was the foremost philosopher to carry the progressive Viennese legacy into the postwar era. In his critiques of the Vienna Circle and Red Vienna he confronted the philosophical and political problems of Viennese late enlightenment [End Page 711] and the interwar crises of scientific reason and Central European democracy. Refashioning the fin-de-siècle progressive legacy, he drew novel visions of liberal science and politics, imagining utopian scientific and political communities that were engaged in the pursuit of truth and reform. He made critical debate the acid test of political and scientific rationality, the center of a new liberalism. Establishing a free public sphere as the sine qua non of the Open Society, he innovated on a familiar liberal motif, shared by thinkers as different as Kant, De Staël, Guizot, Mill, and Habermas.In The Open Society Popper also wrote the political platform of the postwar Social-Democratic Consensus that legislated for the welfare state and mobilized against Communism. During World War II he opted for a liberal-socialist alliance that would contain postwar Central European fascism. Instead, his “Popular Front” platform proved adaptable to postwar anti-Communism. He made a few naïve pronouncements on deterrence and the free world during the Cold War. 4 They reflect badly on his political philosophy. Yet disentangled from its Cold War associations, his liberalism contains an abiding cosmopolitan vision for an age that is looking beyond the nation-state. His cosmopolitanism originated as a solution to dilemmas of ethnic identity faced by the assimilated-Jewish Viennese intelligentsia. His Open Society expressed their dream of integration into a community that discounted religion, ethnicity, and nationality. 5 He refused to give up on cosmopolitanism in the bipolar world when Machtpolitik seemed the order of the day. Almost alone among postwar liberals, he retained a belief in an international legal order and challenged national self-determination. His vision has regained relevance today. Cosmopolitanism and critical debate provide a starting-point for renegotiating liberal dilemmas.“My theory of knowledge, my philosophy of science and my political philosophy are original only in their interdependence,” stated Popper in a 1976 interview. 6 His epistemology has major political and scientific significance. Well before cultural studies began deconstructing science, Popper countered philosophers’ and scientists’ claims of expertise. There is no philosophical method. Every person is a problem-solver, and so every person is a philosopher. “Science is nothing but enlightened and responsible common sense—common sense broadened by imaginative critical thinking.” 7 Demystifying science, he never gave up on the growth of knowledge. He conceived of science as an unending quest for uncertain but growing knowledge. A non-foundationist, [End Page 712] he insisted that objectivity meant intersubjectivity. Rationality was a product of critical debate. In today’s intellectual world, devoid of certainty, where systems of knowledge and identities have been thrown into flux, Popper’s unique synthesis of contingency, convention, and change with logical certainty, objectivity, and tradition suggests a promising direction in the... (shrink)

Benjamin Constant's On Religion was a major effort to include religion within liberal political thought, insisting on the possibility of religious progress and perfectibility. It was also a major critique of Catholicism and of clericalism in any form. And it was one of the most wide-ranging comparative studies of religion since it purported to cover all religions worldwide before Christianity. Constant worked on it for most of his adult life, more than 40 years. This article traces the rise of the (...) language of progress and perfectibility in Constant's milieu, finding roots in Rousseau, Scottish thinkers, Germans and Swiss such as Madame de Staël, Condorcet, William Godwin, and others. He also sprinkled some of his ideas about progress and perfectibility in his wide-ranging political writings. But it was in On Religion that he went into the idea of progress and perfectibility in depth, finding both a universal human need for religion and religious progress in every religion and over time. It may be true that he underestimated the possibility of regress and failure in human development, but nevertheless this work stands as a monument to liberal confidence in a better future. (shrink)

Behler discusses the current state of thought on modernity and postmodernity, detailing the intellectual problems to be faced and examining the positions of such central figures in the debate as Lyotard, Habermas, Rorty, and Derrida. He finds that beyond the "limits of communication," further discussion must be carried out through irony. The historical rise of the concept of modernity is examined through discussions of the querelle des anciens et des modernes as a break with classical tradition, and on the theoretical (...) writings of de Stael, the English romantics, and the great German romantics Schlegel, Hegel, and Nietzsche. The growth of the concept of irony from a formal rhetorical term to a mode of indirectness that comes to characterize thought and discourse generally is then examined from Plato and Socrates to Nietzsche, who avoided the term "irony" but used it in his cetnral concept of the mask. (shrink)

Notamment par l'intermédiaire de Germaine de Staël.

Voltaire called fanaticism the "monster that pretends to be the child of religion". Philosophers, politicians, and cultural critics have decried fanaticism and attempted to define the distinctive qualities of the fanatic, whom Winston Churchill described as "someone who can't change his mind and won't change the subject". Yet despite fanaticism's role in the long history of social discord, human conflict, and political violence, it remains a relatively neglected topic in the history of philosophy. In this outstanding inquiry into the philosophical (...) history of fanaticism a team of international contributors examine the topic from antiquity to the present day. Organised into four sections, topics covered include: Fanaticism in ancient Greek, Indian and Chinese philosophy; Fanaticism and superstition from Hobbes to Hume, including chapters on Locke and Montesquieu, Shaftesbury, and Hutcheson; Kant, Germaine de Stael, Hegel, Nietzsche, William James, and Jorge Portilla on fanaticism; Fanaticism and terrorism; and extremism and gender, including the philosophy and morality of the 'manosphere'; Closed-mindedness and political and epistemological fanaticism. Spanning themes from superstition, enthusiasm and misanthropy to the emotions, purity and the need for certainty, Fanaticism and the History of Philosophy is a landmark volume for anyone researching and teaching the history of philosophy, particularly ethics and moral philosophy. It is also a valuable resource for those studying fanaticism in related fields such as religion, the history of political thought, sociology, and the history of ideas. (shrink)

Si le substantif intellectuel peut se féminiser sans provoquer la colère des Académicien/ne/s et si l’on reconnaît volontiers dans la vie courante que les femmes sont plus « intellectuelles » que les hommes – par leur lien privilégié avec la lecture notamment –, il n’en va pas de même dans l’historiographie et dans le débat médiatique. Suffit-il d’ajouter une syllabe – muette – pour qu’apparaisse une nouvelle configuration? S’il est arrivé que quelques-unes unes, comme Mme de Staël, Simone d...

The authors of the first constitutions of the Spanish-American world, in New Granada, were also scientists who published articles on geography, natural history, political economy, population or medicine. From this observation, the article seeks to show how these scholars understood how to apply the new naturalistic knowledge to the regeneration of society in their constitutional work. This ambition entailed the need to destroy the supposedly artificial and despotic hierarchies of the Ancien Régime, based on the genealogical transmission of dignities and (...) infamy, in order to replace them with others that were "natural". This device did not mean the constitutional triumph of equality, since, to take up a formula of Madame de Staël, equality before the law would mean nothing other than the reestablishment of natural inequalities. The article firstly deals with the works of the Enlightenment of New Granada and of Baron Humboldt to understand the assumptions of their naturalistic anthropology on the "American man", which later served to think, in revolutionary times, about certain political topics such as federalism, the rights of man and the limits of citizenship. It ends with a re-reading of the Discurso de Angostura by showing how this naturalistic knowledge, influenced Bolívar's constitutionalist thought. (shrink)

Unique comprehensive anthology of standard and non-standard short fiction by Stael, Denon, Stendhal, Chateaubriand, Balzac, Sand, Mérimée, Desbordes-Valmore, Flaubert, Hugo, Zola, Huysmans, Rachilde, Schwob, Barbey-d'Aurevilly, and Villiers de l'Isle d'Adam. Important new theoretical/historical introduction; incisive critical preface to, and up-to-date bibliography on, each author and richly annotated work.

Censures au XVIIIe siecle, les ecrivains-philosophes des Lumieres demeurent controverses ou singes de nos jours. Cette etude privilegie leurs idees-forces sans negliger les porte-parole. Celebres (Bayle, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, Helvetius, d'Holbach...) ou reconnus (d'Argens, Mably, Mirabeau, d'Alembert, Volney, Mme de Stael...) ils n'enferment point leur oeuvre dans le moule d'une pensee unique. Ne parlant jamais d'une seule voix, tous associent l'invention de la liberte et l'idee neuve de bonheur. La Mettrie, materialiste medecin des ames, ecrit en precurseur de Freud. (...) Immoraliste visionnaire, Sade anticipe les derives d'une philosophie deshumanisee. Les debats seculaires avec les apologistes (Abbadie, Barruel, Bergier, Gerard, Holland, Vernes...) elaborent les fondements universels d'une morale non confessionnelle. Du refus des dogmes et de tout esprit de systeme nait une ethique transcendant les revelations. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The French Atlantic Triangle: Literature and Culture of the Slave TradeStephen Auerbach (bio)Christopher L. Miller. The French Atlantic Triangle: Literature and Culture of the Slave Trade. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2008. xvi + 571 pp.Over the last decade scholars have shown a new interest in reconstructing the history of the French slave trade and slaveholding Atlantic. A scholarly consensus is slowly emerging around the notion that the history (...) of French slavery and colonialism is central to any understanding of the larger themes in French and Francophone history from the seventeenth century to the present. Christopher Miller’s The French Atlantic Triangle is a welcome contribution to this important subject. Miller rightly argues that France, Africa, and the Caribbean are tied together in a shared history of colonialism, slavery, and the slave trade. His goal in The French Atlantic Triangle is to reconstruct this history and illuminate its impact on modern French and Francophone cultural life.The French Atlantic Triangle is a fascinating example of research that combines methods employed in history and Francophone literary studies in order to discuss the triangular slave trade that condemned 2 million Africans to slavery on France’s Caribbean sugar islands and an untold number to their deaths during the Middle Passage. Miller’s central interest here is exploring the ways in which the slave trade and its afterlife were represented in literature and in film from the eighteenth to the twentieth century in France, Africa, and the Caribbean. In the absence of any extant Francophone slave narratives, Miller persuasively argues that fiction and later film allowed writers and filmmakers to pour their “speculations and reflections” (92) into that void. French and Francophone writers separated by thousands of miles and hundreds of years were united by the desire to construct slave narratives and stories that played on the reader’s sense of pity and shame, or desire for adventure, or to convey a powerful longing for home. The result is an ambitious and substantive work. Miller clearly succeeds in demonstrating a legacy of slavery and the slave trade in France and Francophone literature, yet the picture that emerges is a muddled one; the reader is left to make sense of competing, diverse, and sometimes divergent claims. In the end, The French Atlantic Triangle is more suggestive than persuasive.The book is organized into fourteen chapters, divided into four sections, arranged chronologically and geographically. Part 1 (chaps. 1–4) is largely synthesis. Drawing heavily on the work of historians of slavery and the slave trade, Miller outlines the details of the triangular trade from its inception in the mid-seventeenth century to its first abolition in 1794, and final suppression in 1848. Chapters 1 and 2 will be a review for anyone familiar with the history of this period. Chapter 3 focuses on the Enlightenment and the slave trade. Miller rightly notes that the Enlightenment coincided with the height of French slaving activity. Examining works by Montesquieu, Rousseau, and [End Page 59] Voltaire, Miller argues that the philosophes were never much interested in the plight of African slaves, and when they did speak out on the issue it was with heavy irony or wit that only diluted their message. Miller’s analysis is convincing, though he seems unjustified in suggesting that Voltaire remained mostly quiet on the issue because he was heavily invested in the slave trade. There is no evidence for that assertion.Part 2 (chaps. 5–8) covers the period from the French Revolution to the Bourbon Restoration during which time France experienced complete upheaval from the slave rebellions in Martinique in 1789 and Saint Domingue in 1791, to the abolition of slavery in 1794 and its reimposition under Napoleon. Focusing on the writings of Olympe de Gouges, Germaine de Staël, and Claire de Duras, Miller labels the three as abolitionists because in their works they created sympathetic black characters, critiqued racial prejudice, and instilled pity in their readers. Miller brings a fresh analytical eye to well-known texts like Duras’ Ourika, and shines new light on little-known (or unknown) works like Gouge’s play Zamore et Mirza.Miller’s task here is not only to demonstrate the... (shrink)

La pensée de Benjamin Constant se distingue par son intemporalité. Ce libéral en tout, né à Lausanne en 1767, est l’un des théoriciens et des praticiens les plus profonds de la philosophie libérale. Il fut l’un des membres illustres du groupe de Coppet, autour de Madame de Staël, dévolu à l’étude et au développement intellectuel de la liberté sous tous ses aspects. Dans la concurrence des idées qui caractérise l’Occident, ses principes demeurent à bien des égards inégalés jusqu’à ce (...) jour. Il fait notamment figure de précurseur de l’école (nobelisée) des choix publics. D’où l’intérêt de s’y replonger à une époque d’incertitudes sur l’avenir des démocraties libérales, que l’étatisme et le collectivisme ont tendanciellement éloignées de leurs vertus. La primauté du droit sur l’arbitraire, le respect des libertés des individus face aux majorités électorales, la garantie de la propriété envers l’excès fiscal et réglementaire, le rôle des constitutions, les questions religieuses, les conceptions même de liberté, d’individualité et de perfectibilité au vingt-et-unième siècle trouvent des points de départ ou des réponses dans la réflexion constantienne. Pour Constant, l’État doit s’articuler autour d’une seule tâche : celle de préserver la liberté individuelle. Et celle-ci ne se divise pas à l’envi. La liberté de conscience et la liberté de pensée sont indissociables de la liberté économique, de la liberté éducative ou encore de la liberté d’opinion et d’expression. Benjamin Constant anticipe et analyse ainsi de nombreux défis auxquels sont confrontées les sociétés contemporaines. Ce volume, qui réunit les contributions thématiques de certains des meilleurs experts de Constant et du libéralisme, offre une perspective appliquée et actuelle sur la philosophie politique à l’origine de l’harmonie et de la prospérité de nos régions. (shrink)

Indem dieser Band sich auf das Verhältnis von Naturerkennen und Natursein konzentriert, thematisiert er einen wesentlichen Ausschnitt aus dem weiten Spektrum von Böhmes philosophischer Arbeit. Um die Naturthematik möglichst breit zu entfalten und für Querverbindungen offenzuhalten, ist der vorliegende Band in drei Abschnitte gegliedert. Im ersten Abschnitt stehen Charakter und Reichweite der wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnis von Natur im Mittelpunkt. Der zweite Teil des Bandes stellt alternative Perspektiven auf Natur vor. Im dritten Teil schließlich stehen der Mensch und sein Verhältnis zu sich (...) selbst im Mittelpunkt der Untersuchungen. Inhaltsverzeichnis Krohn, Wolfgang: Wissenschaftsentwicklung zwischen Dezentrierung und Dekonstruktion. Stehr, Nico: Von den Grenzen der Macht wissenschaftlicher Erkenntnis. Schäfer, Wolf: Zweifel am Ende des Baconschen Zeitalters. Kamper, Dietmar: Wissen ist Ohnmacht. Macht ist Unwissen. Gamm, der Technik. Janich, Peter: Zeit und Natur. Kimmerle, Heinz: »Es ist Zeit, daß es Zeit wird«. Wie kann Zeit Zeit werden? Schiemann, Gregor: Natur auf dem Rückzug. Zur Relevanz der aristotelischen Unterscheidung von Natur und Technik. Hauskeller, Michael: Ist Schönheit eine Atmosphäre?. Zur Bestimmung des landschaftlich Schönen. Schmitz, Hermann: Situationen und Atmosphären. Zur Ästhetik und Onthologie bei Gernot Böhme. Rehmann-Sutter, Christoph: Über Relationalität. Was ist das »Ökologische« in der Naturästhetik? Meyer-Abich, Klaus Michael: Erinnerung an die natürliche Mitwelt. Andreas-Griesebach, Manon: Idee plus Erfahrung. Goethes Begründung eines neuen Typs von Naturwissenschaft. Engelhardt, Dietrich von: Madame de Stael über Naturphilosophie, Naturwissenschaft und Medizin in De l'Allemagne. Deneke, Michael: Schramm, Engelbert: »Soziale Naturwissenschaft«. Zwischen Sozialwissenschaften und Naturwissenschaften. Böhme, Hartmut: Enthüllen und Verhüllen des Körpers. Biblische, mythische und künstlerische Deutungen des Nackten. Lippe, Rudolf zur: Eine Logik des gestischen Wissens. Müller, Rudolf Wolfgang: Gernot Böhme - Anima naturaliter japonica. Hoffmann, Gisbert: Das menschliche Sein als mediales. Martens, Ekkehard: »Natürlich« denken?. Heideggers Pseudosokratismus als Irrationalismus. Fleischer, Helmut: Naturalität ohne Naturalismus. Zum lebensweltlichen Fundus jeder höheren Erkenntnis-Artistik. Gerhard: Technik als Medium. Grundlinien einer Philosophie. (shrink)

Volume X presents a critical edition with commentary of all the texts published by Constant between July 1815 and April 1818. We are dealing here with political journalism, an instrument of public opinion deployed with great virtuosity by Constant to realise his liberal programme, with texts on political theory and the fundamental debates on the state budget, with publications composed in connection with the 1817 parliamentary elections. This volume contains an engagement with one of Chateaubriand’s key works (La Monarchie selon (...) la Charte), articles on the politics of the day and publications on important contemporary personalities such as Madame de Staël or Joseph Fouché. The importance of the texts always reaches beyond their particular concern to encompass fundamental principles of liberalism in Restoration Europe. (shrink)

The topical focus of the following inquiry is the critical engagement of French scholars and writers ca. 1800 – for example, Madame de Staël or Charles de Villers – with German philosophical aesthetics. With regard to this case study, the changing relationship of literary criticism and aesthetics within different national contexts can be brought into view. In France, the concept »esthétique«, which was imported as a translation of the German neologism »Ästhetik« current since the publication of Baumgarten’s work, met (...) with firm resistance from the middle of the 18th century on. The task of the following contribution is to analyze the reasons for this rejection in French intellectual circles at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries. In the background of these often quite intensely conducted discussions lies the question whether philosophy can legitimately claim to produce a specific discourse regarding literature. (shrink)

La considération de « l’élément germanique » chez Comte participe d’un projet de réorganisation européenne. Madame de Staël avait légué l’image d’une Allemagne rêveuse et métaphysicienne. Comte développe une autre représentation : celle d’un pays marqué par l’esprit protestant (négatif et critique) et la philosophie de la nature (un panthéisme philosophique). Ces caractéristiques incitent Comte à dégrader le rang de l’Allemagne dans le classement des cinq nations européennes susceptibles de participer à la construction d’une république occidentale positiviste. Toutefois, Comte (...) a hésité avant de déclasser l’Allemagne, car celle-ci possède aussi un formidable atout : le sens des généralités et de la systématisation, indispensable à la philosophie positive. C’est la « situation » de l’Allemagne qui est jugée, et non la nation allemande. Ainsi est-ce à travers l’histoire, et la loi qui en règle le cours, qu’il convient d’étudier cette question. (shrink)

Liberalism has been one of the leading incarnations of political thought for the past two centuries and it was also the first form of political theory to acquire a truly global reach. This volume examines the work of the most pivotal thinkers in the liberal tradition, starting with Montesquieu and proceeding to a wide range of authors from the French Revolution to the present. The book is distinctive in encompassing the wide spectrum of views historically encompassed by liberalism, revealing its (...) geographical as well as intellectual scope by including conceptions of liberalism formed in Latin America, the Middle East and Asia. Twenty-four chapters cover thinkers including Madame de Stael, Alexis de Tocqueville, Abraham Lincoln, John Stuart Mill Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq, John Dewey, Hu Shih, Hannah Arendt and John Rawls. Each chapter offers a commentary on a short critical passage from the author concerned. Essayists use their chosen passage to explore the meaning and significance of the author's work for both the historical tradition of liberalism and for political thought more generally. The book is organized chronologically, building up a richly detailed overview of the tradition of liberalism and its key writings. The book will be an indispensible companion to courses on liberal thought, on political ideologies and on the history of political thought and will be of interest to students and scholars of politics, philosophy and history. (shrink)