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The Fabrication of the Philosophe: Catholicism, Court Culture, and the Origins of Enlightenment Moralism in France

2018; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 51; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/ecs.2018.0013

1086-315X

Damien Tricoire,

European Political History Analysis

This article seeks to show that seventeenth-century moralist literature had a decisive influence on the way eighteenth-century philosophes conceived their own persona and positioned themselves in public space. It explores the fabrication of the philosophe’s persona in the milieu of moderate rigorists gathered around Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet at Louis XIV’s court. Doing this, it casts some light on the origins of the Enlightenment narrative’s central figure. It seeks to explore its history more comprehensively than has been done thus far and to give some answers to the question “why did the Enlightenment narrative emerge in France?”