Sans-Culottes

by Sonenscher, Michael

• ISBN13: 9780691124988
• ISBN10: 0691124981
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-08-25
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

This is a bold new history of the sans-culottes and the part they played in the French Revolution. It tells for the first time the real story of the name now usually associated with urban violence and popular politics during the revolutionary period. By doing so, it also shows how the politics and economics of the revolution can be combined to form a genuinely historical narrative of its content and course. To explain how an early eighteenth-century salon society joke about breeches and urbanity was transformed into a republican emblem,Sans-Culottesexamines contemporary debates about Ciceronian, Cynic, and Cartesian moral philosophy, as well as subjects ranging from music and the origins of government to property and the nature of the human soul. By piecing together this now forgotten story, Michael Sonenscher opens up new perspectives on the Enlightenment, eighteenth-century moral and political philosophy, the thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and the political history of the French Revolution itself.

Author Biography

Michael Sonenscher is a fellow of King's College, University of Cambridge.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. vii
Acknowledgements	p. ix
Abbreviations and a Note on Translations	p. xi
Introduction: "One of the Most Interesting Pairs of Breeches Recorded in Modern History"	p. 1
An Ingenious Emblem	p. 57
New Year's Gifts and an Eighteenth-Century French Joke	p. 57
Fashion's Empire: The Moral Foundations of Salon Society	p. 77
A "Poor Devil": The Short, Unhappy Life of Nicolas-Joseph-Laurent Gilbert	p. 101
Mercier and Rousseau: Vitalist and Contractual Conceptions of Political Society	p. 110
Diogenes and Rousseau: Music, Morality, and Society	p. 134
Diogenes and the Ambiguities of Cynic Philosophy	p. 134
Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Politics of Public Opinion	p. 147
Rousseau and His Cynic Critics	p. 164
John Brown and the Progress of Civilisation	p. 178
"That Subtle Diogenes": Immanuel Kant and Rousseau's Dilemmas	p. 195
Property, Equality, and the Passions in Eighteenth-Century French Thought	p. 202
Reform, Revolution, and the Problem of State Power	p. 202
Property and the Limits of State Power	p. 221
Physiocracy, Reform, and the Fruits of the Tree of Life	p. 248
John Law's Legacy and the Aftermath of Physiocracy	p. 260
Dominique-Joseph Garat, the Modern Idea of Happiness, and the Dilemmas of Reform	p. 273
The Entitlements of Merit	p. 283
Visions of Patriotism	p. 283
The Army and Its Problems in the Eighteenth Century	p. 288
Constitutional Government, Taxation, and Equality	p. 296
Political Liberty, Public Finance, and Public Worship	p. 305
Etienne Claviere, Law's System, and French Liberty	p. 315
Feuillants and Bissotins	p. 324
Antoine-Joseph Gorsas and the Politics of Revolutionary Satire	p. 338
Conclusion: Democracy and Terror	p. 362
Politics and History in Jacobin Thought	p. 362
Rousseau and Revolution	p. 367
Mably, Rousseau, and Robespierre	p. 372
Epilogue	p. 407
Bibliography	p. 425
Index	p. 475
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