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UMI A Bell & Howell Infoimation Conqpaigr 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Aibor MI 48106-1346 USA 313/761-4700 800/521-0600 THE INDIVIDUAL AT THE CROSSROADS OF CLASSICAL AND MODERN THOUGHT: THE EMERGENCE OF A NEW CONCEPT OF THE INDIVIDUAL DURING THE FRENCH REVOLUTION DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Susan Carpenter Binkley, B.A., M.F.S. ********** Ohio State University 1999 A pprov ed byDissertation Committee: , App;eoyedApproved bybyDissertation Professor Karlis Racevskis, Adviser ___________ __ Adviser Professor Charles D. Minahen Department of French and Italian Professor John C. Rule UMI Number: 9931566 UMI Microform 5)931566 Copyright 1999, by UMI Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103 ABSTRACT At the time of the French Revolution a way of conceptualizing the individual emerged that depended on theoretical knowledge about human nature, but also manifested itself in political practices and in the exercise of power. These practices legitimized the Revolution but also seemed to negate the individuality that the revolutionaries had claimed to celebrate. Clearly, the situation during the Revolution did not allow its participants the luxury of a strictly theoretical approach to defining the individual. They were forced to grapple with the challenges of reconciling theory with practice. The theoretical approach used here is informed by Michel Foucault's thesis about the transition from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century. According to Foucault the end of the eighteenth century marked a shift in conceptualization that signaled a departure from classical thinking and ushered in a new era of knowledge strategies. Central to this shift is the development of a conception of "man." Foucault writes that classical thought was unable to ii provide an adequate definition of man in his concrete existence, whereas modern thought was able to develop an understanding that was based on the individual’s concrete existence. The second chapter of the dissertation surveys the ways in which Enlightenment philosophes conceptualized the individual in order to show an evolution in ideas from the beginning of the Enlightenment to the time of the Revolution. The philosophes considered the individual in an abstract manner. The definitions of "man" and of his place in the universe were not based on the individual’s concrete existence but on an exterior referent. For many philosophes, this point of reference was "nature." When the philosophes were hypothesizing about the individual, were they referring to the male or to both man and woman? This ambiguity is a fundamental aspect of the Revolution’s mixed messages concerning women. While proclaiming the universal rights of man and citizen, the Revolution nullified the rights of woman and citoyenne. Thus the disparity between theory and practice is evident not only in the notion of the individual, but in the notion of the individual female as well. Ill ACKNOWLEDGMENT S I am grateful to my adviser, Karlis Racevskis, for his valuable suggestions, recommendations, and corrections throughout each phase of the dissertation process. This research project would not have been possible without his advice and guidance. I thank Charles D. Minahen for his assistance, particularly with some of the finer points of style and formatting. I wish to thank John C. Rule for providing important insights from a historian's point of view. I am also grateful to my loving husband Mark for his patience and understanding, and for helping me keep everything in proper perspective over the past several years. IV VITA Bachelor of Arts, International Relations, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio; June 1989. Master of French Studies, Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama; August 1992. Graduate Teaching Associate, The Ohio State University; September 1994 to June 1999. Assistant Director of the Undergraduate Language Program in French, The Ohio State University; June 1997 to June 1999; Summer quarters 1995 and 1996. Multimedia Intern, Dept, of French and Italian, The Ohio State University; Summer quarter, 1998. FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: French and Italian TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ............................................... Ü ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ........................................ iv VITA ..................................................... V CHAPTERS: 1. INTRODUCTION...........................................1 Review of scholarship 6 Theoretical approach .............................. 17 Outline of c h a p t e r s ................................ 24 2. THE PHILOSOPHES’ NOTION OF THE IN D I V I D U A L ............ 41 The individual and notions of n a t u r e ................42 The individual and society..........................55 Concluding remarks ................................ 87 3. THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION............. 89 The individual and sovereignty .................... 90 The trial of the k i n g ............................. 100 Identifying the individual.........................107 The virtuous individual? ........................ 122 4. THE FEMALE INDIVIDUAL AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION ................................................... 135 The promise of the universal individual ......... 139 Ci t oyen/Ci t oyenn e .................................154 The denial of the female rights-bearing individual 162 Female individuality?............................. 182 5. CONCLUSION...........................................187 BIBLIOGRAPHY........................................... 192 VI CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION In most university French language and literature departments, the ideas and writings of the French Revolution tend to be neglected. Typically, there are courses which focus on the literature of the Enlightenment and include philosophical, fictional, and political readings of the philosophes, and finish perhaps with a reading of the Contrat social and, if there is time, the Déclaration des droits de 1 'homme et du citoyen. For example, in some anthologies of eighteenth-century French literature, such as the one edited by Otis E. Fellows and Norman L. Torrey, the last chapter or appendix is a reprint of the Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen. The next course in a typical literature sequence then begins with a discussion of Romanticism, and a reading of Chateaubriand's Atala. There is often a mention of Rousseau or of Mme de Staël as precursors to Romanticism, and this discussion provides the link between the literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This traditional chronology of literature jumps over the momentous period of 1789 to 1794 and fails to provide an adequate explanation for the manner in which a very rational Enlightenment gave way to an apparently irrational Romanticism. The usual argument for this gap is that the period produced no literary masterpieces because of the political turmoil that sent the future Chateaubriands into an unproductive émigré existence. Béatrice Didier explains that, tout se passe, dans la plupart des histoires de la littérature, comme si la période révolutionnaire était une époque catastrophique pour la création littéraire. Entre les Lumières et le Romantisme, il y aurait un temps mort, pendant lequel la véritable littérature se prépare à renaître. {Ecrire 5) Yet we are left wondering why we have skipped the Revolution, and at the same time are curious about what happened during those years, about events that appear either too difficult to explain or too inconsequential to be worth mentioning. It is this curiosity that has led me to this dissertation. Thus I wish to argue that, rather than overlooking the tumultuous end of the eighteenth century, we must examine more closely the manner in which this time period was in fact quite pivotal. In order to gain a fuller understanding of the transitional role this time period played, I will examine a specific concept— that of the individual. It is a notion whose development reached a critical point during the Revolution.