From advice giving to philosophical writing: editing the Abbé de Saint Pierre
Type de matériel :
100
As they do not belong to identifiable, recognized genres destined to be published, the abbé de Saint Pierre’s political writings have defied editorial attempts owing to a fluctuating, disparate and poorly known corpus. Conceived as aids to advise people in charge of governance and diffused to submit the latter to the pressure of public opinion, they were deliberately not concerned with aesthetic or rhetorical effect and are unstable in that they were modified and altered according to the evolution of the socio-political context. A great number of his texts have been ignored to the benefit of Projet de paix perpétuelle and Discours sur la Polysynodie. With the systematic exploration of dispersed archives, the input of specialists from various fields discussed by the author and with the chronology of the different manuscript as well as published versions of the works providing light onto the writing context, our edition elicits a critical review of the abbé’s reputation as an utopist in a reevaluation of his contribution to political Enlightenment through his defense of an enlightened absolute monarchy.
Réseaux sociaux