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05/22/2007

Pierre Saint-Amand on the French Enlightenment

Pierre Saint-Amand holds joint appointments with French Studies and Comparative Literature at Brown University. A graduate of the University of Montreal, he received his Master's and doctoral degrees in Romance Languages. from The Johns Hopkins University . Before taking a tenured position at Brown in 1986, he taught as assistant professor of French at Yale […]

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[Music]
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This is KZSU Stanford.
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Welcome to entitled opinions.
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My name is Robert Harrison
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and we're coming to you from the Stanford campus.
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[Music]
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When Voltaire ends convieved with the famous declaration
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he focused Ybe no Tejardin.
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We should view the gardening question against the background of the wars,
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pestilence and natural disasters evoked by the novel.
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But who is the new?
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Condeed and his comrades, the citizens of France,
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humankind in general,
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and what does the garden refer to?
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To the plot of private land that Condeed retreats to after his adventurous odyssey
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to his troubled nation,
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to the social or moral virtues that are lacking in the public sphere,
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but that can be cultivated privately,
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to the values that keep us sane when all else goes to pot.
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[Music]
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[Music]
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[Music]
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We must cultivate our garden.
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Now that's a dictum I hold to.
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And in my opinion, the imperative of self-cultivation
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has done more to enhance human relations than anything besides running hot water.
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Some things like good genes or a vigorous liver are given to us as gifts,
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but most of our personal, social or moral virtues are the fruit of systematic cultivation.
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As Yates once put it, hearts are not had as gifts,
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but hearts are earned by those who are not entirely beautiful.
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And he went on to say, "We must labor to become beautiful."
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Because even beauty more often than not isn't acquired quality.
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Just ask Anukhe Me.
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Over the centuries, no one in the Western world has labored harder to become beautiful in the French.
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Whether it's the aristocracy of the Aussier-Rejim,
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or the maligned bourgeoisie of the 19th and 20th centuries,
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self-cultivation has long been a prime French directive.
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The Greeks and Romans had highly developed traditions of "Kurfjud de Sua" as Michel Foucault called it.
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They cultivated virtues like prudence, wisdom and temperance.
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But the French taught us something new.
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They taught us that vices are every bit as cultivatable as virtues.
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Indeed, even more so.
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For French sensibility, a highly refined vices far more beautiful than an earnest virtue.
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It is precisely because vices are so susceptible to the transfigurations of form
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that they thrive in highly formal settings like the Cordovette-Sai.
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The cultivation of envy, spite, vanity, mean-spiritedness, pride,
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and sloth or greed does not transform vice into virtue.
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On the contrary, by submitting such vices to extremely formalized rules and protocols,
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it gives them a style that renders them sublime while leaving their vicious essence intact.
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"Efocurtivé no vise."
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Speaking of cultivating one's garden, think of the gardens of Versailles.
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The idea for the Versailles gardens came to Louis XIV on the evening of August 17, 1661,
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when Louis' finance minister, Nico La Foucée unveiled the magnificent gardens he had had built for himself
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at a place called Volu viqueult.
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So sublime and awesome were these gardens that Louis XIV promptly stormed out of them in a rage.
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The next day he had his minister arrested and cast into a dungeon,
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where Fucque languished for the rest of his long life,
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never to be pardoned by the king, despite many earnest appeals on his behalf from various quarters.
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Now, no doubt the sumptuousness of the Volgarden suggested that only a corrupt minister could afford such luxury.
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But Fucque's offense in Louis' mind was graver than that.
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The gardens were a gesture of pride, vis-a-vis the king himself,
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for only the king was entitled to such splendor.
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Just as Lucifer and his pride over reached his station and sought to be the equal of God,
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so too Fucque had done the same with the king,
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and just as God cast Lucifer into the depths of hell,
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so too Louis through his minister Fucque into a dungeon.
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Yet at the heart of Louis' regal indignation,
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there was a good deal of envy as well.
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So jealous was the king of what he saw that night at Volu-Vikont,
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that after punishing his minister he promptly hired Fucque's entire team of architects, gardeners,
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and engineers, and initiated the project of building the gardens of Versailles.
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Thus what we see in Versailles today is a magnificent spawn of jealousy, wounded vanity, and rivaled re-imitation.
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And what about overbearing pride?
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If pride is defined by overreaching, can a king be prideful?
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He can be so only with respect to God,
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yet it is precisely in his irrigation of the powers and stature of God on earth,
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that the absolute monarch remains the living incarnation of Superbia.
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Never had the Christian sin of pride institutionalize itself so unabashedly as it did under the absolute monarchy of Louis XIV.
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The gardens of Versailles were designed with one overriding purpose in mind,
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namely to exalt the Sun King and reaffirm his analogical kingship with God.
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In that regard, they put pridefulness on open display
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and gave it one of the most exalted forms it would ever take,
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without in the least, extenuating its vice.
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And yet, despite this vicious matrix, or better, because of it,
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Versailles remains one of the most cultivated gardens in the world.
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In the next hour, we're going to talk with one of the world's leading scholars of the French Aacianne Jean,
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and in particular, we're going to talk to him about some of the sublime vices that run through its society, its politics, and its competing ideologies.
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His name is Pierre Saint-Amal, a professor of French literature at Brown University.
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I'm taking advantage of his brief visit to Stanford to bring him into the studios of KZSU,
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so that he can share with us his eminently entitled opinions about the covert,
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as well as overt passions of the so-called Age of Reason.
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Pierre, welcome to the program.
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Welcome. Thank you, Robert for this invitation.
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Now, Pierre, I don't usually do this with my guests,
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but your background is somewhat out of the ordinary,
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so I'd like to start with some personal bio, if you don't mind.
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You were high-ish in by birth, and you grew up in Porto, Paris, is that right?
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Yes, I grew up in Paul Paris, during the... I spent most of my childhood,
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you know, during the reign of the infamous Fosois de Vallea, then is his son.
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And I was a young student going to... what is called, "collegia," you know, "vise," there in Haiti,
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left finally to come to North America to attend university.
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I take it to the New State, was it French, at least, say?
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It was a French-lea, it was a...
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Actually, it was... I belong to two differentleaes, and the story is actually quite interesting.
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I was first in a... there were two private schools. One of them was directed by French priests,
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who were exiled by Fosois de Vallea, because the then-president thought that they were...
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their ministry was becoming too problematic, and spreading dangerous words, and they were all exiled.
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Were they Jesuits? No, they were actually marries, priests.
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And when they left, then my father took me to another school, where I finished.
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What age were you when he said? What age were you during that period of transition?
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Yeah, I must have been 14, 14, yeah.
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Did those exiled priests before their exile have a lasting influence on your education, or at least your personal recollectives?
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I don't really think so. The ones that really had... the transition to the other school, I think, was in a way all the way.
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I liked being in the school that I was before, but I think the second school had much more influence with me.
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They were a school that was formed by a series of professors that had returned a long time ago to France for their own studies, and I was educated by them.
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One had returned from France, and had studied the mathematics, another one philosophy, and another one was a prominent professor of literature, who had...
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was one of the leading specialists of Haitian literature, his name is Padel Povidus.
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So I was educated by those people, and I thought then as a student that I was privileged to have had these people, and they always instilled in me the desire to become actually a professor.
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So, when you went on to become a professor of the humanities and in literature in particular, was that an interest that you knew you had already back then?
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Well, my father was a teacher himself. He was a principal of a school, and a great lover of literature.
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This is one of the rare things that I actually shared with him. I was educated by a very authoritarian father, and we had some clash when I was young.
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But literature was one of the rare domains where we got along, and we shared some affective bond.
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So I knew... I didn't know, but teaching was basically there.
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I think I inherited that from him.
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So you came to North America, and you had a... I think you're one of the youngest people, if not the youngest person, to get a PhD in America.
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Is that right? Probably not, but...
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Yes, I was.
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You were held where you got a dissertation from Johns Hopkins University in French literature.
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I think I was 23 years old.
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I think you have to be one of the youngest. Maybe Nietzsche beats you.
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I'm with the youngest full professor of your life.
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But I knew you became a full professor pretty quickly too.
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So, when you pursued graduate study at Hopkins, you ended up deciding to work on the 18th century.
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Yes, I started being trained to actually work on the 20th, and I switched over to the 18th.
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I don't exactly know when the passage to the early modern period became important for me.
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My great interest was always actually to work on the 17th, but I felt more comfortable working in the 18th.
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Because of the mix between literature and philosophy, which was always an interest to me.
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I don't consider myself a philosopher really, but I always have interest in philosophy.
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The language of philosophy itself has an interest for me.
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So, in the 18th century, it allows me to go between the two discourses.
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Your dissertation, I believe, was on Ditoo, is that correct?
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My dissertation was on Ditoo.
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Ditoo de la del adi rant de la relación.
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And it was mostly on the scientific writings of Ditoo.
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When I wrote that dissertation, very few people, it was actually close to the bicentennial of Ditoo's birth.
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But there was very little interest in Ditoo really.
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I think I was able to rekindle some interest in this sort of strange...
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Ditoo was perceived as being sort of a strange philosopher.
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But I wrote on his...
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The connection between his scientific writings and his other writings around the concept of the complicated...
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Basically, the complex, basically working around the notion of disorder, which was a main concept for Ditoo.
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It was also very much in the air, I believe, in the early 80s.
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And you were at the right place. You had there...
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The right place, and it was a big o'jean was around.
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And...
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It was a hunde jirard at Hopkinson.
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Hunde jirard was also there.
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And Michel Cérez, both of whom have migrated now to Sanford.
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Indeed.
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Indeed.
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So I was...
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I think around the listening to Michel Cérez and also Pligoschien, who came to Johns Hopkins,
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I could see that there was a precursor of those...
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Of their theories in Ditoo and there was a line of sort of...
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...
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That was here, actually, at Stanford.
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That conference?
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Yes.
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Was that here at Stanford?
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That was you at Stanford.
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Which is the one I'm thinking of.
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You think of the famous conference on poststructuralism, no?
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Yes.
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That was before my time.
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Well, anyway, those were times when academic conferences still could have some huge impact and resonance and consequences.
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Now, you know, they happen every day and our words just kind of float into a void and disappear there.
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Anyway, P.L.
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After the whole your dissertation, I believe that came out as a book...
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Yes.
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It's a new territory, which isn't the intersection between science and literature, but it's a book...
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A really fascinating book which in French is called de la Céducceon.
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In English, I believe it was translated as the Libertines Progress.
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They came out in '87 originally in French.
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Translated a few years later.
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This is a book about seduction in 18th century French literature.
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What was so interesting to you about seduction?
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Yes. First of all, I should say that I realized that it was difficult to teach especially in French department.
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The scientific works that I had worked on.
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So I progressively abandoned that field to teach what students could manage to read more easily.
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So I developed a teaching the novel.
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And it is in relationship to my pedagogy that I thought of this book on seduction.
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What was my attraction usually on working in a field is to provoke in a way a new interpretation for the interest in D'Ora was that.
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It is a unique really philosopher in the Enlightenment and odd figure.
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That was the fascination.
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Working in seduction was basically the same way too.
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I did not approach it from a point of view of reading the novel, the way the specialist of the novel read it.
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I read the 18th century novel introduction from a more anthropological point of view.
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Basically, I read what can be considered modern phenomenon, not a cultural phenomenon of libertarianism in the 18th century with more archaic.
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The connection, the clash of these individuals.
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It was more the relationships of seduction that I wanted to study.
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And I read them between model and agent, model and subject.
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I have read the book.
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It is not that you propose a theory of seduction in general as far as I recall, but there is definitely a theory of desire as it works in the
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a bit of the 18th century French novel.
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Where seduction is also a means of rivalry and of Skinner made violence.
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Is that going too far?
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No, that's it.
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And yes, and I show that the novel of the 18th century provides actually a genealogy of this desire.
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The novel of the 18th century going from Marivo all the way to the novel of sad is a
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give us an anthropological
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blueprint basically of
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this progress of desire.
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Desire itself becomes more and more
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violent and relationships become more and more lethal
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when we go from
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Marivo to sad and all of that is done by
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this mimetic
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process and
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the this clash of
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vanity is basically.
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So well, I have two questions. One who would you say then that what some of the remarks I was making in my opening lead in about the
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cultivation of vices or the rendering of them in giving them style is something that really takes place
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in the phenomenon of seduction in the 18th century novel.
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In other words, you don't have brood violence. It's not an uncultivated. No, I think it's
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yes, it is it has taken on a certain refinement, but it still hasn't lost its vicious. Not at all. It is
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sort of performed
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violence when
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ritualized
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highly ritualized violence. A lot of people were shocked for example, there is the in the famous
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Black-Clue novel. Ladies and all those words.
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There's been a lot of
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you know interpretations of the end of the of the novel with the expulsion of
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La Macquézneche, I
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give to that particular episode a much more anthropological
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background by
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very distinctly
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meticulously showing how the novel
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places are at the end of the
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at the end as a victim of this
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of this community and and the way her her place
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The wish you she becomes scared-goated
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at the at the end
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Although she's a participant in the same process. No, she's she's a participant of in the same process, but the
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the collective finds in her way to redeem to redeem itself and she she's expelled and
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an anthropological point of view allows us to to see that
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much better and to give
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to the
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Contagion of release relations in the novel of much much more ample
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feature
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So by the time you get to sad however, I think you book their ends on sad there is there's no more
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sublimation or
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highly ritualization and formalization of
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of the violent
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foundations of of seduction and desire, but kind of unmasking of it
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in in a way that I believe
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Do or yes, we agree that it gives a game away and and and sad is important in in that way
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Usually a sad is he is studied in in disconnection with the rest of the 18th century
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With the readings that I do
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We we can read sad in a on in a continuum rather than in
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in disconnection
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The forms may be parodid they may you know inside but yet yet they they enlighten the rest of the century
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It's not
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The readings that I provide we no longer can see sad as an absurdity of of the period, but really a
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monstrous
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Apojay
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Not even the unconscious he's the
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Or even the subconscious he he's the
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The unmasking of the driving principle not made it when I go too far obviously
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That's that's what I
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Like to that's the way I like to see it now you you've had a lot of experience over the years teaching
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these novels to students and
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do you
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do you find that there's been a
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Change fundamental change in the last ten or twenty years in the reactions that you're finding in the classroom
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to the liberty novel
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There there is always some especially for sad there is always some degree of shock and
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There is a for the for the for the the other ones the the liberty novels which are highly readable
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About these are is the cracks, you know there is a level of
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fascination
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That that remains and that the students have
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They as much today as before not as much maybe
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The entire 18th century becomes more and more difficult to teach as the generations get become younger
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I realize only yeah, maybe I'm getting older myself, but or maybe enlightenment is getting further and further away
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there you go, but
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I think the
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The the fascination as I was saying we still remains remains there and
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The it's it's a world and a language that is very obscure to them
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They are
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Sometimes in order to make it accessible, you know, I I make it more by now
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Overwhite try to I just didn't have to take them away from that banality by talking about
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Sexual proclivity and things like although I don't think it has anything to do with that only I
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I'm glad that I teach things like Dante and
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Petroc and I would find it very difficult and frustrating to try to
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get American
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students to
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Imagine what a French 18th century aristocratic world was like the degree the kind of obsession with
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With one's rank in the in this social hierarchy the vanity the kind of extreme
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Vanity of the actors there the memetic contagion they don't understand no, it's very hard
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I think for the passions of that century to be translated into our terms
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Yeah, and more and more when I teach now the literature I start with basic ideas about about that society
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about rank about hierarchy and then I
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Progressively make them enter into this this strange
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World I
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was reading a quote the other day I guess in preparation for our conversation about this wasn't
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Louis the 14th but
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there was a some
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priest Jansenist would died and he was buried in a cemetery and
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Followers came there and they thought that he was a saint and they were eating dirt anyway the authorities the kings authorities came in there and
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They they courtened off the place and they put up a sign
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du par luehua
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Defence adieu
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Defere me raku also to you
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We are forbidding God to perform miracles in this place. I mean du par luehua
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Define the one to the king. Yes, the king by the king's order God shall not perform miracles in this
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yep
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How can one imagine the depth of presumption that such a
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Dietic would you know in tales or assume this just yeah, it is it is it is it is a very interesting and peculiar
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Edict in in many ways the king being of course the repress the representative of God on earth yet there in that particular edict
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It's you have the infacement of one majesty over the other
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Yeah, I know I'm with Dante on this whole issue
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Dante thought that kings were just petty tyrants and he had no use for them in his political providential order at you know
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An emperor okay one emperor, but all these petty little kings on absolute monarchs
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That's a different discussion
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Pied after seduction you went on to write a fascinating book on what we call the French fiddos off and I think we still call them even in English
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fiddos off because
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Many people don't consider them philosophers in the Anglo-Saxon sense of
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metaphysicians and so forth. These are
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Voltaire the de de ho and who so on so forth and this is a book
00:30:43.540
That you entitled in French Leil wadiros de dite the laws of hostility came out also in English in the mid 90s
00:30:52.380
What is that book about?
00:30:55.500
Yes, and in many ways both books are connected
00:30:59.140
seduction
00:31:03.300
book and the laws of our city today both deal with
00:31:07.420
the underside of the
00:31:11.340
Enlightenment and they both deal with the
00:31:16.660
foreclosure of
00:31:19.580
the violence that is usually connected with
00:31:22.780
with the
00:31:26.260
the enlightenment the
00:31:28.460
the laws of hostility laws is shorthand for
00:31:34.900
Philosophies of the philosophies of contract that are developed around
00:31:40.180
rather than that time and
00:31:42.780
contract you mean social contract social contract and
00:31:45.420
It's a play also on the multi-scuse famous East Piddell wad
00:31:53.620
What I wanted to
00:31:57.180
To show in in that book is
00:32:00.300
and there again is to
00:32:03.580
Read the 18th century upside down upside down start with
00:32:08.380
multi-scuse
00:32:10.020
majestic East Piddell wad and
00:32:12.020
Go on with who so all of both of them are sort of philosophers of goodwill
00:32:18.980
There was an American historian who spoke about
00:32:22.980
Philosophies of of
00:32:26.100
Decency in the 18th century and and to read them
00:32:29.540
to read them
00:32:31.500
in light of Dijot and sad who
00:32:35.500
bring violence back into
00:32:41.460
into the social into the social realm so
00:32:46.500
It that is the reason why it's appropriately called
00:32:50.780
law I think a laws of
00:32:53.700
the laws of hostility I
00:32:55.700
remember also that
00:32:58.260
One of the things that you suggest is that especially among these philosophers of goodwill
00:33:03.100
Who believed in the general benevolence of human nature the non-aggressive?
00:33:09.500
Yes, I think that that
00:33:12.140
They had displaced it into their own rivalry among themselves
00:33:17.180
indeed that that's
00:33:20.180
It was interesting to to to study itself
00:33:24.740
The space of political philosophy and the lineage of
00:33:29.540
These philosophers from Hobbes
00:33:33.300
and even before on to study
00:33:37.540
the the field itself as a study of
00:33:42.300
hostility and clashes between between them you say that I'll say
00:33:49.060
You'll say X I'll say why basically so the field itself becomes more and more
00:33:54.740
mimetic as it it
00:33:57.060
Progresses and I believe in other words. Yeah, you can't have also without
00:34:02.140
Multi-scuse and you can have sad without
00:34:07.140
Multi-scuse and also
00:34:10.020
To the point where perhaps their behavior belies their theories
00:34:16.100
To a certain extent no in a way in a way
00:34:19.860
So you say that the whole brings violence back into the equation
00:34:25.620
Sad obvious, you know, it very obvious
00:34:29.540
Yes, there's two philosophers that I'd like to ask you about what one is Voltaire and the others who so
00:34:39.260
You have some pages. I know on
00:34:44.100
Voltaire yes, and for my own curiosity because I began by invoking
00:34:49.640
Con deed yes, and I asked a number of questions not because I think that I have the answer to them
00:34:55.400
But it's because I think the novel and you know leaves us with these questions
00:34:59.700
About this dictum info
00:35:02.900
Christopher and what's your after so can I ask you? What is your on your opinion about?
00:35:06.860
Who is the new who are we that must cultivate our garden and what does what might
00:35:14.100
Voltaire mean by the garden there yes, well, I I don't know whether I can arrive to
00:35:19.300
more eloquent rendering of your own
00:35:24.420
perspective on on Voltaire but
00:35:27.380
in in in the book I
00:35:30.260
studied Voltaire
00:35:32.500
again in an end with an anthropological lens and as you
00:35:36.660
recalled very
00:35:39.780
very wonderfully
00:35:41.140
the
00:35:42.500
episode in
00:35:44.180
Con deed where the garden is
00:35:47.140
offered as as a response is at the end of the of the novel after
00:35:53.300
Voltaire basically takes us takes takes takes the reader and Con deed through
00:35:58.740
realm of
00:36:02.260
violence
00:36:04.340
there are plagues
00:36:07.700
earthquake earthquakes we which you can read anthropologically as
00:36:12.180
events of of contagion and indifference basically
00:36:18.900
but the garden
00:36:22.420
is in response to that and
00:36:26.340
a different model of of reciprocity is offered there
00:36:32.020
by Con deed and the moment of the garden is a moment of epiphany
00:36:37.860
for Con deed yes those you know the the Indian tire novel he oscillates between
00:36:44.020
between those two philosophers
00:36:47.780
there is a pessimistic discourse and there is an optimistic one
00:36:56.180
finally into garden not only does he himself
00:37:01.380
settles that little farm and erects himself as a kind of
00:37:07.780
benevolent
00:37:09.780
pastor he enunciates
00:37:13.140
his
00:37:17.140
dicto is you know he says
00:37:20.100
if for
00:37:21.140
Kojivé
00:37:22.820
not for the
00:37:24.180
for the first time in the novel Con deed does not hesitate
00:37:29.780
does not
00:37:33.140
reflex back and forth oscillates he oscillates he speaks in an
00:37:39.220
affirmative
00:37:40.580
affirmative way and the the garden moment is a is a wonderful moment you know of of peace
00:37:49.540
basically gained through experiment experience
00:37:54.260
it's a wonderful suspension
00:37:59.860
in the in the novel where the all the characters returned they have aged
00:38:05.140
around Con deed and and the reciprocity the model of reciprocity that
00:38:13.540
Voltaire develops there is a reciprocity of services and life there
00:38:21.380
you know at the on the on the on the
00:38:27.860
Shalebeau the La Proport on the on the on the on the how do you say that in English on the
00:38:34.900
it's on the bus on the bus for us is is is is is supposed to be a life with living with the minimum
00:38:43.380
yeah i think we can feel take a lesson from that today oh absolutely and i i think that
00:38:53.140
if what you're suggesting is indeed the case anyway that history is characterized by
00:38:58.900
what disaster violence in differentiation and so forth
00:39:04.900
the cultivation yes of the gardens whatever whatever the garden represents whether whatever kind of
00:39:10.980
virtue social personal communitarian that and minimalism
00:39:17.060
and there is a wonderful episode that people usually don't talk about when you know they
00:39:22.260
they insist of course on the realers insist on on the garden but there is one episode where you
00:39:28.580
see boats with different kings at you know across the day going going by and you know at the closest
00:39:40.260
thing we have and it's only i think in an exceptional moment in modern american history is when
00:39:45.860
jf cases ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country otherwise
00:39:50.900
we live more and more in a kind of climate where the citizen has
00:40:00.420
unlimited presumption that the government is there to provide services to
00:40:05.780
facilitate consumption and the idea of taking responsibility for cultivation is as alien as you can get
00:40:15.220
i think in our own day where the citizen is called upon to be primarily a consumer and not a cultivator
00:40:23.220
yes and in that regard i think both there's deep thoughts it's why i said yeah i mean i hold to it
00:40:31.140
yeah and and i think we should we should think of this moment in the garden as this agricultural
00:40:41.460
celebration yeah and it can be also expanded allegorically or symbolically to the university the
00:40:48.660
cultivation of the mind the cultivation of friendship the cultivation of conversation
00:40:53.300
various pretty even a vices as i originally said i mean if we're not going to get rid of vices
00:41:00.260
no why not you know render them then why don't we stylize them at least so that they become sublime
00:41:06.100
rather than corrosive yeah and that is the lesson i think of at the end of of county
00:41:13.860
yeah you know the the the aging the return of the aging characters i think is a key in that sense
00:41:24.580
so if we move on i i i wanted to speak a little bit about who's so but it's given that there's
00:41:31.700
not that much time i wanted to make sure that we get far enough ahead in our conversation before the time
00:41:38.900
runs out on us to ask you why you if you have any sort of insight to impart to us about why the
00:41:51.860
all-sean regime in France ended up the way it did namely decapitation and was the French revolution
00:42:03.780
necessary outcome given everything that had preceded it or was it something that could have been
00:42:10.980
avoided if certain moves were made at the right time by the right people yeah i you know i don't
00:42:18.500
know if i can offer you know an answer you know it's it's a it's a it's a great historical question
00:42:27.060
in my book i touched upon the revolution exactly in that terms there there you have all of these
00:42:35.380
philosophers of goodwill basically those theoreticians of decency to talk to return to this term
00:42:44.820
and then this great moment of the revolution this explosion of violence that will end up in
00:42:51.780
not only the death of the king but the replication of all these deaths you know the sea of deaths
00:43:00.500
and the revolutionaries themselves the men of the terror
00:43:08.580
there were lawyers and there were disciples of also they were talking
00:43:13.940
you know in in in in terms of natural the natural man natural rights and on the other side
00:43:26.820
they were decapitating millions of heads and and and for many of them violence was this supposed to be
00:43:38.260
this foreign thing this foreign affair so at the end of the century what you have indeed and this is the
00:43:47.140
reason why you have a lot of at the end of the 18th century going to the 19th a lot of critics of the
00:43:53.940
revolution like Joseph the mess would take issue principally with those so-called what they would
00:44:05.300
called the lawyers of the of the 18th century not only in the person of also but also in their
00:44:13.860
incarnations of the whole Bespierre and Sanjist but do you think there is a cause and effect
00:44:21.780
relationship between these lawyers having read who saw or Montezquez or the other Philosov's
00:44:28.820
and their willingness to resort to a a very abstract and unrestrained form of violence in order to
00:44:38.180
achieve political aims or were they just bad readers of good philosophers or was there reading of
00:44:46.580
those philosophers not relevant at all to their political the way they behaved as politicians
00:44:55.220
yeah well yeah that's a difficult question to answer you know you you can read all the sphere for example as
00:45:06.660
a monstrous deformation of also and is a vision of the virtue and the terror as a
00:45:23.540
horrible deformation of the of the resource general general will I don't know whether I can provide
00:45:34.660
ends and answer to that they certainly are you know real causes I think of the revolution
00:45:43.940
and there are many well certainly there is a certain there is activism among the philosophers of
00:45:50.100
the 18th century both there for example really believed that if with the proper reform in the social
00:46:00.340
political spheres and with enough people committed to changes you can ameliorate human society
00:46:07.780
and that this will mean necessarily taking on the vested interests that come to us from the past
00:46:14.500
and from certain classes of society and that perhaps there is in the philosophy
00:46:21.700
a recognition that a certain amount of violence has to be done in the name of a greater
00:46:28.580
higher good well I mean they they don't say that you know and they're they're
00:46:38.980
I think for most of the 18th century philosophers also especially violence is is really
00:46:49.300
is really behind behind us and even they don't sometimes you know use is a language which is
00:47:02.500
confusing and saying that the time of barbarity is is behind us and we all we all have become so
00:47:12.500
enlightened yeah in the period that you work on there are two in the popular American imagination
00:47:19.940
anyway there there are two moments or texts or figures that have a power to captivate one is
00:47:30.020
the liaison don't you lose which we talked about already yes the other is a figure of marion
00:47:35.940
to a net and there's a lot of interest in her in her continues not only in America but you know
00:47:42.020
in France as well as elsewhere and I know that you've worked on marion to net what is it about this
00:47:48.340
Austrian woman who was a victim of the revolution that so fascinates yes you know the
00:47:55.940
interest of course in her today she she is basically if I may provide a reading you know especially
00:48:04.580
thinking about the movie by Sofia Kupola she's seen between across between Lady Dye and Paris Hilton
00:48:11.780
you know this this woman who came to the side very young and become a consumer of all the
00:48:19.380
goods that that culture provides and that movie got very bad reviews by the way I don't I haven't seen
00:48:27.940
it yes I don't think it it's so bad myself personally I think the beautiful views of of the
00:48:34.340
XI my own fascination with marion to a net and again it's it's I read her a story with an in an
00:48:42.500
anthropological lens is the this extraordinary reversal in her story between a figure who is
00:48:55.060
celebrated to to being despised she she is sort of this narcissistic icon paraxelos and then she's
00:49:10.260
vilified and and everything is taken away from her
00:49:13.380
it's it's also in her case the way she represent becomes to represent and usually that's the way
00:49:26.260
she is perceived as a kind of icon of fashion but a contagious figure paraxelos you know
00:49:34.260
with all women becoming basically a figure of marion to a net and our alienation I think may
00:49:41.860
have to do with with that process but that that may be my my own vice of reading right is it
00:49:48.500
because she was the queen or because she had other personal qualities recommending her she was
00:49:54.500
not beautiful from the historical records of from what we're told no no she
00:50:04.180
but she had a not a pair of sultan is no no but she was cons she became she became this sort of
00:50:13.540
constructed figure you know of of fashion and she of fashion wise no doubt if you see some of those
00:50:24.820
yes but dresses what about her garden in Versailles Pier I wanted to ask you about the little
00:50:30.740
the little amu is yeah yes yes well what's that I actually it's been completely refurbished
00:50:40.020
I know and I had the opportunity to see it because this is the 250th anniversary of
00:50:46.180
marion to a net and the garden has been with thanks to a lot of funds some of them American
00:50:54.500
have been completely refurbished and it's quite a beauty you know she was a reader of Rousseau
00:51:01.620
and some of it you could say that it's also nostalgic she did not did not like when she came to Versailles
00:51:10.340
she did not like not only the formality of the of the court life itself and and the rigors of it you
00:51:17.780
know inherited from the Louis XIV time she preferred more interiorized intimate settings so she
00:51:27.300
retreated not only to the tree and but and when she had to put her stamp on the garden she created
00:51:33.540
this very informal pastoral garden that were more reminiscent of her Austrian life but also
00:51:48.020
some say close to what was being developed at the time by Rousseau thinking of the English
00:51:56.420
garden and it's it's truly beautiful and I had the opportunity to to revisit them this summer and
00:52:05.220
it was with great joy so you said according to some I thought it would that it was deliberately
00:52:11.220
and very openly based on Rousseau's contrasting the formality and artificiality of the
00:52:17.940
classical French garden versus the English garden and that there is just this little oasis of a
00:52:22.980
yes yes well there is that I I think also there is an element of nostalgia of the other
00:52:30.580
Austrian landscape I think it's it's it's both really so in conclusion
00:52:41.700
when we come back to the biographical I mean do you find we feel talking about Marianne's planet
00:52:48.420
no no we're talking now about your career as a these week yimis yes you know a scholar of 18th century
00:52:54.580
French literature primarily you do a number of other things obviously
00:52:59.220
but the curiosity is whether there are points of coincidence
00:53:06.580
between your background growing up in high E.T. and the history that that country has had as
00:53:13.940
an ex-French colony and your decision to devote your research to the most
00:53:25.060
regal and in a certain sense canonized century of the ex-colonizers history yes I often ask myself why
00:53:38.260
you know I remain in the 18th century and why this is this is a fascinating century for myself
00:53:45.300
and why I choose to read it the way I do and it might in fact have to do with a very
00:53:53.940
biographical element that I I always read the 18th century as as basically caught between an archaic
00:54:03.780
past made of of violence and clashes class class warfare class and class warfare and and this
00:54:14.980
this possibility of modernity and and almost utopia and I wonder if I wonder sometimes if if this is
00:54:29.220
if this is not this chaos mess that I experience in my own and I do you think there's nothing
00:54:37.460
distinctive about the French enlightenment that distinguishes it along the lines you've just
00:54:45.140
described that distinguishes it from either the English enlightenment or the American enlightenment
00:54:52.980
italian I don't know if Italy ever really had a true enlightenment but nevertheless is there
00:54:58.020
something distinctively French oh definitely yeah the the enlightenment the
00:55:06.420
the enlightenment the French enlightenment has all of these contradictions which make it very interesting
00:55:11.140
and and it has this fascinating style in a way too which make it so seductive
00:55:21.860
to return to and what about the claims to universality that is so much a part of the ideology
00:55:30.420
the French enlightenment and also subsequently becomes part of the fabric of French national identity
00:55:38.900
and French education especially when it comes to the colonial experience where
00:55:45.060
the unshakable belief in the universality of the rights of man for example and
00:55:56.420
dictates of reason and so forth that is this something that you
00:56:02.180
I don't want to say buy into but is it a faith that you inherited in any way through your French
00:56:09.220
education or is it something of which you are profoundly suspicious as speaking now as a
00:56:15.300
a heian who is seen things from then from another angle yes and you know I don't buy in it at all
00:56:25.620
and in I don't reject it the way some some do from a sort of postcolonial point of view there
00:56:36.420
there these days all these study of the others of the enlightenment I think that's very important
00:56:42.020
there was a great exhibit last year in France about the enlightenment
00:56:46.660
Le Le Miere point of
00:57:08.680
this uncovering of violence, of hostility those reversal of enlightenment propositions that I do in my book are
00:57:22.920
a contribution to a de-universilising of the enlightenment so my contribution may not be so readily read
00:57:37.880
as a critique of the enlightenment the way a postcolonial one would would be but I do believe that
00:57:49.320
it is nonetheless a contribution in in that light also a hermeneutics of suspicion that
00:57:57.560
is an old term exactly hernews of the earthquake and I think that's what's most powerful about the
00:58:03.080
the kind of perspective that you bring to bear on your own topic so for those of
00:58:07.960
the people in our audience who have been listening that we've been talking with P.F.S. at
00:58:13.160
that mall professor of French literature from Brown who's visiting here at Stanford and he's
00:58:19.000
authored three books his first book on the De-Hole and the two books that we've mentioned here in the
00:58:24.440
last hour one on seduction called the Libertines Progress and the other on the laws of hostility
00:58:33.080
and unfortunately P.F.R we've run out of time otherwise I was going to ask you about the book that
00:58:36.600
you're just finishing on laziness in the 18th century that's another whole topic do you want to
00:58:42.760
take a minute or two and just give us a little preview of what that well yeah very new project is
00:58:47.800
about very briefly it's the same exercise in contradiction you know the the 18th century is with the
00:58:55.400
merchants of capitalism is seen as the age of industry and I will be reading
00:59:04.520
series of authors who are proposing different types of subjectivity those
00:59:14.280
marred in in idleness and and laziness and who retract from the world of of labor and and and
00:59:25.080
discipline fabulous we'll look forward to that thanks for coming on yeah thank you
00:59:29.720
- Thank you, playthrough, and thank you for your wish.
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