Cette recherche porte sur le rôle joué par la lecture de Montaigne dans la philosophie de Rousseau.Il convenait d’abord de repérer les traces de cette lecture et les différents témoignages qu’en donnent son œuvre publiée ainsi que ses manuscrits, d’établir les éditions dans lesquelles Rousseau lit les Essais et les perspectives dans lesquelles il le fait. Il fallait établir également les médiations qui ont joué un rôle dans la réception de Montaigne par Rousseau. Les Essais sont édités et lus au XVIIIe siècle selon des perspectives auxquelles il ne cesse de se confronter. Nombre d’auteurs du XVIIe siècle sur lesquels il s’appuie dialoguent avec Montaigne. L’étude de la relation que Rousseau entretient avec lui demande donc l’examen de toute une tradition philosophique qui s’appuie elle-même sur Montaigne.Cette dimension de l’héritage conduit à trianguler les références, implicites ou explicites, que Rousseau fait à Montaigne dans son œuvre philosophique. Il lui sert de point d’appui pour dialoguer avec Diderot traducteur de Shaftesbury et pour prendre parti, dès le premier Discours, en faveur de la religion naturelle. La lecture politique des Essais qu’il produit nourrit son opposition à toute forme de domination et lui permet de critiquer la position de Montesquieu sur le luxe. Cette lecture politique se développe dans le second Discours, pour dénoncer les effets de l’intérêt particulier, qui détruit le lien politique. Rousseau s’appuie encore sur les principes de La Boétie qu’il trouve dans les Essais pour penser la dépravation de l’homme en société. Le lien social ne demande pas de suivre une morale opposée à l’intérêt, mais de poursuivre l’intérêt universel qui nous lie aux autres hommes. Montaigne occupe aussi une place déterminante dans le dialogue que Rousseau entretient avec des auteurs comme Barbeyrac, Mandeville ou Locke.Cette thèse montre ainsi que la référence à Montaigne met en jeu les principes fondamentaux de la philosophie politique et morale de Rousseau. / The aim of this study is to analyze the role of Montaigne’s legacy in Rousseau’s philosophy.First, evidences and views of Rousseau’s reading of Montaigne have been examined in his published works and in his manuscripts. Editions in which Rousseau was reading Montaigne have also been identified.Then, mediations between Rousseau and Montaigne’s reception have been reviewed. Rousseau reads the Essais with the 18th century points of view. He relies on 17th century authors who judge Montaigne. Therefore, thanks to this philosophical tradition who deals with Montaigne, links between Montaigne and Rousseau are analysed.The implicit and explicit references to Montaigne in Rousseau’s work are triangulated. Rousseau quotes Montaigne to deal with Diderot, – translator of Shaftesbury, to defend natural religion as early as in his First Discourse on the Sciences and Arts.Rousseau has a political reading of the Essais. He denounces all kind of domination, and criticizes Montesquieu’s apology of luxury. The political reading of Montaigne increases in the second Discourse : the possessive individualism destroys the social link.Rousseau underlines the La Boétie’s principles in the Essais, which show the political depravation of society. The social link does not demand to follow moral rules against citizen’s interests. Humanity has to pursue a universal interest, which establishes a relationship between each human being and the whole humanity.Montaigne has a central position to understand the dialogues between Rousseau and Barbeyrac, Mandeville, and Locke. Rousseau refers to Montaigne when he defends his moral and politic fundamental principles.

This study examines the role of history in the writings of the English deists, a group of heterodox religious controversialists who were active from the last quarter of the seventeenth century until the middle of the eighteenth century. Its main sources are the published works of the deists and their opponents, but it also draws, where possible, on manuscript sources. Not all of the deists were English (one was Irish and another was of Welsh extraction), but the term ‘English Deists’ has been used on the grounds that the majority of deists were English and that they published overwhelmingly in England and in English. It shows that the deists not only disagreed with their orthodox opponents about the content of sacred history, but also about the relationship between religious truth and historical evidence. Chapter 1 explains the entwining of theology and history in early Christianity, how the connection between them was understood by early modern Christians, and how developments in orthodox learning set the stage for the appearance of deism in the latter decades of the seventeenth century. Each of the following three chapters is devoted to a different line of argument which the deists employed against orthodox belief. Chapter 2 examines the argument that certain propositions were meaningless, and therefore neither true nor false irrespective of any historical evidence which could be marshalled in their support, as it was used by John Toland and Anthony Collins. Chapter 3 traces the argument that the actions ascribed to God in sacred history might be unworthy of his goodness, beginning with Samuel Clarke’s first set of Boyle Lectures and then progressing through the writings of Thomas Chubb, Matthew Tindal, Thomas Morgan, and William Warburton. Chapter 4 charts the decline of the category of certain knowledge in the latter half of the seventeenth century, the rise of probability theory, and the effect of these developments on the deists’ views about the reliability of historical evidence. Chapter 5 is a case-study, which reads Anthony Collins’s Discourse of the Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion (1724) in light of the findings of the earlier chapters. Finally, a coda provides a conspectus of the state of the debate in the middle decades of the eighteenth century, focusing on the work of four writers: Peter Annet, David Hume, Conyers Middleton, and Edward Gibbon.

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En vue de saisir la pensée kantienne dans toute sa virulence, on ne peut jamais faire abstraction de la place éminente de Jean-Jacques Rousseau dans cette philosophie qui ne cesse pas à marquer, à définir et à poser des jalons de la pensée moderne. À cet égard, si le Genevois communique les grandes leçons de sa théorie de l’homme sous la guise d’une éducation, il s’agit ici non pas d’une philosophie de l’éducation mais bien plus d’une philosophie comme éducation. C’est effectivement cette thèse que Kant reprend, suit et enrichie d’une manière sui generis pour renverser l’ordre théorique mais surtout pratique de religion-moralité-devoir et libérer une fois pour toutes la morale des dogmes théologiques et finalement pour édifier une philosophie pratique comme l’éducation de l’espèce humaine. Le but de cette étude est de jeter quelques lumières sur la place sans pareille de Jean-Jacques Rousseau dans la philosophie kantienne de l’éducation. / The decisive influence of Immanuel Kant in the course of modern philosophy is incontrovertible. In a sense, had it not been for this monumental figure of the 18th century, philosophy would have never reached the flair to convey the existential, analytical and phenomenological questions of modernity. However, if Kant set the agenda for any posterior thought, he was not himself Kantian until Jean-Jacques Rousseau disenchanted him. In this regard, if the Genevois philosopher communicated his philosophy in the guise of an education, philosophy in itself is defined by the education of humanity. It is indeed this perspective of Rousseau that put the German philosopher on the right track to find the ultimate goal of philosophy in the moral education as the sum and substance of the practical philosophy. The objective of this study is to shed some lights on the unparalleled role of Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Kant’s philosophy of education as the harbinger of the universal ethics beyond the dogmas of a blind theology: the question which still remains crucial today.