Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

UWSPÓŁCZEŚNIENIE: THE CONTEMPORIZATION OF POLISH EDUCATION, POLITICS, AND SOCIETY IN THE ENLIGHTENMENT PERIOD examines the contemporization of educational, governmental, and societal structures that occurred in eighteenth-century Poland. Italian educational models and English governmental models influenced the development of Poland’s structures since the fourteenth century. The introduction and pervasiveness of Sarmatism in szlachta culture during the fifteenth century created the foundation for the szlachta democracy. Continued interference from neighboring rulers coupled with the erosion of educational standards inside Poland contributed to the szlachta’s susceptibility to corruption, which resulted in non-functioning government. Following the Partition of 1772, the Poles employed the assistance of French philosophes in developing revitalized educational and governmental structures. Stanisław Konarski, King Stanisław Poniatowski, Hugo Kołłątaj, Stanisław Staszic, and Michał Wiełhorski fought to thwart Catherine the Great’s attempts to subordinate Poland; the result was the Constitution of 3 May 1791 and the contemporization of Poland’s society during their enlightenment movement.

This work deals with the changes of rhetorical education and emotional orders in the second half of the 18th century. The aim of the research is to assess the relations among language education, funtions of medias, anthropological models and expression of emotions on the Threshold of enlightenment. The background of the research shapes the transformation of rhetorical tradition. The research of the broad field of pedagogical, rhetorical and moral discurs is focused on the collegium of Karl Heinrich Seibt.

L’objet de la présente thèse, soutenue sur la sociabilité des salons du XVIIIe siècle, vise dans un premier temps à interroger, à la lumière d’un témoignage du temps – Le Tableau de Paris – choisi pour son réalisme, son authenticité et sa fidélité à l’histoire, les chroniques et les représentations léguées à la postérité par Louis-Sébastien Mercier pour décrire la vie de société dans la France de l’Ancien Régime, afin d’en dégager les spécificités françaises. Le regard critique posé par le chroniqueur sur la vie parisienne nous sert tout d’abord de guide pour pénétrer ces cercles de rencontre, de conversation et de convivialité à l’aune de sa propre fréquentation du bureau d’esprit de Fanny de Beauharnais. Dans un second temps, on aborde le contexte historique et culturel ayant conduit à l’avènement de ces assemblées depuis le XVIIe siècle, voire antérieurement, non seulement pour en marquer les phases d’évolution successives, mais aussi pour tenter d’en dégager les traits distinctifs, les constantes et les variantes au temps des Lumières. XVIIe et XVIIIe siècle interagissent dans une dynamique historique permettant la mise en perspective des enjeux de la sociabilité dans leur continuité, depuis le siècle de Louis XIV jusqu’aux Lumières, voire au-delà. Toutes les idées reçues sont débusquées, puis passées au crible. Plusieurs méthodes viennent renforcer l’arsenal de la critique interne et externe des sources. L’outil informatique scrute méthodiquement les fonds insuffisamment explorés en permettant des rapprochements inédits. L’enquête comparatiste et l’exégèse sociolinguistique des sources polyglottes à l’échelle européenne viennent rendre leur verdict après la confrontation des sources françaises, anglaises et allemandes. Si Paris est la capitale européenne de la société élégante et polie, ce paradigme prévaut surtout pour la noblesse, la bourgeoisie et les élites cultivées, car les provinces de l’Hexagone se singularisent par leur idiome propre et par leur bilinguisme affiché, même au salon. En Angleterre, en Allemagne, en Suisse, les langues nationales, dont le français, véhiculent une vie de société locale, imitée certes, mais pas toujours fidèlement, du modèle parisien. Les témoignages du temps remettent au goût du jour la conversation, l’esprit, les gens de lettres, les petits-maîtres, les grandes dames, les soupers, les bureaux d’esprit, les bureaux de philosophie, les bureaux de littérature et les bureaux d’insurrection, naguère relégués au ban des curiosités par les historiens de la sociabilité et restituent sans conteste leur spécificité au sein de l’espace culturel français des Lumières. De nouveaux éclairages jettent une clarté nouvelle sur les débats ravivés depuis une vingtaine d’années autour des salons en France. / The purpose of this dissertation on 18th century salon culture aims at questioning the chronicles and representations of Le Tableau de Paris (Panorama of Paris) by Louis-Sébastien Mercier in the light of his realistic, genuine and faithful eyewitness accounts of Paris life, in order to depict society life in Ancien-Régime France and to show any French peculiarities. The critical look taken by the chronicler of Parisian life as a regular frequenter of Fanny Beauharnais’ bureau d’esprit serves as a guide to get into these meeting, conversation and conviviality circles. Secondly, the historical and cultural background leading to the advent of such assemblies as early as the 17th century, and even before, is discussed, not only to mark their specific development, but also in a attempt to allow their dominant features, invariants and variations to be identified during the Enlightenment. Both the 17th and 18th centuries interact in a historical dynamics that provides a perspective of sociability stakes as part of a continuous process from the Century of Louis XIV to the Enlightenment and subsequently. All misconceptions were screened and subjected to rational investigation. Various methods were used to produce a full battery of internal and external criticism. Computerised tools methodically scrutinised unexplored resources, allowing novel associations to be made. Comparative survey and sociolinguistic analysis of European multilingual sources provided positive feedback as a result of comparative assessments of French, English and German texts. While Paris appeared to be the European capital of the elegant and polite society, such a paradigm has been found to apply mainly to the nobility, upper classes and educated elites as the rest of the French population in the provinces was found to speak local idioms and display bilingualism, even in salons. National languages including French conveyed local society lives in England, Germany and Switzerland, which, although imitated from the French model, were not always a faithful copy of it. Textual evidence revives the conversazione, esprit, petits-maîtres, ladies of the world, suppers, literati, bureaux d’esprit, ‘philosophical bureaux’, ‘literary bureaux’ and ‘insurrectional bureaux’, although relinquished by historians of sociability, and provides unambiguous demonstration of their specificity in the French cultural sphere of the Enlightenment. New light is shed on the current debates that have been on-going for twenty years about salon culture in France during the Enlightenment

Pour être confortable la classification littéraire ne parvient pas toujours à rendre compte de la complexité des productions humaines et de leur réception. C’est d’autant plus vrai à une époque de grands changements, politiques, économiques, sociaux et culturels, comme le XVIIIe siècle européen. Tributaire d’une terminologie limitatrice, l’histoire littéraire a contribué à enclore les Lumières dans une cadre resserré, qui soulignait de manière dyadique les différences entre auteurs chrétiens et philosophes, raison et sensibilité. C’est dans le dépassement de ce débat que s’inscrit notre réflexion sur la symbolique de la possession à l’époque des Lumières. Cette étude est consacrée à l’analyse d’un corpus de textes qui, estimés à la lumière d’une problématique anthropologique, prennent une teinte autre que moralisatrice, fantastique, picaresque ou dramatique. Ces genres sont diffusés par les œuvres de Guevara, Lesage, Cazotte, Beckford, Goethe, Lewis, Chamisso et Potocki au fil de détours narratifs et temporels porteurs d’une modernité littéraire. L’interdépendance des enjeux esthétiques, narratifs et psychologiques marque résolument l’ancrage sociologique de la fabula dans la cité. Ces nouvelles, romans et drame assurent la naissance d’un genre d’investigation sociologique et psychologique, encore non conceptualisé à l’époque de leur parution, d’une contemporanéité manifeste avec la société en pleine mutation qui constitue son substrat et son horizon d’attente. Distincte du mythe de Satan et du Romantisme à venir, la symbolique de la possession est un regard sur l’avènement de la reconnaissance, encore confuse à l’époque des Lumières, de l’individualité irréductible / Convenient though it may be, literary classification sometimes fails to account for the complexity of human productions and of their reception. This is all the more so at an age of sweeping political, economic, social and cultural changes such as the European eighteenth century. Literary history, dependent as it is on restrictive terminology, has contributed to enclose the Age of the Enlightenment within a narrow framework which dyadically underscored the difference between Christian authors and philosophers, between sense and sensibility. The present reflexion on the symbolics of possession at the turn of the Enlightenment aims to transcend such a debate. The study is dedicated to the analysis of a corpus of texts which, seen from an anthropological perspective, take on a dimension other than moralistic, fantastic, picaresque or dramatic. Those genres were circulated by the works of Guevara, Lesage, Cazotte, Beckford, Goethe, Lewis, Chamisso and Potocki, by narrative and temporal means laden with literary modernity. The interdependence of aesthetic, narrative and psychological stakes resolutely shows how anchored within the body politic the fabula is. Those short stories, novels and dramas paved the way for a genre of sociological and psychological investigation – a genre not yet conceptualized when those works came out – in obvious keeping with the thoroughly changing society which is both its background and its horizon of expectations. The symbolics of possession, to be distinguished from the myth of Satan and the oncoming Romanticism, is an outlook on the advent of the acknowledgement – still confused at the turn of the Enlightenment – of irreducible individuality

The subject of this thesis was virtue and honour in signo temporis. It means that I've tried to focus on the concept of virtue and honour in a certain time period. I have chosen three different literary periods and three works as their representatives. It was the bourgeois tragedy "Emilia Galotti" by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, as the representative of the Enlightenment. For the first half of the 19th century I've chosen also a bourgeois tragedy "Maria Magdalena" by Friedrich Hebbel. And as the third example I analysed the novella "Fräulein Else" by Arthur Schnitzler. All of the three heroines are daugthers, who are strongly influenced by this fact. All of them find a tragic end. Two of them commit suicide and one persuades her own father to kill her. The fathers are also an important part of the plot, because their largely contribute to death of their daughters. Emilia in "Emilia Galotti" is stabbed by her own father, after she persuades him to kill her, because she is afraid of losing her virtue, which is at that times related with religion and identified with chastity. In the first half of the 19th century the religious aspect was still a part of the concept of virtue and honour. But the honour was now perceived more in the way of reputation. Klara in "Maria Magdalena", who lost her virtue by...

This is a study of Dr. William Cullen (1710-1790), the Scottish chemist, physician, and professor of medicine, who played a significant role in the Scottish Enlightenment. I argue that Cullen was both a more unorthodox figure in Scottish medicine than he is generally depicted, as well as a more ambitious one. Despite his controversial doctrines, he skillfully managed the hierarchy of his profession and reached the pinnacle of success as a learned physician in the Scottish Enlightenment. I explore Cullen’s life and thought from different angles. I explicate his pedagogical persona and philosophy of medicine, both of which shaped the experiences of his pupils. I show how his neurophysiology was rooted in his contentious interpretation of the nature of the nervous fluid. And I provide a detailed look at Cullen’s understanding of hygiene, or the art of health—a rarely-studied component of his practice of medicine.

Le XVIIIème siècle consacra en France la disjonction idéologique, intellectuelle et spirituelle entre la raison critique et empirique du philosophe et l’anthropologie chrétienne des défenseurs de l’orthodoxie. Toutefois, l’intuition et l’intention d’un syncrétisme humaniste aspirant à voir collaborer l’intelligence scientifique et l’intelligence de la foi survécut à la Renaissance et au Grand siècle pour soutenir la réflexion de littérateurs catholiques reconnus, les abbés Morellet, Coyer, Yvon, Bergier et Raynal. Ces théoriciens de la médiation incarnaient une frange modérée de l’apologétique catholique, une apologétique de la conciliation qui soulève maintes interrogations quant à sa nature et sa portée : parvint-elle à arrimer les valeurs chrétiennes aux idées forces des Lumières rationnelles, proposa-t-elle une voie médiane entre les partis antagonistes des « philosophes » et des « dévots » ? L’exploration analytique et la mise en perspective comparative des termes de l’alliance de la raison et de la foi révèlent une conciliation plurielle ; véritable nébuleuse idéologique élevée sur l’humanisme théologique du molinisme jésuite, elle se confronte à des difficultés externes d’ordre conjoncturel, partisanes notamment, se heurte aux antagonismes de la certitude du christianisme et du doute méthodique, se soumet aux exigences de la dualité de la « raison » - philosophique et scientifique -, mais subit également les retombées de ses propres ambiguïtés et carences conceptuelles. In fine, l’enjeu de ces ambitions syncrétiques ne repose plus tant sur le diptyque foi-raison que que sur les interactions entre le sentiment de foi, la nature et la science. / The XVIIIth century, in France, sanctioned the ideological, intellectual and spiritual separation between the critical and empirical reason of the philosopher and the christian anthropology of the orthodoxy partisans. However, intuition and intent of a humanist syncretism aiming at the collaboration of both scientific and faith intelligence lived through Renaissance and XVIIIth century, to maintain the thought of famous Catholic litterateurs, abbots Morellet, Coyer, Yvon, Bergier and Raynal. Those mediation theoreticians personified a moderated minority of catholic apologetics, an apologetic of conciliation calling to mind about its nature and its significance: did it manage to tie up the christian values to the strong ideas related to the rational Enlightenment; did it offer a medial path between the antagonistic parties of the “philosophers” and the “devout persons”? A pluralist conciliation can be revealed by analytical exploration and by putting into perspective comparatively the terms of the union between reason and faith. Deemed as a true ideological nebula rose on the theological humanism of Jesuit molinism, this conciliation was constrained by cyclical external difficulties, was torn apart between Christianity certainty and methodical doubt, was faced to the requirements of the duality of the philosophical and scientific “reason”, but was also submitted to the consequences of its own ambiguities and conceptual lacks. In fine, the stake of these syncretic ambitions lied less on the faith-reason diptych than on the harmonization of the feeling of faith, nature and science.

En analysant les discours élaborés par les Lumières allemandes au sujet de La Mettrie entre 1739 et 1789, cette thèse vise à réévaluer la place du matérialisme au sein des échanges culturels franco-allemands de la période. La première partie précise les enjeux et les méthodes de l’étude : le scandale littéraire et philosophique doit être envisagé comme un révélateur des principes et des mécanismes de fonctionnement qui sous-tendent les productions de la République des Lettres. L’étude du scandale dans ce qu’il fait au texte est un prisme pertinent pour analyser le problème du matérialisme français, l’oeuvre de La Mettrie et le fonctionnement de l’espace qui la reçoit. La deuxième partie examine la réception initiale de la Mettrie en Allemagne entre 1739 et 1752. Elle mesure l’impact du scandale sur les textes, en montrant que l’oeuvre de La Mettrie est prise dans des débats qui rejaillissent de manière ambivalente sur son interprétation, allant jusqu’à entrainer de fausses lectures. La troisième partie s’intéresse à la réception ultérieure du médecin-philosophe français. Elle souligne la diversité des discours produits entre 1752 et 1789 : repoussoir, aiguillon, occasion de transfert oblique, voie de contestation et de redéfinition des Lumières, la référence à La Mettrie ne saurait être uniquement interprétée en termes d’influences ou d’absence d’influences. Ce parcours permet, in fine, de relire les débats entre philosophes et antiphilosophes français à l’aune de la réception allemande. Cette thèse souligne la richesse de la discussion menée entre France et Allemagne autour du matérialisme, reconsidère le rôle de La Mettrie et invite à redécouvrir une oeuvre méconnue. / In analyzing the discourses developed by the German Enlightenment on La Mettrie between 1739 and 1789, this thesis aims at re-evaluating the place of materialism in the Franco-German cultural exchanges of the period. The first part specifies the stakes and methods of the study: the literary and philosophical scandal must be considered as a revealing of the principles and operating mechanisms that underlie the productions of the Republic of Letters. The study of the scandal in what he does to the text is a pertinent prism to analyze the problem of French materialism, the work of La Mettrie and the functioning of the space that receives it. The second part examines the initial reception of the Mettrie in Germany between 1739 and 1752. It measures the impact of the scandal on the texts, showing that the work of La Mettrie is taken in debates that reflect in an ambivalent way on its interpretation, even leading to false readings. The third part is concerned with the later reception of the French physician-philosopher. It emphasizes the diversity of discourse produced between 1752 and 1789: a flicker, a sting, an oblique transfer opportunity, a way of contesting and redefining the Enlightenment, the reference to La Mettrie can not be solely interpreted in terms of influences or absence of influences. This course allows, in fine, to read differently the debates between French philosophers and antiphilosophers in the light of the German reception. This thesis underlines the richness of the discussion between France and Germany on materialism, reconsiders the role of La Mettrie and invites us to rediscover an unknown work.

\"O que é o Esclarecimento?\" Em mais de uma oportunidade Michel Foucault retoma a célebre questão lançada no século XVIII no intuito de interpelar as imbricações entre formas de racionalidade e efeitos de poder na Modernidade. No cerne dessa conexão, enfatizará o papel das resistências que acompanham, enredam, transformam esse campo de interações múltiplas, com especial destaque à postura que virá a designar, no final dos anos 1970, como uma \"atitude crítica\" em face do presente. Esta tese confronta leituras como a de Axel Honneth que, ao considerar Foucault um \"teórico do poder\", atribui-lhe uma concepção de racionalidade como processo de extensão da dominação individual e coletiva que culminaria por inviabilizar qualquer possibilidade crítica ou de emancipação dos sujeitos. Nosso objetivo central trata de ressaltar que Foucault não promulga em suas análises qualquer concepção de racionalidade como invariante universal - meta-antropológica ou meta-histórica -, mas busca antes ressaltar a história e geografia das racionalidades promovendo uma \"crítica racional da razão\" que compreende igualmente a crítica de seus efeitos concretos de poder. Isso porque Foucault não concebe o poder em termos estritamente repressivos, como privação ou proibição da liberdade, fenômeno puro da dominação, mas como jogos estratégicos com relações de força e de resistência presentes nas configurações e transformações complexas das formas de organização social e subjetiva. A atitude crítica, como modo de pensar, como postura ética e política, como compreensão e questionamento do momento ou do tempo presente constitui-se como um dos motores dessa transformação possível. Ora, seguindo o fio subterrâneo que a liga a Kant, Foucault destaca que a atitude crítica pode tomar formas diversas, a partir de tradições filosóficas distintas e em contextos históricos variados. Em nossa análise, além de Max Weber, privilegiamos a interlocução que o pensador francês estabelece com algumas das tópicas e autores da Teoria Crítica, notadamente com questões colocadas por Adorno e Horkheimer, de modo a explorar suas afinidades, tensões e especificidades. Argumentamos que é nesse diálogo que a postura foucaultiana expressa e afirma sua singularidade ao recolocar a questão do Esclarecimento como questão atual, inconclusa, inadiável. / \"What is Enlightenment?\" Michel Foucault revisited more than once to the prominent question raised in the eighteenth century in order to challenge the imbrication between forms of rationality and effects of power in modernity. At the core of this connection, he emphasizes the role of resistances that follow, enmesh and transform this field of multiple interactions, highlighting what he called, in the late 1970s, a \"critical attitude\" towards the present. This thesis confronts interpretations - like Axel Honneth\'s one - that consider Foucault as a \"theorist of power\" and assign to his work an idea of rationality as a process of the expansion of individual and collective domination that would cause the impossibility of any critique and also of the emancipation of subjects. The main purpose of this thesis is to emphasize that Foucault does not use in his analyses any conception of rationality as an universal invariable - a meta-anthropological and meta-historical one -, instead his analyses aim at highlighting the history and geography of rationalities, encouraging a \"rational critique of reason\" that includes the critique of the actual effects of power. This is because Foucault does not conceive the power on strict repressive terms, such as deprivation or restriction of liberty or a pure phenomenon of domination, but as strategic games of power relations and resistances within the complex of configurations and transformations of the forms of social and subjective organization. The critical attitude - as a way of thinking, a political and ethical attitude, an understanding and a critique of the present - is one of the driving forces of this possible change. Following the underground thread that connect it to Kant, Foucault emphasizes that the critical attitude may assume different forms according to the different philosophical traditions and historical contexts. In addition to the dialogue with Max Weber, this thesis analyses the interlocution of the French philosopher with some authors and issues of the Critical Theory, especially those raised by Adorno and Horkheimer, in order to explore their affinities, tensions and particularities. I argue that it is in this dialogue that the foucauldian attitude manifests and affirms its singularity to reinstall the question of Enlightenment as a current, open and urgent question.