The concept of the self in the French enlightenment

The Background of Physiological Psychology in Natural Philosophy

This thesis studies the rise of the modern self in France from the aftermath of the French Revolution until the eve of the First Wold War. Building on the work of Michel Foucault, the modern individual is understood as the result of collective practices and beliefs that change across time and space, as well as being inseparable from the problem of governing and shaping the conduct of oneself and others. The focus is placed on how the experience of being a nineteenth-century self was structured, by considering, on the one hand, the explicit discourses and logics that naturalized specific forms of selfhood and made it possible to identify oneself and others as modern subjects and, on the other, the rise of techniques and technologies aimed at producing and reproducing this modern self. These included practices of the self such as moral analysis or self-mastery strategies, as well as the mechanisms for instilling selfhood in others, such as education or domesticity. In particular this thesis considers the mutually-supportive role of the nuclear family at the micro level and social assistance programmes at the macro level. The home and charity office participated in a new form of governing and understanding of authority called guardianship or tutelle. This was a conceptually non-coercive way of moulding those not yet able to govern themselves and others in accordance with freedom, but whose effects extended far beyond the pauper or child. Through mobilizing, sensationalist and threatening images of non-normative subjectivity and family breakdown, social reformers and administrators generated a troubling narrative of both lack and ideal against which poor and rich alike could contrast, measure, and correct the normativity of their own habits and domestic arrangements. This thesis therefore contributes to our understanding of how the modern individual was produced and reproduced as the normative subject of modern collectives.

Parenting the self : welfare, family, and subjectivity in nineteenth-century France

The history of eighteenth-century philosophy is a subject with its own history. However, the idea of what constitutes eighteenth-century philosophy has been remarkably stable over the two centuries that have elapsed since the period in question, and this stability has obscured the simple fact of its historicity and made it peculiarly difficult to question the historical adequacy of that idea. What is more, even now, when detailed scholarship has undertaken such questioning in earnest, tradition is so strong that works of synthesis and overview – not to mention teaching – have to pay it considerable respect in order to find an identifiable audience. During the last two centuries, two factors above all have lent the philosophy of the eighteenth century an identity, other than its place in time, and these two factors have often reinforced each other. One is the idea that the philosophy in question is the core of a wider cultural and social movement, namely ‘the Enlightenment’. The other is that the eighteenth century has to be seen as part of – in fact, as the high point of – a development of early-modern philosophy from Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes to Thomas Reid and Immanuel Kant. THE ENLIGHTENMENT AND PHILOSOPHY The attempt to identify the philosophy of the eighteenth century by means of the Enlightenment is as inadequate as it is popular. Apart from the danger of tautology – namely that the philosophy of the eighteenth century is the philosophy of the Enlightenment because the Enlightenment is the eighteenth century – the concept of Enlightenment is either too wide or too narrow to capture the philosophical riches of the century.

The history of eighteenth-century philosophy: history or philosophy?

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The Foundations of Morality

The ninety-ninth Critical Bibliography,* which includes 3026 citations, is the twentieth to be classified according to the system established in 1953. The main purpose of the classification has always been, in the words of its founder, George Sarton, "to satisfy the needs of historians of science in general rather than those of historians of particular sciences". While the classification is both chronological and by subject, preference is given to the former. The reader who wishes to find all references to a particular subject, therefore, must examine several sections of the bibliography.

The concept of the self in the French enlightenment

Citations

The Background of Physiological Psychology in Natural Philosophy

Parenting the self : welfare, family, and subjectivity in nineteenth-century France

The history of eighteenth-century philosophy: history or philosophy?

The Foundations of Morality

Ninety-Ninth Critical Bibliography of the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (to January 1974)

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The Natural History of Man in the Scottish Enlightenment