Animal Rhetoric and Natural Science in Eighteenth-Century Liberal Political Writing

ISBN-13: 9781032605722 / Twarda / 2023 / 312 str.

Andrew Billing

Opis

It explores how five18th-century liberal French political authors—Rousseau, Diderot, La Mettrie, Quesnay, and Rétif de la Bretonne—constructed a “political zoology” informed by animal references drawn from Enlightenment natural history and physiology

Recenzje

“The timely intervention of Animal Rhetoric and Natural Science in Eighteenth-Century Liberal Political Writing leaves an indelible mark in the conversation around liberalism, animality, and human nature in eighteenth-century European thought [...] By tracking the animal through the mutually constitutive, hybrid frames of natural science and political philosophy, Billing, with nuanced theoretical discernment, successfully and provocatively realigns the parameters of current discussions about the French Enlightenment and its legacy.”

- Scott Venters, Drama and Humanities, Dallas College

Spis treści

 

Acknowledgements

 

Introduction: French Enlightenment Political Zoology: A Definition

     “Political Zoology” as a Hybrid Science

     Disenchanting the Animal in French Enlightenment Political Rhetoric

     Enlightenment Anthropology and New Theories of animalité

     Empiricist Natural Science and the Critique of Political Absolutism

     An Emergent Eighteenth-Century French Liberalism

 

1. La Mettrie’s Hybrid Medical and Political Science

     This Bold Analogy: La Mettrie, Descartes, and the Vicissitudes of the Animal-Machine Figure

     Machine Rhetoric and the Animal Economy in L’Homme Machine.

     The Animal in La Mettrie’s Anthropological Machine

     The Moral Sentiments, Natural Law, and the “Prerogatives of Animality”

     The Animal-Machine as Moral Image in the Discours sur le bonheur

     The Limits of La Mettrie’s Liberalism: The Philosopher, the Sovereign, and the People in the Discours préliminaire

 

2. Political Economy as an Animal Economy in François Quesnay

     General and Particular Economics and the “great law of the natural order”

     Theorizing the Animal Economy in the Essai physique sur l’économie animale

     Animals, Representation, and Nature in Quesnay’s Political Economy

     Quesnay’s “Liberal Despotism”: the Animal and the économie morale

 

3. The Animal in Question in Diderot’s Moral and Political Philosophy

     Thinking Politics in an Animal Laboratory

     Diderot’s Bee: Morality, Politics, and the Interpretation of Nature

     Animal and Human Morality in Diderot's Encylopédie Essays

     Beyond the Human: Diderot's Éléments de physiologie

     Animality, Anarchism, and The Nature of Happiness

 

4. Political Anthropology and its Animal Other in Rousseau

     Animal Origins and Human Foundations in the Discours sur l’inégalité

     Liberty, Equality, and Human Specificity

     Rousseau’s Moral Sentiments: Pity, “Love of Oneself,” and the “Ferocious Beast”

     The Disappearance of the Compassionate Animal in Emile and the Essai sur l’origine des langues

     Rousseau’s Primitivism: Ferocity as Amour de soi

 

5. Animality, Race, and “Liberal Empire” in Rétif de la Bretonne

     Rétif’s Real and Perfect Republic: Liberalism Between Absolutism and Communism

     Rétif’s Imperial Zoology: the Animal as Predator and Racialized Other

     A Politics Beyond the Predator/Prey Distinction? Patagonia and Megapatagonia

     Rétif’s Imperial Desire: Promissory Liberalism and “Unequal Fraternity”

     “The inconceivable Animal-human”: Animality, Race, and métissage in the Lettre d’un singe aux êtres de son espèce

 

Conclusion

Index

O autorze

Andrew Billing is an associate professor of French and Francophone Studies at Macalester College, in Saint Paul, Minnesota, who specializes in French Enlightenment literature, philosophy, and political thought. He completed his doctorate on Rousseau's political writings at the　University of California,　Irvine. He has articles published and forthcoming on Rousseau, Quesnay, Louis-Sébastien Mercier, Diderot and other early modern French political authors, and co-edited a special volume of Esprit créateur on Paris, capitalism and modernity.