Sophie de Grouchy on the cost of domination in the Letters on Sympathy and two anonymous articles in Le Republicain

Date
2015
Authors
Berges, S.
Advisor
Instructor
Source Title
Monist
Print ISSN
0026-9662
Electronic ISSN
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Volume
98
Issue
1
Pages
102 - 112
Language
English
Type
Article
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Abstract

Political writings of eighteenth-century France have been so far mostly overlooked as a source of republican thought. Philosophers such as Condorcet actively promoted the ideal of republicanism in ways that can shed light on current debates. In this paper, I look at one particular source: Le Re´publicain, published in the summer 1791, focusing on previously unattributed articles by Condorcet’s wife and collaborator, Sophie de Grouchy. Grouchy, a philosopher in her own right, is beginning to be known for her Letters on Sympathy, a response to Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiment, which she published at the same time as her translation of that text into French. I argue, further, that in the texts, which I attribute to Grouchy, we can find the early development of a commercial republican theory, a belief, which is reflected in her discussion of the ‘cost’ of tyranny.

Course
Other identifiers
Book Title
Keywords
Le Republicain, Political writings, France
Citation
Published Version (Please cite this version)