Abstract
In the aftermath of the Terror, Staël started to ask how to ensure social and moral cohesion in a post-revolutionary French society composed of atomized citizens so that the representative system might function effectively. The Terror was the decisive event that convinced Staël of the vital necessity of conservative elements in the modern representative system. After the Terror, Staël became an unusual member of the Thermidorian republic. While embracing conservative republicanism, she incorporated what she considered the substance of constitutional monarchy, namely, hereditary peerage, into the Directory’s political institutions. She remained the only conservative republican to propose such a syncretic definition of bicameral legislature, inspired by Anglo-American political culture. Finally, after five years of incessant political instability marked by serial coups d’état and the manipulation of electoral results, Staël proposed the strengthening of the state, although she tried to neutralize its negative effects by institutionalizing local administrative liberty reserved for all male citizens as a counterweight. Thus, her peculiar liberal political thought is dextrously marked by aristocratic principle at the national level, symbolized by the second chamber of a British type, and democratic principle within local administrative units to promote the social and moral ties of citizens, despite political antagonism.
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Notes
- 1.
Staël, C.Gb., 3-II, 542.
- 2.
Staël, Essai sur les fictions suivi de De l’influence des passions sur le bonheur des indivivus et des nations, ed. Michel Tournier, (Paris: Ramsey, 1979), 58.
- 3.
Gordon, Citizens, 54–56.
- 4.
Ibid., 61–63. Istvan Hont, “The Language of Sociability and Commerce: Samuel Pufendorf and the Theoretical Foundations of the ‘Four-Stages’ Theory,” ed. Anthony Pagden, The Languages of Political Theory in Early Modern Europe, (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 1987), 265–268.
- 5.
Thomas Hobbes referred to it in De Cive (1642) and Leviathan (1651). Niberto Bobbio, Thomas Hobbes and the Natural Law Tradition, (Chicago: Chicago U.P., 1993), 41–42.
- 6.
Albert O. Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before its Triumph, (Princeton: Princeton U.P., 1977), 38–39.
- 7.
Gordon, Citizens, 168.
- 8.
I basically refer to the French atheist philosophes in my definition of the philosophes. Staël cynically calls them “religious sects” because of their doctrinaire attitudes, which are comparable to her image of catholic doctrine in terms of no room alloted to individuals’ ethical freedom as opposed to true philosophy. At stake is individuals’ moralizing free will. These philosophes include d’Holbach , Helvétius , and, to a lesser extent, Diderot. Staël, Lettres sur Rousseau, 78.
- 9.
“Hobbisme,” L’Encyclopédie ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, ed. Diderot et d’Alembert, numerical edition, (Paris: ENCCRE).
- 10.
Hisashi Ida, Genèse d’une morale matérialiste: les passions et le contrôle de soi chez Diderot, (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2001), 249; P-H.T. d’Holbach , Le système social, vol. 3, (Paris: Hachette, 1971), 87–89.
- 11.
Alain Touraine, La critique de la modernité, (Paris, Fayard, 1972), 21–49.
- 12.
Gordon, Citizens, 63.
- 13.
For example, a technical document in 1704 states that “commerce attaches men to one another through mutual utility.” The economist Samuel Richard mentioned this in 1704. Quoted by Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence has Declined, (London: Penguin Books, 2011), 77.
- 14.
Hirschman theorized the Doux commerce theory as follows: “There was much talk, from the late seventeeth-century, about the ‘douceur’ of commerce … sweetness, softness, calm, and gentleness, the antonym of violence.” Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests, 60.
- 15.
See Chap. 3 of this book.
- 16.
Mara Maria, “Rousseau and the Thesis of Natural Sociability,” unpublished article. Prepared for the 2012 Annual Meeting of the Western American Political Science Association, March 22–24, 2012, Portland, Oregon, USA.
- 17.
Ibid., 13.
- 18.
Daniel Gordon, Citizens, 242.
- 19.
Lucien Jaume, Hobbes et l’Etat représentatif modern, (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1986).
- 20.
Joseph de Maistre, Etudes sur la souveraineté, (Oxford: Pergamon Presse, 1884), 311–312.
- 21.
Joseph de Maistre, Considerations on France, ed. Richard A. Lebrun, (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 86–87).
- 22.
Ibid., 112.
- 23.
Rosanvallon traces the discourse on social dissolution back to only after 1800. Rosanvallon , Le moment Guizot, 75–82.
- 24.
Quotation from Roger Dupy, Pour une république sans révolution, (Paris: Presse universitaire de France, 1795), 16.
- 25.
Takeda, “Deux origines,” 244.
- 26.
Robert Wolkler, “Ideology and the origins of social science,” The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Political Thought, (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 2008), 695–698.
- 27.
Ibid., 699.
- 28.
Ibid., 696.
- 29.
Sieyès , Roederer, and Dupont de Nemours were of this class and were known as “economists.” Although they were not part of the ideologues, they were socially close to them. Evelyn L. Forget, “2: A brief biography of Jean-Baptist Say (1767–1832),” The Social Economics of Jean-Baptiste Say: Markets and Virtue, (London: Routledge, 1999), 12–34.
- 30.
Kaiser asserts that the ideologues turned to industrialism as “a way of putting an end to social and political disorders the Revolution had caused.” Thomas E. Kaiser, “Politics and Political Economy in the Thought of the Ideologues,” History of Political Economy, 12-2: 1980, No. 2, vol. 12, 143. I define industrialism in terms of “thinking of the social organization on the basis of the existence and the diffusion of the market on the one hand, and of industry on the other, the whole defining the framework in which the freedom of the moderns takes place,” following Steiner’s definition of industrialism. Philippe Steiner, “Say, les idéologues et le Groupe de Coppet: La société industrielle comme système politique,” Revue française d’histoire des idées politiques, 2, no. 18 (2003), 331–351.
- 31.
James Livesey, “Agrarian Ideology and Commercial Republicanism in the French Revolution,” Past and Present, no. 157, (November 1997), 100–101.
- 32.
This tendency is the most prominent in Roederer’s social and political thought, in which “social and moral cohesion could result from social mores based on the principle of work.” Within this assumption, while work is an important component of citizens’ liberty, the necessity of organizing the social division of labor is an egalitarian principle to enhance the social and moral cohesion of post-Terror French society. For this reason, it is an urgent task of the state more important than the political organization of power. Ruth Scurr, Chap. 3, “Judging the extent of social cohesion: work as the social principle that supports modern representative government,” The Social Foundations of the Modern Republic: P.-L. Roederer’s Cours d’organisation sociale, PhD dissertation to the University of Cambridge, 2000, 101–103.
- 33.
Patrice Rolland. “Les droits garantis,” Revue française d’histoire des idées politiques, 18-2, 2003, 323.
- 34.
Staël, Considerations, III-XXVIII, 420.
- 35.
Staël, C. G., 3-I, 321.
- 36.
As the Swedish ambassador to France, M. de Staël recognized the French Republic in April 1795. E.-M. de Staël-Holstein and C. Brinckman, Correspondance diplomatique du baron de Staël-Holstein et de son succésseur comme chargé d’affairs, le Bon Brinkman. Documents inédits sur la Révolution (1783–1799), (Paris: Hachette et cie, 1881), 259–261. On Staël’s patronage activities and publications in 1795–1796, Basil Munteano, Les idées politiques de Madame de Staël et la constitution de l’an III, (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1931).
- 37.
Staël, C.G. 3-II, 8.
- 38.
Lucien Jaume, “Introduction,” Réflexions sur la paix intérieure, OCb, III-I, 123.
- 39.
Staël, Réflexions sur la paix intérieure, OCb, III-I, 144.
- 40.
Ibid., OCb, I-I, 144.
- 41.
Ibid., OCb, 144.
- 42.
Grange, Les idées de Necker, 463.
- 43.
Staël, Circonstances actuelles, OCb, III-I, 327.
- 44.
Staël, Réflexions sur la paix intérieure, OCb, III-I, 147.
- 45.
Staël, C. G. 3-II, 15.
- 46.
Jean-Joseph Mounier . Considérations sur les gouvernements et principalement sur celui qui convient à la France, (Paris: Boudouin, 1789), 22.
- 47.
Boissy d’Anglas, Le projet de constitution et le discours préliminaire, (Paris: 1795).
- 48.
François Dominique de Raynaud, the comte de Montlosier, Des moyens d’opérer la contre-révolution, ([S.I.], [s.n.], : 1792), 34.
- 49.
Ibid., 37.
- 50.
Staël, Réflexions sur la paix intérieure, OCb, III-I, 151.
- 51.
Theodore Zeldin, “France,” ed. David Spring, (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins U.P., 1977), 128.
- 52.
Ibid., 128. On nobles’ landholding after 1789, see David Higgs, Nobles in Nineteenth-Century France, (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins U.P., 1987); Peter Mcphee, A Social History of France 1789–1914, (London: Palgrave, 2004).
- 53.
Staël, Réflexions sur la paix intérieure, OCb, III-I, 73.
- 54.
Simone Balayé, “La nationalité de Madame de Staël,” Humanisme actif. Mélanges d’art et de littératures offerts à Julien Calin. vol. I, (Paris: Hermanne, 1968), 73–85.
- 55.
Staël-Holstein. Correspondance diplomatique, 269–270.
- 56.
Staël, “Preface,” Lettres sur Rousseau, OCb, I-I, 37.
- 57.
Staël, De l’influence des passions, OCb, I-I, 138.
- 58.
Ibid., 136.
- 59.
Ibid., 171.
- 60.
Ibid., 221–233.
- 61.
Ibid., 228–229.
- 62.
Ibid., 225.
- 63.
Ibid., 222.
- 64.
Ibid., 138.
- 65.
Ibid., 146.
- 66.
Ibid., 145–146.
- 67.
Ibd., 146.
- 68.
Ibid., 149.
- 69.
Staël, “letter to A. Lameth on November 24, 1795,” C. G. 3-II, 274–275.
- 70.
Réflexions sur la paix intérieure was posthumously published in Oeuvres complètes in 1820–1821.
- 71.
Boissy d’Anglas referred to aristocracy of the best (l’aristocratie des meilleurs) in his “preliminary speech to the project of constitution” in the Convention in 1795.
- 72.
Martin Staum, “Individual Rights and Social Control: Political Science in the French Institute,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 48, no. 3 (July–September 1987), 428–430. Staum attributes the ideological origin of the middle class inherent in the ideologues to Aristotle. Ibid., 429. See also Martin S. Staum, Minerva’s Message: Stabilizing the French Revolution, (Montreal: Mcgill Queen’s U.P., 1996), 185–187.
- 73.
Staël, De l’influence des passions, OCb, I-I, 146.
- 74.
Staël, Circonstances actuelles, OCb, I-I, 343–345.
- 75.
Staël, Circonstances actuelles, OCb, I-I, 353–354. Andrew Jainchill, “Liberal Republicanism after the Terror: Charles-Guillaume Théremin and Germaine de Staël,” in Pluralism and the Idea of the Republic in France, ed. Jones Stuart and Julian Wright, (New York: Palgrave, 2012), 34–40.
- 76.
Staël adopts the principle of utility in her political reflections, asserting that “the aim of the government is to ensure the happiness of all.” Jainchill, “Liberal,” 27.
- 77.
Staël enumerates “rest, safety and property” in her definition of civil rights. Staël, Réflexions sur la paix intérieure, OCb, II-I, 169. Rolland, “Les droits garantis,” 305.
- 78.
Staël, Circonstances actuelles, OCb, II-I, 415–416.
- 79.
Rolland, “Les droits garantis,” 309.
- 80.
Staël, Circonstances actuelles, OCb, II-I, 423–431.
- 81.
Ibid., 428.
- 82.
Ibid., 428.
- 83.
Ibid., 427.
- 84.
Staël, De l’influence des passions, OCb, I-I, 145.
- 85.
James Livesey, “On the Political Culture of the Directory,” A Companion to the French Revolution, ed. Peter Mcphee, (Oxford: Blackwell, 2013), 328–342.
- 86.
Staël, C. G., 3-II, 56–57.
- 87.
Roederer, Journal d’économie publique, de morale et de politique on 10 Prairial, 1797.
- 88.
Ibid.
- 89.
Staël, C. G. 3-II, 88.
- 90.
Antoine Claire Thibaudeau, Mémoires sur la Convention et le Directoire, (Paris: Chez Ponthieu, 1827), vol. II, 242–250.
- 91.
Quotation from Henri Grange, “Mme de Staël et la constitution de l’an III: avant et après,” La constitution de l’an III: Boissy d’Anglas et la naissance du libéralisme constitutionnel, ed. Gérard Conac and Jean-Pierre Machelon, (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1999), 205.
- 92.
Balayé, Mme de Staël, (Paris: Kincksieck, 1979), 66.
- 93.
Quotation from Craiutu, A Virtue, 252.
- 94.
This definition of modérantisme matches Vincent’s definition of the liberalism of fear.
- 95.
Albert Mathiez, Le Directoire (du 11 brumaire en IV au 18 fructidor An V), (Paris: Armand Colin, 1934), 347.
- 96.
Thibaudeau, Mémoires, vol. II, 388.
- 97.
Mathiez, Le Directoire, 339.
- 98.
Ibid., 347. Hereafter referred to as The Current Circumstances.
- 99.
Fontana, Germaine, 160.
- 100.
Staël, Circonstances actuelles, OCb, II-I, 255–221.
- 101.
Staël, “Constitution,” Ibid., 371–410.
- 102.
Ibid., pp. 156–157, 160.
- 103.
Ibid., 165.
- 104.
Livesey. “The Political Culture of the Directory,” 330.
- 105.
Ibid., 330; Pierre Rosanvallon, L’Etat en France de 1789 à nos jours, (Paris: Seuile, 1989). Le modèle politique français: La société civile contre le jacobinisme de 1789 à nos jours, (Paris: Seuil, 2004); Pierre Serna, La république des girouettes (1789–1815 et au delà), une anomalie politique: La France de l’extrême centre, (Paris: Champ Vallon, 2005).
- 106.
Isser Woloch, Napoleon and his Collaborators: The Making of a Dictatorship, (New York: WW Norton, 2003).
- 107.
Fontana, Germaine, 170.
- 108.
Ibid., 14–15.
- 109.
Fontana, Germaine, 173–174; Blennerhassett, Madame de Staël et son temps, vol. II, 382–385.
- 110.
Staël, “Letter of 21 January 1798,” C. G. IV-1, 110.
- 111.
Staël, Circonstances actuelles, II-I, 389.
- 112.
Ibid., 343–345, 389.
- 113.
Ibid., 343–345.
- 114.
Jacques Godechot, Les institutions de la France sous la Révolution et l’Empire, (Paris: Presses univrsitaires de France, 1951), 87–97; Malcolm Crook, Elections in the French Revolution, (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 1996), 158.
- 115.
Crook, Elections, 158.
- 116.
Patrice Gueniffey, “La Révolution ambiguë de l’an III: La Convention, l’élection directe et le problème des candidatures,” Pour une République sans Révolution, (Paris: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 1996), 1795. 50.
- 117.
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Takeda, C. (2018). Staël’s Liberal Republicanism in Reaction to the Discourse on Social Dissolution (1795–1799). In: Mme de Staël and Political Liberalism in France. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-8087-6_4
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