Our tendency to read French Enlightenment political writing from a narrow disciplinary perspective has obscured the hybrid character of political philosophy, rhetoric, and natural science in the period. As Michčle Duchet and others have shown, French Enlightenment thinkers developed a philosophical anthropology to support new political norms and models. This book explores how five important eighteenth-century French political authorsRousseau, Diderot, La Mettrie, Quesnay, and Rétif de La Bretonnealso constructed a "political zoology" in their philosophical and literary writings informed by animal references drawn from Enlightenment natural history, science, and physiology. Drawing on theoretical work by Derrida, Latour, de Fontenay, and others, it shows how these five authors signed on to the old rhetorical tradition of animal comparisons in political philosophy, which they renewed via the findings and speculations of contemporary science. Engaging with recent scholarship on Enlightenment political thought, it also explores the links between their political zoologies and their family resemblance as "liberal" political thinkers.
Recenzijos
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
Acknowledgments
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 Mettries 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 LHomme Machine
The Animal in La Mettries Anthropological Machine
The Moral Sentiments, Natural Law, and thePrerogatives of Animality
The Animal-Machine as Moral Image in the Discours sur le bonheur
The Limits of La Mettries Liberalism: The Philosopher, the Sovereign, and
the People in the Discours préliminaire
2 Political Economy as an Animal Economy in Franēois Quesnay
General and Particular Economics and the great law of the natural order"
Theorizing the Animal Economy in the Essai physique sur léconomie animale
Animals, Representation, and Nature in Quesnays Political Economy
Quesnays Liberal Despotism: The Animal and the économie morale
3 The Animal in Question in Diderots Moral and Political Philosophy
Thinking Politics in an Animal Laboratory
Diderots Bee: Morality, Politics, and the Interpretation of Nature
Animal and Human Morality in Diderots Encylopédie Essays
Beyond the Human: Diderots 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 linégalité
Liberty, Equality, and Human Specificity
Rousseaus Moral Sentiments: Pity, Love of Oneself, and the Ferocious
Beast
The Disappearance of the Compassionate Animal in Emile and the Essai sur
lorigine des langues
Rousseaus Primitivism: Ferocity as Amour de soi
5 Animality, Race, and Liberal Empire in Rétif de La Bretonne
Rétifs Real and Perfect Republic: Liberalism Between Absolutism and
Communism
Rétifs Imperial Zoology: The Animal as Predator and Racialized Other
A Politics Beyond the Predator/Prey Distinction?
Patagonia and Megapatagonia Rétifs Imperial Desire: Promissory Liberalism
and Unequal Fraternity
The inconceivable Animal-human: Animality, Race, and métissage in the
Lettre dun singe aux źtres de son espčce
Conclusion
Index
Andrew Billing is an Associate Professor of French and Francophone Studies at Macalester College, 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 L'Esprit Créateur on Paris, capitalism and modernity with Juliette Cherbuliez.
