Book contents
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- List of Contributors
- List of Figures
- The Science and Politics of Humanity in the Eighteenth Century: An Introduction
- Part I Humanity and the Civilizing Process
- 1 Representing Humanity during the French Revolution: Volney's ‘General Assembly of Peoples’
- 2 Representing Woman: Historicizing Women in the Age of Enlightenment
- 3 Sheer Folly and Derangement: How the Crusades Disoriented Enlightenment Historiography
- 4 Turning Things Around Together: Enlightenment and Conversation
- 5 Moses Mendelssohn and the Character of Virtue
- Part II Encountering Humanity
- Part III The Limits of Humanity
- Notes
- Index
1 - Representing Humanity during the French Revolution: Volney's ‘General Assembly of Peoples’
from Part I - Humanity and the Civilizing Process
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- List of Contributors
- List of Figures
- The Science and Politics of Humanity in the Eighteenth Century: An Introduction
- Part I Humanity and the Civilizing Process
- 1 Representing Humanity during the French Revolution: Volney's ‘General Assembly of Peoples’
- 2 Representing Woman: Historicizing Women in the Age of Enlightenment
- 3 Sheer Folly and Derangement: How the Crusades Disoriented Enlightenment Historiography
- 4 Turning Things Around Together: Enlightenment and Conversation
- 5 Moses Mendelssohn and the Character of Virtue
- Part II Encountering Humanity
- Part III The Limits of Humanity
- Notes
- Index
Summary
Leaders of peoples! If you possess the truth, let us see it, because we seek it ardently and it is in our interest to find it: we are men, and we can be mistaken, but you are men too, and you are equally fallible. Help us, then, in this labyrinth … assist us to determine the truth amidst the battle of so many opinions that dispute for our belief. End in one day the long battles of error; establish between it and the truth a solemn struggle: summon the opinions of men of all nations. Convoke the general assembly of peoples that they may be judges in their own cause.
Constantin-François Volney, Les Ruines, ou Méditation sur les révolutions des empires (1791)In many ways the French Revolution marks the apotheosis of Man as a political concept. In publishing the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen in 1789, the Constituent Assembly rendered both Man and citizen as central legitimating conceits of Revolutionary politics. The concept of the ‘citizen’ would play a vital role in demarcating sovereignty and re-fashioning identities over the ensuing decade. It levelled old hierarchies and facilitated new ones in the reconstruction of the political nation. Throughout this period Man also retained a powerful place in Revolutionary semiotics as the holder of rights, the bearer of needs and the object of reforming practices.
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- Representing Humanity in the Age of Enlightenment , pp. 15 - 26Publisher: Pickering & ChattoFirst published in: 2014