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
- Part II Encountering Humanity
- 6 Songs from the Edge of the World: Enlightenment Perceptions of Khoikhoi and Bushmen Music
- 7 Joshua Reynolds and the Problem of Human Difference
- 8 François Péron's Meditation on Death, Humanity and Savage Society
- 9 Neither Civilized Nor Savage: The Aborigines of Colonial Port Jackson, Through French Eyes, 1802
- 10 The Difficulty of becoming a Civilized Human: Orientalism, Gender and Sociability in Montesquieu's Persian Letters
- Part III The Limits of Humanity
- Notes
- Index
10 - The Difficulty of becoming a Civilized Human: Orientalism, Gender and Sociability in Montesquieu's Persian Letters
from Part II - Encountering Humanity
- 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
- Part II Encountering Humanity
- 6 Songs from the Edge of the World: Enlightenment Perceptions of Khoikhoi and Bushmen Music
- 7 Joshua Reynolds and the Problem of Human Difference
- 8 François Péron's Meditation on Death, Humanity and Savage Society
- 9 Neither Civilized Nor Savage: The Aborigines of Colonial Port Jackson, Through French Eyes, 1802
- 10 The Difficulty of becoming a Civilized Human: Orientalism, Gender and Sociability in Montesquieu's Persian Letters
- Part III The Limits of Humanity
- Notes
- Index
Summary
In the Persian Letters (1721) Montesquieu recounts an episode where a monk explains to the Persian traveller Rica how ‘barbarian peoples’ brought about the fall of the Roman empire but subsequently became enslaved under the dictator-ship of kings. ‘These peoples were not truly barbarous, since they were free’, the monk tells Rica, ‘but they have become so now that most of them have submitted to dictatorship, and lost the sweetness of freedom, which is in such close concord with reason, humanity and nature.’ Much of the novelty and entertainment value of the Persian Letters arises from the assumption that European and Oriental societies are innately different because their customs and character are influenced by climatic conditions – an idea more fully fleshed out in Montesquieu's The Spirit of the Laws (1748). These differences form the basis of the satirical sketches of Parisians and Persians in the novel. In the above quotation, however, the monk – a European – creates a parallel between Europeans and Persians who, being ‘Oriental’, also live under the dictatorship of despotism and who are thus equally uncivilized. It is a rhetorical move that undermines the accepted Enlightenment notion that Europeans – and the French more than most – were ‘civilized’ and ‘Orientals’ were ‘barbarous’.
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- Representing Humanity in the Age of Enlightenment , pp. 135 - 148Publisher: Pickering & ChattoFirst published in: 2014