Fénelon may be the most neglected of all the major early modern philosophers. His political masterwork was the most-read book in eighteenth-century France after the Bible, yet today even specialists rarely engage his work directly. This problem is particularly acute in the Anglophone world, for while Fénelon's works have been published in several excellent modern French editions, only the smallest fraction of his vast and influential corpus has appeared in modern English translation. This volume aims to help remedy this by (...) bringing to English-language audiences the first collection of his moral and political writings in translation. By so doing it hopes to make more widely available the riches of one of the leading voices of resistance to the absolutism of Louis XIV. Fénelon's political thought will thus be of particular interest to students and scholars of French history, as well as to those today engaged in questions of political resistance and reform. But Fénelon's reach also extends to fields well beyond politics and ethics. In the Enlightenment, Fénelon came to be celebrated not only as a humanitarian political reformer but also as a pioneering theorist of education, a prescient student of economics and international relations, and a key voice in contemporary philosophical debates-not to mention his fame as one of the seventeenth-century's most preeminent theologians and spiritualists and masters of French prose. As such, his work will be of interest to students and scholars in fields ranging from philosophy and political science to economics, education, literature, French history, and religion. (shrink)

"Fénelon is arguably the most neglected of all the major philosophers of early modernity. His political masterwork was the most-read book in eighteenth-century France after the Bible, yet to now we have lacked a single interpretive monograph in English devoted specifically to his thought. This monograph aims to correct this by providing the first such book-length study. In focusing specifically on Fénelon's political thought, it has three primary aims. The first is to provide a reconstruction of Fénelon's (...) political ideas accessible to those who might be encountering Fénelon directly or at length for the first time. The second is to demonstrate the connections between Fénelon's political thought and several other fields to which he made significant and long-recognized contributions, including not only philosophy and political science but also economics, education, literature, theology, and spirituality. Third, the book aims to cut several new edges in our extant understanding and appreciation of Fénelon's political thought and its significance. On this front, it specifically argues that Fénelon is better understood as a moderate and modern thinker rather than as a radical or reactionary, and that Fénelon deserves to be seen not merely as a political thinker but as a political philosopher. Finally, The Political Philosophy of Fénelon argues for Fénelon's relevance to our political world today. Fénelon was a nuanced and insightful diagnostician of ills from egocentrism and social atomism to authoritarianism and imperialism, and our understanding of these phenomena so familiar to us today can benefit from attending to his insights"--. (shrink)

Summary In his novel The Adventures of Telemachus, François de la Mothe-Fénelon (1651–1715) presents a utopian society, Boetica, in which the role of luxury, war and trade is extremely limited. In unreformed Salentum, on the other hand, Fénelon shows the opposite image, one in which the three elements reinforce each other in a fatal feedback-loop. I analyse the relationship between luxury, war and trade in the Telemachus and I sketch the background to Fénelon's views, with special attention (...) to the military expansion and the mercantilism of Louis XIV, Fénelon's quietist spirituality, and the development of the concept of self-interest in seventeenth-century philosophy by mechanicist philosophers and economic thinkers. (shrink)

The connection between Godwin and Fénelon has traditionally been restricted to the famous and controversial moment in the first edition of Political Justice (1793) in which Godwin presents an example of the interdependence of rationality and ethical action. This paper argues, however, that Fénelon, and particularly his political and educational treatise Telemachus (1699), plays a significant role in a number of Godwin's subsequent fictional works. Employing Telemachus to explore the theories of education presented by Godwin in the various (...) editions of Political Justice and The Enquirer (1797), this paper explores the manner in which Godwin's version of the Enlightenment transcendence of pedagogical power comes up against its limits. Reading this issue in relation to Godwin's argument, in ‘Of Choice in Reading’, that literature remains outside of socio-ethical corruption, three of Godwin's major novels are shown to demonstrate that Telemachus provides the chance for meta-textual moments in which the appeal to reason (the reader's rational capacity or ‘private judgement’) is at once reflected upon and produced. Reading educational theories and problems into Godwin's major fiction in this fashion helps to clarify aspects of the Godwinian (or ‘Jacobin’) novel. (shrink)

In The Political Philosophy of Fénelon, Ryan Hanley argues that Fénelon was a realist who aimed to elevate and educate self-love—rather than resist it—in order to avoid tyranny. This roundtable article examines two of Fenelon’s arguments for how self-love, well-directed, could circumvent a king’s absolutist and tyrannical inclinations: 1) the king’s need to be loved and to love in turn, and 2) the relationship between faith and politics / church and state. Contrasting Fénelon with Machiavelli, I question (...) whether the ruler’s “need-love” for his people leaves him susceptible to forms of domination or at least, as Machiavelli warned, renders them politically weak. Given Hanley’s interest to recover Fénelon for the present day, I conclude by arguing that the thinker’s insights about the limiting role of well-directed self-love are inescapably tied to his critiques of absolutism. The same need-love of the people, I argue, cannot similarly check executive power under democracy. Nonetheless, Fénelon’s perspective remains valuable, as does Hanley’s project of recovery, since democracies continue to reckon with particular problems raised by self-love. (shrink)

Ryan Patrick Hanley makes two original claims about François Fénelon: that he is best regarded as a political philosopher, and that his political philosophy is best understood as “moderate and modern.” In what follows, I raise two concerns about Hanley’s revisionist turn. First, I argue that the role of philosophy in Fénelon’s account is rather as a handmaiden of theology than as an autonomous area of inquiry—with implications for both the theory and practice of politics. Second, I use (...) Fénelon’s writings on the education of women as an illustration of the more radical and reactionary aspects of his thought. Despite these limits, the book makes a compelling case for recovering Fénelon and opens up new conversations about education, religion, political economy, and international relations in early modern political thought. (shrink)

In his excellent new book, Hanley presents an engaging interpretation of Fénelon’s political thought as modern and moderate. While I salute the revival of the work of this important and forgotten a...

Drawing on his past work as an interpreter of Adam Smith, Hanley offers an account of Fénelon’s social and political thought that emphasizes the role of pride and self-love in human affairs. Fénelon does not join those, like Mandeville and La Rochefoucauld, who seek to understand and possibly to control self-love. Instead, he attempts to wed a far more rigorous and classical approach to the problem of pride—namely, the refinement of self-love through virtuous practices—to a modern view of (...) the state and political economy. (shrink)

Henri Gouhier, dans son étude classique Fénelon philosophe, qualifiait l’archevêque de Cambrai de « philosophe de la prière ». En effet, l’amour de Dieu est inscrit « comme son principe et sa fin » dans l’essence de la philosophie fénelonienne1. La destination suprême de cette dernière est de s’accomplir dans la contemplation dont l’élévation,..

In the seventeenth century, when the modern Self emerged in the shape of a self-assured Cartesian cogito, a radically opposite movement of ‘emptying’ or ‘deconstructing’ that Self took place. The religious subject, having become modern, understood its ultimate aim as becoming selfless. The battlefield on which the new subject fought the fight with its own modern condition was the issue of ‘love’. ‘What is the status of his Self when it is involved in the act of love?’ was the central (...) question in seventeenth century religiosity. This essay examines the early modern idea of pur amour and focuses only on two voices in the Querelle Du Quiétisme, François de Fénelon (1651–1715) and Nicolas Malebranche (1638–1715). Fénelon vehemently defended the pur amour, a concept he adopted from a century-long tradition of spirituality in France and which he tried to explain and legitimize in a systematic and theoretical way. Malebranche was highly critical of that tradition, but refused neither to use the term nor to refer to the ideal of pur amour. His interpretation of the Self, however, forced him to draw different conclusions on the nature of pure love. (shrink)

Cartesianism appeared inexorably to produce disparate theoretical tendencies inside itself, and Spinoza’s philosophy was one of the most outrageous and strangest result of those tendencies. This explains why so many Cartesians felt the urge to deal with the thought of the Dutch philosopher, from time to time labelled as ‘monism’, ‘pantheism’, or ‘atheism’. The case of Fénelon, the Quietist theologian, tutor of the Princes of France and brilliant Cartesian philosopher, highlights the difficulties of such an operation. The Archbishop of (...) Cambrai devotes not only various letters to the criticism of Spinoza, but even a whole section of the Démonstration de l’existence de Dieu – his most ambitious work, from a theoretical point of view. For apparently no reason, the Réfutation du spinozisme was inserted in the middle of the second part of the Démonstration, the more specifically philosophical section. This paper aims to show how Fénelon actually wanted to criticize Descartes’ radical tendencies by attacking them where they were to be found inside Spinoza, without directly compromising Cartesianism – or, first and foremost, his own ‘apologetic’ Cartesianism. (shrink)

In his monograph, Ryan Patrick Hanley offers a revisionist interpretation of the political philosophy of François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon, archbishop of Cambrai. A series of Enlightenment commentators and their progeny have hailed Fénelon as a political subversive who boldly attacked the injustices of the reign of Louis XIV and who prepared the arrival of an egalitarian society with socialist and pacifist traits. Hanley, however, argues that Fénelon actually defended a more moderate and realistic model of (...) political society than his Enlightenment exegetes have suggested. Like earlier commentators, Hanley attempts to prove his argument primarily through an analysis of... (shrink)

Si elles ne sont pas d'un philosophe, les œuvres de Fénelon ne témoignent pas moins d'une réelle préoccupation pour les questions relatives à l'origine et la nature de la connaissance. Cette étude tente d'établir que, loin de s'en tenir à une simple répétition de positions strictement augustiniennes, l'archevêque de Cambrai reprend très largement des thèmes et des solutions malebranchistes sur un certain nombre de points cruciaux, comme la conception de l'idée et de sa vision en Dieu ainsi que la (...) définition du principe d'individuation. Nous tentons ensuite de confirmer cette hypothèse en montrant que la noétique fénelonienne dépend très largement de sa conception de la causalité, et que celle-ci, sur le fond d'une négation de toute interaction réelle entre les étants finis, s'inscrit dans la constellation de l'occasionnalisme, peut-être mieux représenté qu'on ne le croit à la fin du XVIIe siècle. Although he did not describe himself as a philosopher, Fénelon's works nevertheless do show a true concern for questions relating to the origin and nature of knowledge. This paper argues that far from just simply repeating classical Augustinian doctrines, Fénelon actually took over from Malebranche several solutions to crucial problems of seventeenth century meta-physics, such as the définition ofthe idea and its vision in God and the définition oftheprin-ciple of individuation. The paper then attempts at confirming that hypothesis by showing that the Fenelonian theory of knowledge strongly dépends upon his conception ofcausality. Based on a négation ofanyform ofreal interaction between fïnite beings, his theory ofcausality is imbedded in the constellation of occasionalism, a tradition that therefore appears as much more widespread at the end ofthe seventeenth century than it is usually acknowledged. (shrink)

Résumé Dans cet article, nous examinons la Démonstration de l’existence de Dieu de Fénelon ; la question posée est celle de la démarche apologétique, où le spectacle de la nature donne à voir l’activité du Créateur. Dans un regard qui suppose la foi, Fénelon met en relation le caractère admirable de l’ordre du monde et ce Dieu que nul ne conteste encore sérieusement. Réenchantant l’univers mécaniste, Fénelon en appelle à un Dieu seul capable de mettre en harmonie (...) le mécanisme et la vie ainsi que le corps et l’âme. À la lumière de la science du temps, les espèces animales s’inscrivent dans un ordre équilibré et vivant, le corps organisé est le siège d’opérations d’assimilation et de génération, inaccessibles à la machine, il semble aussi fournir le support des pensées à l’âme. Faute de l’existence d’une cause assumant simultanément les dimensions matérielles, vitales et spirituelles, le lecteur se trouve renvoyé à l’action divine. S’agit-il ici d’occasionalisme fénelonien? Peut-on parler de postérité de Fénelon dans le discours sur la nature au xviii e siècle? (shrink)

This study is focused on an original conception of freedom essentially derived from the Stoics and St Paul: freedom as a use of the world. How Fénelon, when he quotes Paul’s phrase « those who use the things of the world, as if not engrossed in them », associate it with the doctrine of pure love? His desire to interpret the Pauline idea in a mystical perspective threatens the possibility of answering it.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Political Philosophy of Fénelon by Ryan Patrick HanleyJohn J. Conley SJRyan Patrick Hanley. The Political Philosophy of Fénelon. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Pp. xvi + 306. Hardback, $41.95.In his monograph, Ryan Patrick Hanley offers a revisionist interpretation of the political philosophy of François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon, archbishop of Cambrai. A series of Enlightenment commentators (Montesquieu, Rousseau, Hume, Jefferson) and their progeny (...) have hailed Fénelon as a political subversive who boldly attacked the injustices of the reign of Louis XIV and who prepared the arrival of an egalitarian society with socialist and pacifist traits. Hanley, however, argues that Fénelon actually defended a more moderate and realistic model of political society than his Enlightenment exegetes have suggested. Like earlier commentators, Hanley attempts to prove his argument primarily through an analysis of Telemachus, the pedagogical novel Fénelon had composed for Louis, duc de Bourgogne, the "petit Dauphin" and grandson of Louis XIV, when Fénelon served as his tutor.Three strong chapters demonstrate Hanley's thesis concerning Fénelon's moderate politics and philosophy. Hanley argues that Fénelon's philosophy of education rests on a distinction between true and false glory. True glory resides in virtue and a humble recognition of divine glory, while false glory is the self-centered glorification of the human agent, which easily deteriorates into vanity. Rather than simply condemn self-interest, in his treatment of the education of the prince Fénelon argues that self-interest must be gradually transformed into a broader interest for the good of one's subjects and a deeper recognition of the glory of God. Earning the praise of his Enlightenment acolytes and later feminist commentators, Fénelon defends a solid education for women, but he clearly wants this education to prepare women for their domestic role as wives and mothers; his celebrated treatise and letters on the education of women are not an exercise in gender equality.The economic theory of Fénelon has often been interpreted as a type of utopian socialism. This is largely based on the central place taken by Bétique in the Telemachus. In this mythical land, the happy citizens practice a communist economics; private property is foreign to them. All their basic needs are provided for through communal cooperation. Luxury is also foreign to them; precious metals like gold and silver are used in practical construction as if they were pieces of iron. But Hanley argues that the prosocialist exegetes ignore the varied economies presented in the passages concerning Egypt, Crete, and Tyre. Bétique does not stand alone as an economic ideal. When Fénelon details how the economy of contemporary France should be reformed, it is far from simple socialism. The state has a strong initial role in the state's economic reform, but it works in tandem with private initiatives that will gradually become the stronger partner. "Fénelon differs from later socialists in insisting that the use of state power is not an end in itself, but necessary only to establish the conditions whereby a free economic system can emerge and flourish—at which point direct intervention of the state into economic affairs will diminish, and a free (though hardly unbridled) pursuit of self-interest will be encouraged" (81).Hanley also attacks the common argument that Fénelon is a pacifist who excoriates all recourse to war. Fénelon does indeed condemn war in the most graphic terms. As Archbishop of Cambrai in northern France, he had witnessed the brutal carnage and attendant famines that had decimated the population in repeated wars in this border area. But his nuanced critique of war rests on a distinction between false and true courage. False courage is found in the warrior who initiates war for the sake of his own false glory. True courage lies in those who defend the innocent out of a proper sense of duty; this courage contrasts with cowardice disguised as pacificism. Hanley argues that the confederation of nations that Fénelon envisions as a mechanism to mediate conflict and reduce the recourse to war is less a species of international government than... (shrink)

This research file’s object is Fénelon’s correspondence, the complete edition of which, achieved in 2007, has considerably enriched our knowledge of both the life and works of the archbishop of Cambrai, by shedding new lights on its multiple facets. Mirror and memory of the published body of work, when it is not in itself an essential and constitutive part of it, the correspondence enhances Fénelon’s published body of work’s understanding through the discovery of its process of elaboration, the (...) obstacles it met, or the circumstances which favored it. The correspondence also reveals that which is not shown by the work : aborted projects and renouncements, lastly and most importantly, the societal environment, surrounding Fénelon, which allows him to weave the fabric and network in which is set this exceptional life made of radical commitments, of battles, of glory but also of disappointments, disgraces and submissions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Adventures of Telemachus [1699] by François de Salignac de la Mothe-FénelonJean–Michel RacaultFrançois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon. The Adventures of Telemachus [1699]. Translated with an introduction and notes by A. J. B. Cremer. London, Anastasis Books, 2022, 419 pp. Hardbound £24.50. Paperback £15. ISBN: 9781739798314.Fénelon’s 1699 novel The Adventures of Telemachus—or more precisely, the epic poem in prose—was one of the major bestsellers in many (...) European countries for nearly two centuries. The book inspired paintings, operas, fashions, and even wallpaper motifs. It gave birth to a literary subgenre, the “archeological novel,” such as Terrasson’s Sethos (1731) or Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s L’Arcadie (1788), in which the action is located in an antique setting. Still part of French schools’ syllabi a century ago, this book mainly owes its survival today to highly specialized academic research, stimulated from time to time when an “Agrégation” program generates new publications, papers, and conferences, as happened in 2009–10. The situation is similar in English-speaking countries, if perhaps just a bit worse: new editions are scarce and generally based more or less on revised versions of eighteenth-century translations, such as those editions by John Hawkesworth’s (1768) or Tobias Smollett’s (1776).The publication by A. J. B. Cremer of an entirely new translation, featuring a close rendering of the French text into modern English and preserving the original’s formal dignity without resorting to a pastiche of the classical language, is therefore a landmark in the history of Fénelon’s reception, and in the valuation of Telemachus particularly. This edition, while intended for the general reader, includes most of what is expected of a scholarly edition. In a comparatively short introduction, the editor recalls the essential facts about the author’s background (as a descendent of high nobility) and about his ecclesiastic career, which was compromised by both his involvement in mystical spirituality (the quarrel over Quietism) and his critical attitude toward the absolutism of Louis XIV’s régime. [End Page 140]In fact, Fénelon’s appointment as Archbishop of Cambrai (1695) was a kind of exile. In 1689, however, he was appointed tutor to Louis XIV’s seven-year-old grandson, the young Duke of Burgundy, second in the line of succession to the throne after his father (though both died prematurely). Fénelon wrote for this boy The Adventures of Telemachus as an educative fiction in the tradition of the “mirrors of Princes.” Of course, such a book was not intended for publication, and when it appeared in 1699—strangely enough, in a fully legal manner and with a printing privilege—it was against Fénelon’s will and in a very faulty form, which was corrected in later editions. An editor today therefore faces solving some highly complex textual problems, and choosing between the manuscript traditions. Cremer’s translation is based upon Jacques Le Brun’s authoritative text, published in Fénelon’s Œuvres, tome II (Paris: Gallimard, “Pléiade,” 1997).1After surveying the critical reception of Telemachus, particularly in England, starting at the text’s first publication and reaching the present time, the introduction discreetly hints at an apparent trend, among some interpretations, toward Christian allegory. If the figure of Mentor obviously “represents Fénelon” in his tutorial role, Cremer notes, this character, also an incarnation of Minerva, embodies humanity and divinity simultaneously, and thus may be seen as a “Christ-figure,” with Telemachus as his disciple and Ulysses, with his pursuit of a never-ending quest, as the symbolic form of the Divine. These observations are not entirely new; they have been formulated before by various critics. The editor himself concurs with a well-known article by André Blanc that describes Fénelon’s neo-platonician turn of mind: for Fénelon there is no contradiction between Christian revelation and the pagan fables of classical mythology, which he considers prefigurations or allegories of Christianity.This interpretation is abundantly and convincingly confirmed in the editor’s annotations. While as expected the commentaries point frequently to Greco-Latin mythology or classical literary sources... (shrink)

This article is about the art of portrait in Fénelon's spiritual correspondence. It distinguishes two categories of portraits: some are generic, others are from the inside, individual and detailed. The article also analyses some exemplary personalities such as the Contesses de Gramont, de Montberon or Madame Guyon. Divergences between "high society portraits" and "spiritual portraits" are outlined. The spiritual portrait is being analysed based on main character studies (Madame de Maintenon and the Duc de Bourgogne), as well as deep (...) speech exploration (lexicon, rhetorical systems). The overall study also takes into account the cultural and scientific context of the time. (shrink)

Cet article étudie l'interprétation, par Fénelon, des arguments platoniciens de Clément d'Alexandrie destinés, dans les Stromates, à inciter la conversion des païens au christianisme. S'il reconnaît la dette du Père alexandrin à l'égard de la pensée académique, Fénelon, pourtant, déforme et escamote les sources platoniciennes tout au long de son opuscule, dans le but évident de conformer la pensée de celui-ci à sa conception de l'élévation gnostique. Le platonisme du Gnostique de Fénelon est moins redevable à la (...) tradition alexandrine qu'à la théologie négative des mystiques de son temps. This paper studies Fénelon's interprétation of Clément of Alexandria's Platonic arguments in the Stromata which were intended to be used to convert pagans to Christianity. Although he acknowledges the debt owed to the Alexandrian Father with regard to academic thought, Fénelon, nevertheless, alters and skips over its Platonic origins throughout his op uscule, with the obvious objective of molding the thinking of the latter into his own concept of gnostic grandeur. The Platonism of the Gnostique owes less to the Alexandrian tradition than to the negative theology of the mystics of his times. (shrink)

Two philosophers, Robert Spaemann and Henri Gouhier, have identified a similarity between Fénelon and Kant in the prominence of motive in their thought: disinterestedness in Fénelon's pure love and in Kant's good will. Spaemann emphasizes their common detaching of the ethical in terms of motivation from the context of happiness. In this article I explore further similarities and differences under the topics of perfectionism, pure love, good will, happiness, and disinterestedness, as these are pertinent to their thought. On (...) perfectionism there appears a stark contrast; on pure love over against good will, on happiness, and on disinterestedness, however, there seems a balance between likenesses and differences. Finally I point out a qualification set on pure love by Fénelon and on the good will by Kant. (shrink)

This article deals with the question of whether Ernst Jünger's long story Auf den Marmorklippen (1939)—the publication of the text itself as well as its contents—should be interpreted as political action or quietist retreat. The author examines the notions that the text advocates fatalism and escapism, both of which could be seen as tenets of (anti-)Catholic Quietism, of which Fénelon is cited as a practitioner. A close reading shows that Jünger's protagonists value their carefree and quiet lives before the (...) story's wars and only join the militant Mauretanian order because of its promise of serene detachment. Jünger's world is imbued with manifestations of the divine—much unlike the Quietists'—and as such is worthy of the protagonists' sustained intellectual attention. They arrive at a thorough appreciation of the prevailing social and political situation and develop a new language to capture it. They understand that resistance against the ruling party is futile but do not reject their own responsibility for their friends and neighbors. The article concludes that Jünger presents the protagonists' escape at the end of the story as a temporary solution. He writes a complex narrative that leaves its interpretation and application to his readers. He neither fashions himself as a national redeemer-poet nor do his protagonists content themselves with a reclusive life forgetful of their surroundings. (shrink)