Abstract

At the time of the French Revolution a way of conceptualizing the individual emerged that depended on theoretical knowledge about human nature, but also manifested itself in political practices and in the exercise of power. These practices legitimized the Revolution but also seemed to negate the individuality that the revolutionaries had claimed to celebrate. Clearly, the situation during the Revolution did not allow its participants the luxury of a strictly theoretical approach to defining the individual. They were forced to grapple with the challenges of reconciling theory with practice. The theoretical approach used here is informed by Michel Foucault's thesis about the transition from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century. According to Foucault the end of the eighteenth century marked a shift in conceptualization that signaled a departure from classical thinking and ushered in a new era of knowledge strategies. Central to this shift is the development of a conception of "man." Foucault writes that classical thought was unable to provide an adequate definition of man in his concrete existence, whereas modern thought was able to develop an understanding that was based on the individual's concrete existence. ;The second chapter of the dissertation surveys the ways in which Enlightenment philosophes conceptualized the individual in order to show an evolution in ideas from the beginning of the Enlightenment to the time of the Revolution. The philosophes considered the individual in an abstract manner. The definitions of "man" and of his place in the universe were not based on the individual's concrete existence but on an exterior referent. For many philosophes, this point of reference was "nature." ;When the philosophes were hypothesizing about the individual, were they referring to the male or to both man and woman? This ambiguity is a fundamental aspect of the Revolution's mixed messages concerning women. While proclaiming the universal rights of man and citizen, the Revolution nullified the rights of woman and citoyenne. Thus the disparity between theory and practice is evident not only in the notion of the individual, but in the notion of the individual female as well