The Modernist Imagination: Intellectual History and Critical Theory

By Warren Breckman, Peter E. Gordon, A. Dirk Moses and Samuel Moyn

Some of the most exciting and innovative work in the humanities currently takes place at the intersection of intellectual history and critical theory. Just as critical theorists are becoming more aware of the historicity of theory, contemporary practitioners of modern intellectual history are recognizing their potential contributions to theoretical discourse. No one has done more than Martin Jay to realize the possibilities for mutual enrichment between intellectual history and critical theory. This carefully selected collection of essays addresses central questions and current practices of intellectual history and asks how the legacy of critical theory has influenced scholarship across a wide range of scholarly disciplines. In honor of Martin Jay's unparalleled achievements, this volume includes work from some of the most prominent contemporary scholars in the humanities and social sciences.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Release date: Dec 1, 2008
• ISBN: 9781845458812

Book preview

Part I

INTELLECTUAL HISTORY

THE KISS OF LAMOURETTE

Possibilism or Christian Democracy?

David Sorkin

The sense of boundless possibility—possibilism one could call it—was the bright side of popular emotion, and it was not restricted to millenarian outbursts in the streets. It could seize lawyers and men of letters sitting in the Legislative Assembly. On July 7, 1792, A.-A. Lamourette, a deputy from the Rhône-et-Loire, told the Assembly's members that their troubles all arose from a single source: factionalism. They needed more fraternity. Whereupon the deputies, who had been at each other's throats a moment earlier, rose to their feet and started hugging and kissing each other as if their political divisions could be swept away in a wave of brotherly love.

—Robert Darnton, The Kiss of Lamourette

With an essay entitled, The Kiss of Lamourette, and the volume in which it appeared bearing the same title,¹ Robert Darnton has made this obscure incident of the French Revolution so widely known that other historians have begun to repeat his account of it.² Yet the one engaging paragraph devoted to the incident reduces the kiss of Lamourette to a curiosity that allegedly reveals the French Revolution's excesses and eccentricities (possibilism). Darnton rightly insists that we should prefer the voices and thoughts of historical participants to the theories of contemporary historians.³ In this essay, I will attempt to let Lamourette speak for himself. I will offer an alternative understanding of the incident by providing a detailed account of Lamourette's life and thought. My contention is that we need to employ the methods of narrative intellectual history to comprehend this event as did the historical participants themselves.

Lamourette, whom Darnton identifies only as a deputy from the Rhône-et-Loire, was not only an Abbé, a serious theologian, a Constitutional Bishop, and a deputy, but one of the patriotic clergy who understood enlightened Catholic belief and the Revolution to be mutually fulfilling. His kiss was located at the heart of the Revolution's conflicts: it was intended as a defense of what he significantly called Christian democracy. This essay will revisit the kiss by employing the methods of narrative intellectual history to look closely at what the sources say first about Lamourette and next the kiss itself.

Who was A.–A. Lamourette?

Adrien Lamourette (1742–1794) was a member of the Lazarist order, a sometime seminary Professor, Seminary Director, and parish priest.⁴ Born in 1742 as the oldest of five children to a humble family in the market town of Frévent (in the northwest, now the Department of Pas-de-Calais) where his father was a comb-maker, he showed an early aptitude for study and his parents dedicated him to the Church. He entered the Lazarist order at the age of seventeen (1759) and was ordained a Priest ten years later (1769).⁵ Lamourette attended the Order's central seminary at its Paris headquarters, known as the Maison Saint-Lazare (hence the Order's name), where he likely followed a twelve-year curriculum for the training of Lazarist seminary professors.⁶ His first teaching post was at Metz (1769–1772), where he taught philosophy, and the Abbé Grégoire (1750–1831) was one of his students. Beginning in 1773, he was a Professor at the Lazarist seminary in Toul (west of Nancy) in the province of Lorraine. He served for two years (1776–1778) as Director of the Seminary of Toul, a placeholder during the reorganization of the institution.⁷ Lamourette then became a parish priest in Outremcourt (Haute-Marne), where he spent five formative years (1778–1783). Lamourette returned to the Congregation of Saint Lazare in 1784, and in 1785 went home to his parish of origin, where he was appointed a member of the Academy of Arras.

Lamourette's first book appeared in 1785 and he published three more by the time of the Revolution (1786, 1788, 1789). This torrid pace says something about the 1780s as a crucial juncture in France's history: the accession of Louis XVI brought an end to the era of Unigenitus (1713). By enforcing this papal bull prohibiting Jansenism, Louis XV's government had created the conditions for a tripartite struggle (Jansenists vs. parti dévot vs. philosophes) that largely determined the shape of French religious and political culture throughout his long reign (1715–1774).⁸ The Jansenist-parti dévot divide began to dissolve with the suppression of the Jesuits in 1764. Louis XVI's restoration of the Parlement at the conclusion of the Maupeou controversy (1774) signaled the end of the monarchy's alliance with the parti dévot and its heretofore implacable dispute with Jansenism.⁹ A political realignment ensued, in which the clergy and the Bishops began to ally with the Parlement, Jansenist thinkers opened to new cultural possibilities, and the government began to implement reforms, the most salient being the limited toleration granted to Protestants (1787).¹⁰

The 1780s were thus conducive to new directions in thought. In his four books, Lamourette attempted to offer a version of Catholic Enlightenment. Most famously associated with Joseph II's reforms, Bishop Hontheim, the Punctation of Ems (1786), and Bishop Scipio de Ricci and the Council of Pistoia (1786), Catholic Enlightenment was an attempt to articulate Catholic faith in the categories of Enlightenment science and philosophy. Catholic Enlightenment also included an effort to recover neglected aspects of Catholic tradition (e.g., study of Scripture, Patristics) and a program of Church reform (usually inspired by the ideal of the primitive Church, conciliarism, and some variant of Jansenism or neo-Jansenism). Its proponents generally adopted the key ideas of reasonableness and natural religion, natural law and toleration. Other theologians in France began to move in this same direction prior to the Revolution: the Abbé Grégoire applied natural law theory to the issue of the Jews’ civil status (Essai sur la Régénération physique, morale et politique des Juifs, 1789), while the Abbé Claude Fauchet (1744–1793) applied it to the reorganization of the Church (De la Religion nationale, 1789).¹¹

Lamourette broke new ground in endeavoring to devise a Catholic Enlightenment theology. His theology is distinctly apologetic. The philosophes are his partners in dialogue to the degree that on every fundamental issue, he developed his own position by criticizing theirs: the role of reason and sentiment (inspired by Rousseau) in faith; the relationship between revealed and natural religion; and Christianity as a political philosophy and a social ethics.

In general, Lamourette aimed to make a fresh theological start. He referred neither to medieval scholastic theology nor to the vast and acrimonious theological literature of the eighteenth century, but rather turned to the great figures of the seventeenth century (Bossuet, Fénelon). As his biographer aptly observed, Lamourette was trying to avoid the extremes of Jansenism, whose aridity destroyed the sources of piety, and of philosophy, which sapped the basis of faith.¹²

Lamourette's version of Catholic Enlightenment consisted of a moderate skepticism, well established in French Catholicism (Pascal), which he wielded against the philosophes' claims. By considering such words as revelation, miracle, mystery, and prophecy incompatible with truthful analysis, the philosophes deluded themselves, Lamourette believed, into thinking that they are able to decipher everything but religion. In fact, they found nature impenetrable and cannot even explain the true character of a drop of water. The theologian's belief in the trinity had the same basis as the philosopher's in geometry: perception, "bon sens, and reason. Theology qualifies as philosophy since it rests on true perception and reason: everywhere philosophy consists in heeding reason and submitting to truth. It is anti-philosophical" to cite as grounds for incredulity the obscurity of miracles and mysteries.¹³

Lamourette's skepticism restricts his notion of reason, and especially, science. While admiring two centuries of scientific achievement (Copernicus, Galileo, Cassini, Torricelli, Pascal, Malphighi), he insists that it remains on the surface of phenomena. The essence or final cause of nature is as impenetrable as the divine mysteries: it is…only in the Infinite that the true principles of differences that distinguish created substances are to be found hidden away. Man's task is to act, not to understand.¹⁴

From this skeptical restriction of science and equation of theology and philosophy, Lamourette made a fideist leap, redefining enlightened man.

For the enlightened man [l'homme éclairé] of good faith the collection of human knowledge carries a preconceived disposition to believe without understanding; and the reluctance to recognize as truth that which cannot be explained is an absurd ostentation which decisively proves mediocrity and ignorance.¹⁵

Lamourette then turns on its head the philosophes' claim that Christianity is a cruel and seditious religion and a form of religious fanaticism. The philosophes are the true fanatics since they aim to create discord in the hearts of all peoples and combustion in the entire universe by making the philosophical spirit…as much the ruin of reason as the tomb of all virtue.¹⁶

Lamourette strove to overcome the polarity between religion and reason: "the philosophes of our century have shown themselves to be too anti-Theologian, and our other theologians have perhaps been a bit too anti-Philosophes." This polarity is a human invention—people mistakenly confound reason and revelation's fundamental compatibility.¹⁷ This false polarity can be avoided by finding a middle ground in which "the masters of theology would reduce less severely the rights of reason, and…the philosophes show more respect and consideration for those of revelation." Philosophers should recognize not only that there are truths beyond reason, but that the very fact of being beyond reason attests to their divine source.¹⁸

Lamourette proposed to undo this polarization in France by recapturing the University and the Republic of Letters for belief.¹⁹ He wanted the Republic of Letters to promote belief and piety, and the Universities to allow pious writers to teach religion.²⁰

Within this skeptical structure, Lamourette made sentiment a source of belief alongside reason. Lamourette began to exhibit traces of Rousseau's sentimental understanding of religion in his second book (Thoughts on the Philosophy of Unbelief or Reflections on the Spirit and Design of the Irreligious Philosophers of our Century, 1786), where he wrote repeatedly of the sentiment of faith and asserted that Catholicism not only elevated the spirit but also contents the most capacious heart.²¹ In his third book, The Pleasures of Religion, or the Power of the Gospel to make us Happy (1788), he elevated sentiment to a source of religious knowledge equal to reason. He combined the argument of reasonable religion with that of belief from sentiment, aiming to enlighten reason and interest feeling, as his treatment of the Gospel demonstrates: "our intimate sense [sens intime] is the first proof of the beauty of the Gospel and the strongest conjecture of its truth." The same holds for our perception of Jesus, which has all the persuasive proof of science.

It is not the demonstration of the internal truth of the miracles of Jesus Christ that determines my adoration and belief; but it is a proof of sentiment that draws its strength from the knowledge that I have of his character, the tissue of his actions, the infinity of local circumstances and persons, whose combination victoriously produces conviction in a healthy and reasonable mind, like all the evidence of a geometric proof. ²²

Since reason is equally a source of belief, Lamourette argued that we must disengage ourselves from the realm of passions and submit to reason which is the realm of God: Therefore we see reason everywhere beginning the work of faith, and we are transported by the most natural gradations to the great wisdom of the Gospel.²³

Whereas in his third book Lamourette had explicitly associated natural religion with rank unbelief (the disciple of natural religion, the impious person who no longer sees God in the universe), in his last book he linked it to reason in a manner characteristic of Catholic Enlightenment: natural religion is identical with Christianity since there is no such thing as theism without revelation.²⁴ True natural religion pushes and inclines toward the Gospel.²⁵

Lamourette vehemently attacked the philosophes' political philosophy, unmasking them as a dark and malicious sect which…makes a study of corrupting men and freeing them of every sort of duty as well as subverting all authority and undermining morality because there is no middle route…between Christianity and atheism.²⁶ Lamourette discerns similar malignity in the philosophes' view of society: by positing that men are originally solitary beings who wish to devour each other, they promote an egoism destructive of all social virtue that removes all sense of obligation.²⁷ The philosophes are, therefore, as much an enemy of throne as of altar.

Lamourette had two political-social ideals. He examined an idyllic, penurious rural parish (which he had presumably experienced first hand in his years at Outremcourt, but which was also a trope of eighteenth-century Jansenist literature), which is led by a dedicated priest and is imbued with faith.

[A] rural parish becomes, through a virtuous and sensible pastor, the most beautiful and delightful spectacle that the entire grand theater of the world can offer. There one can see religion shining in all the glory of its triumph.²⁸

In his third book, he construed this rural parish in terms of sentiment, idealizing the poor as its true repository. He then combined it with his second ideal, the property-less primitive Church. [N]ever were the virtues of Christianity known and practiced to such an amazing and sublime extent as in the early Church.²⁹

Lamourette sketched an alternative social philosophy.³⁰ He took issue with social contract theory, attacking its first principle, namely, that there is a natural man or state of nature. This is an abstraction and a pure hypothesis, a "geometric postulatum" that is the equivalent in the social world of being emerging out of chaos in the physical world, namely, that, "matter is originally indifferent to everything. The underlying problem for philosophers is that they cannot explain anything without chaos."

He posited instead that society, not the so-called state of nature, is the first state of humankind. Man is born into a double relationship with God and society, in which his relations with God yield religion, those with his fellowmen yielding morality. Both of these are embodied in the ideas of the Gospel. The Gospel teaches the lessons of respect and submission to the powers that be, which makes Christians the "true and excellent philosophes."³¹ Thus, society is the natural state of the human species [genre]. God creates man in society from the start.³² The state of society is therefore a work of creation; it is a mode of human nature that does not rest at all on what one calls a pact or a contract.³³

Christian society derives directly from its Creator and is invested with an authority that is neither man-made nor subject to man's approval.³⁴ Christianity inculcates performance of obligations as the first step toward the mystery of God's kingdom.³⁵ Christianity also indicates a conservative acceptance of the established order, with divine society serving as the template for human society: the infinitely perfect society of eternity is the origin and model of the profound idea that God used in conceiving and fashioning temporal society.³⁶ In this divinely ordained Christian social order, in which authority and obedience are foremost, the ideal form of government would be "a theocratic regime," but barring that, a monarchical regime…is the most perfect of all the social forms.³⁷

Christianity creates not only the best government, but also the best society: it is the unique system which is able to form a perfect society, and people the empire with true and incorruptible citizens, because it corresponds to the infinite's unity within plurality.³⁸ In his fourth book, Thoughts on the Philosophy of Faith, or the System of Christianity (1789), Lamourette in fact attempted to formulate a systematic theology of the infinite in which reasonableness and sentiment were equal sources of belief.³⁹ The ideal of the primitive Church fortifies this notion of a Christian social order since, based on communal property and a life devoted to prayer, it represented all the characteristics of the most perfect and happiest society that could establish itself on earth, embodying the ideals of equality (égalité) and sociability (sociabilité).⁴⁰

Lamourette's idea of the infinite is also the basis of his social ethics. Man's very Christian potential depends upon it: a man is so great a being through the excellence of his nature and entirely by his capacity to know and to possess the Infinite.⁴¹ In contrast, Lamourette discerned the false infinity of the impious who, rather than looking to the true infinity of God, pursue luxury and sensual experience. Luxury is none other than the inarticulate and confused search for the infinite that religion gives us. It is the sterile and deceptive supplement to the great force in which Jesus Christ comes to incorporate all of humankind.⁴²

Lamourette's ethics were, then, in clear opposition to the philosophes', which he derisively labeled the regime of the passions. Based on the desire for the false infinity of objects, its ideal is passionate man (l'Homme passionné) who, acting solely from physical needs and self-love, is incapable of the benevolence and solidarity society requires. Lamourette pits against passionate man the moderate man (l'Homme modéré) who understands that he is born into society, has an indissoluble solidarity with his fellow men, subjects himself to the true infinity of Christ, and acts in ways that are profoundly reasonable.⁴³

This combination of moderation and reasonableness was an epitome of Lamourette's conception of Catholic Enlightenment in the 1780s. He opposed the radical philosophes by trying to invent a theological middle ground that reconciled major features of Enlightenment thinking—including reasonableness, natural religion, moderation, and Rousseauist sentiment—with the Gospel. While he embraced ideas of equality and sociability that presaged the Revolution, he also held to notions of authority and obedience manifestly at odds with it.

What are the implications of Lamourette's Catholic Enlightenment for our understanding of his kiss? We need to examine the direction of his thought and actions during the early Revolution.

Lawyers and Men of Letters

In the early years of the Revolution (1789–1791), Lamourette emerged as one of the patriotic and enlightened clergy. These were priests who understood the Revolution and Christianity in the terms of the Enlightenment and held the two to be not just compatible, but mutually fulfilling: the Revolution realized the central ideas of the Gospel, while the Gospel was indispensable to the Revolution's success. The patriotic or enlightened clergy were not a party or even a coterie, but a group who professed equal loyalty to Christianity and the Revolution.⁴⁴

While Lamourette held no office in the first two years of the Revolution (1789–1791), he publicly articulated his position in a number of ways. He frequented the salons of Madame Genlis (1746–1830) and Madame Helvétius (1719–1800), both of which were identified with the Revolution and constitutional monarchy. Through the latter, Lamourette became acquainted with Mirabeau, for whom he later ghostwrote two important speeches.⁴⁵ He was a member of the Directory of the Cercle Social (1789–1791), the group of thinkers and politicians around Nicolas Bonneville (1760–1828) (first a faction in Paris’ municipal politics, then a political club, Confédération des Amis de la Vérité (1790), and finally a publishing house, Imprimerie du Cercle Social, 1791–1793), which eventually became the most important base of the Parisian Girondins. Fauchet, the preacher of the Paris Commune, and a leader of the early Cercle Social (1789–1791), delivered to the meetings of the Confédération his famous lectures on Rousseau's Social Contract, trying to reconcile the Gospel and the Revolution.⁴⁶ Finally, Lamourette published pamphlets and a journal in which we can trace his views on key issues.

Lamourette's articulation of his double loyalty to the early Revolution and Christianity helped him to extend and deepen his version of Catholic Enlightenment. He understood the question of the Jews’ admission to civil equality as a legal and constitutional question (December, 1789), that is, a manifest consequence of the principles adopted by the nation.⁴⁷ This stand allowed him to appropriate the idea of natural right and connect it with citizenship. Joining other patriotic clergy as advocates, Lamourette abandoned his denigration of liberty to espouse this key ideal of the Revolution (he had already embraced equality and fraternity in Thoughts on the Philosophy of Faith).⁴⁸

Lamourette supported the Civil Constitution of the Clergy (July, 1790) by drawing on his idealization of poverty and the primitive Church, as well as his Catholic Enlightenment view of church-state relations. A Catholic Enlightenment restructuring of the ancien régime Church, the Civil Constitution was perhaps the most radical package of erastian or state-led Church reform (Gallicanism, Staatskirchentum) Europe had seen. It was additionally controversial because it was proposed not by a legitimate ruler, but by a legislature in the name of a sovereign nation.⁴⁹ Lamourette deemed it as being as necessary to the regeneration of the church as to that of the state, and as …the sole revolution which can put an end to the ills of religion, and restore it to [its] ancient and austere majesty.⁵⁰ In support of the Civil Constitution, for the first time Lamourette voiced the revolutionary ideal of the sovereignty of nations and their legislative power.⁵¹ Like other patriotic clergy, he was enraptured with the Revolution and its millenarian visions. In its equality and unity in plurality, revolutionary society would emulate the infinity that stands as the model for human society (harmony, unity, and equality).⁵² Revolutionary society would also erase the polarity between religion and philosophy—one of his fondest wishes—so that the two torches [will] unite to enlighten men and make them good and happy, thereby establishing an eternal alliance of temple and school [lycée].⁵³

In a journal addressed to fellow clergy, Civic Instructions, or the Patriotic Pastor (1791), in which he offered his most radical version of a revolutionary Catholic Enlightenment, Lamourette rewrote the history of Christianity according to the Revolution's ideals. Jesus championed the principles of fraternity and equality and died a victim of the despots of the synagogue and the tyrants of Rome.⁵⁴ Christianity embodied the ideas of 1789; it infused the principles of reason and nature and the ideas of "the eternal laws of equality and egalitarianism [l'équité et l'égalité]" into every society.⁵⁵ He fundamentally revised his understanding of the Enlightenment, recasting the radical philosophes as defenders of liberty and freedom against an ancien régime despotism which, by including the Church (that aristocratic theology, source of all the scandals that dishonored Christianity and of all the evils that have tortured the bosom of France), was responsible for the growth of unbelief: the history of the entrance of unbelief in France…is, like so many other evils, an effect of despotism.⁵⁶

His effort to promote enlightened Christianity as a viable platform for a regenerated France culminated in his ghostwriting two critical speeches for Mirabeau. In a speech of 27 November 1790, in the tense period after the Assembly had enacted the Civil Constitution (July 12), Mirabeau/ Lamourette deplored the danger of a mounting counter-revolution that could result in a schism between Catholic France and free France. If the clergy were to accept the spirit of revolution and liberty, they could play a positive role in the new France, whereas if they persist in decry[ing] liberty in the name of the Gospel, they risked the horrors of a religious war.

Two months later (14 January 1791; the King sanctioned the clerical oath on 26 December 1790, administration began on 2 January 1791), France appeared to be even closer to a dangerous division. Mirabeau/Lamourette did their utmost to explode the notion that the fundamental alternative facing France was between being Christian or [being] free.⁵⁷ They endeavored to establish the middle ground of Catholic Enlightenment and constitutional monarchy by finding a mediating group, which they significantly called "enlightened Christians [chrétiens éclairés]."⁵⁸

Mirabeau/Lamourette vehemently attacked the ancien régime church and government, echoing the Prônes civiques.

Enlightened Christians [les chrétiens éclairés] asked, whither had fled the august religion of their fathers, and the true religion of the Gospel was nowhere to be found. We were a nation without a country, a people without government and a church without character and discipline.⁵⁹

They visibly alienated most of the clergy sitting on the right side of the Assembly, as the majority rose in protest and departed the chamber. At the same time, the pro-revolutionary anti-clerical party on the left rejected with catcalls the very notion of an enlightened Christian.⁶⁰ Aside from the patriotic clergy, there was no distinct pro-revolution, pro-Christian party that actively identified with the Enlightenment. There could not, then, be a more striking rebuff of the middle ground of Catholic Enlightenment. The Civil Constitution had so radicalized the parties that there was virtually no place for a mediating position.

Lamourette's attempt to defend the middle ground of the Civil Constitution and constitutional monarchy was the background to his kiss. His proposal was not a curiosity, but part and parcel of his highly informed theological and political agenda.

A Wave of Brotherly Love?

In 1791, Lamourette became a public official of the Revolution when he was elected Bishop of Lyon.⁶¹ He was immediately embattled since the former Archbishop, Yves-Alexandre de Marbeuf (1734–1800), was a non-juror who rejected the Civil Constitution, refused to relinquish his seat, and with the help of his Vicar general, organized opposition among the numerous non-juring clergy. Whether the clergy would accept a Constitutional Bishop was a critical test of the Civil Constitution: at one of Lyon's churches (Saint Nizier, 13 March 1791), the priest insisted in his instruction that Lyon had an Archbishop (Marbeuf), but not a Bishop (Lamourette), inciting a brawl which the civil authorities had to quell (the offending priest was jailed).⁶²

There was also a pamphlet war. Lamourette at first stoutly defended his integrity, his election, and the Civil Constitution (it did not impinge on dogma or immutable belief; the state was entirely within its rights in altering points of discipline or the exterior order; the reforms were a return to the spirit and, even more, the practice of the ancient Church).⁶³ Later, desperate to salvage a functioning Church in the face of the growing polarity of patrie and church, he adopted a more conciliatory tone.⁶⁴ In yet another round of pamphlets, Lamourette (16 July 1791) attacked the ultra-montane view of the Church as a Papal monarchy and presented the conciliarist conception of a Church governed by bishops and a council that also embodied the ideals of the primitive Church and the Gallican liberties.⁶⁵ Despite, or perhaps because of the concerted opposition he faced, Lamourette reiterated his millenarian dreams, professing his confidence in the providential nature of the Revolution: the establishment of the reign of faith by establishing the reign of liberty.⁶⁶

Lamourette took another step in his revolutionary career when the Department of Saône-et-Loire elected him a delegate to the Legislative Assembly (30 August to 4 September 1791). The large number of votes Lamourette received indicated the esteem the moderate and enlightened part of the populace had for him as a result of the indulgence, wisdom, and dignity with which he conducted himself in the conflict over the Civil Constitution.⁶⁷

Lamourette returned to Paris with some grounds for optimism. The delegates to the Legislative Assembly he joined on 1 October 1791 had been elected by a limited property franchise. The majority comprised a moderate center; the groupings at the extremes were small; and the factions that were later to dominate the Convention (Girondins and Montagnards) had yet to emerge, although most of the salons and clubs that shaped them already existed. For most of the Legislative Assembly's fifty-one weeks, their future members were more likely to cooperate than to