Fallen Nature, Fallen Selves: Early-Modern French Thought II Fallen Nature, Fallen Selves: Early-Modern French Thought II. By M ichael M oriarty . Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2006. xviii + 430 pp. Hb £60.00.

Abstract

The second part of Michael Moriarty's important study follows on from his Early-Modern French Thought: The Age of Suspicion (FS, LX.1, 2006, pp. 104–105). The two books can be read independently of each other (and cross-referencing is provided in the second volume), but are most profitably considered as a single project, with the substantial introduction to this volume effecting the thematic link. The range of writing covered is however much broader, although the three core figures of Descartes, Pascal and Malebranche continue to define the parameters of philosophical and theological investigation. The secular moralists La Bruyère and, in particular, La Rochefoucauld are accorded some significant amounts of attention, as well as their explicitly Christian counterparts, Nicole, François Lamy and the Protestant Abbadie; and, unlike the first part, some space is devoted to the ways in which certain technical areas of speculation are reflected in the more traditionally ‘literary’ figures of the age. Moving on from the predominantly metaphysical concerns of the previous volume, the two governing areas of enquiry are ethics and psychology. Since the purpose of humankind is to aspire to the supreme good, it would apparently follow that the definition and pursuit of appropriate forms of human behaviour will provide the privileged mode of access to its attainment, and such an assumption would indeed be present both in ancient philosophy and, for different reasons and to a different degree, in Cartesian thought. And yet the progressive impact of Jansenist (or more correctly neo-Augustinian) thinking renders such a simple link increasingly tenuous as the century progresses. What it also does is to drive the enquiry onto the terrain of introspection, into the problematics, in other words, of whether and how the individual might aspire to such good, and of the extent to which he can know and control his innermost motives in that endeavour. Much of the debate thus centres on the complex interaction of grace and free-will, and on the far from certain link between the intention governing an action and the objective good that might ensue from it, with self-knowledge (and its perversions of self-love and self-deception) thrown into high relief as a result. The erudition is impressive throughout, showing a secure grasp of classical and patristic sources, as well as of French writing in earlier and later periods; and the study begins and ends with a compelling engagement with modern critical orthodoxies. Moriarty shows on occasion a tendency to embark on a parenthesis that, while independently interesting, distracts from the clarity of the broader picture; and there is a curious absence of reference to contemporary dictionary definitions of key terms. But the overall conclusion is magisterial in its interweaving of the complex strands of argument that have led to it; and while the author modestly resists the temptation of claiming to offer any global re-evaluation, it will be difficult in future to address the concerns that are explored in this bipartite enterprise without making reference to his enlightening, lucid and often engagingly individual treatment of them.

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