The Decline of the French Jurists as Political Theorists, 1660-1789

Abstract

It is well known that during the reign of Louis XIV patterns of thought in France gradually evolved from the traditional and authoritarian to the rational and speculative, ultimately providing the foundations of the Enlightenment. Especially during the second generation of the reign, thinkers in almost all fields increasingly abandoned their orientation toward the learning and experience of the past and substituted a philosophical approach to knowledge and human affairs. The major elements of this crisis of the European conscience have been widely known since the appearance of the works of Paul Hazard and others. One aspect of this massive intellectual transition, however, has been virtually neglected. That is the decline of the French jurists from their earlier pre-eminence in the field of political thought. This gap in historical scholarship is surprising in view of the importance of political concepts in the ideology and motivation of the age of absolutism, yet little has been done to indicate the jurists' exact position in the political speculation of the period. Since the jurists were traditionally the most important political theorists in France, an analysis of the currents that caused them to forfeit this role to others should elucidate certain im-

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