"The Changing Meaning of "Sensibilité

The Changing Meaning of "Sensibilite": 1654 till 1704 FRANKBAASNER The word "sensibilite" was one of several key concepts of eigh­ teenth-century French literature and philosophy. Its frequent and varied use make it difficult to assign a precise meaning to the word. Like "raison" or "lumiere,"1 "sensibilite" can mean a number of different things, and the word was used in such diverse disciplines as ethics, medicine, aesthetics, etc. This study focuses on one particular meaning of "sensibilite," namely when it was used to describe the new notion of human nature as this began to take hold during the first third of the eighteenth century in France. Throughout the seventeenth century "sensibilite" had held a neutral or even negative connotation. But in the course of the eigh­ teenth century it became an expression of the highest of all moral values. The new notion of man's nature derived from the firm belief that we are good by nature and natively sociable. In this context, "sensibilite" took on the meaning of a virtuous love between the sexes, as well as every kind of benevolent feeling towards one's fellow hu­ man beings. It came to denote our innate sociability, and thus the very foundation of human society. "Sensibilite," in the period under consideration, refers to the innate capacity in man to produce virtue or humanity: "Vous ne pouvez avoir ni humanite ni generosite sans sensibilite. ... La sensibilite secourt l'esprit et serf la vertu,"2 states Madame de Lambert in 1727, and about 1750 the identification of "sensibilite" with the total of social virtues is well established and 77 78 / BAASNER seems broadly accepted. Let us have a look at the most famous expression of the French Enlightenment, Diderot's Encyclopedie. Apart from a long article on the medical meaning of sensibility we find a short one giving the moral definition. The entry is based upon Duclos 's Considerations sur les moeurs de ce siecle published in 1751. Duclos 's definition of "sensibilite" was representative enough to find its way into the Encyclopedie as follows: "L'esprit seul peut et doit faire l'homme de probite; la sensibilite prepare l'homme vertueux."3 The history of the term "sensibilite" leading up to this high moral appreciation remains unwritten.4 Such a complex history cannot pos­ sibly be the subject of a short article. This study focuses on some of the aspects of the many-sided development of "sensibilite" which led to its identification with social virtue. Generally, the middle of the eighteenth century is considered the moment when "sensibilite" became a central concept in French liter­ ature.5 John S. Spink, in a recent article, is right in pointing out that essential elements of "sensibilite," as it was praised later on, were part of the term from the very beginning of the eighteenth century. In this article I will take a further step back in history and try to show how new connotations became part of "sensibilite" in the second half of the seventeenth century, and thus help to explain the further suc­ cess of the term. It is not my purpose to prove that there has been, as early as in the seventeenth century, a "preromantisme" which has often been mistakenly identified with the word "sensibilite."6 What I would like to do is to explain the change in the evaluation of "sensi­ bilite" which took place at the beginning of the eighteenth century by analyzing the meaning and implications of the term in the seven­ teenth century. We shall see that many elements of the eighteenthcentury definition of "sensibilite" were inherent in the seventeenthcentury connotations, although the positive evaluation was to be fully developed only in the eighteenth century. Two texts shall be in the center of our inquiry: the popular novel Clelie (1654), which is partly a treatise on "honnetete" and partly a love-novel, by Madeleine de Scudery, and the less widely acclaimed treatise Ee Systeme du Coeur (1704) by the Abbe Gamaches.7 Several other texts of different literary genres will help to illustrate our main points. The English and German equivalents of "sensibilite" (sensibility and Empfindsamkeit) did not come into use before the eighteenth cen

Aesthetics · Art · Connotation · Context (archaeology · Epistemology · Feeling · Humanity · Linguistics · Literature · Meaning (existential · Theology · Virtue · French Literature and Criticism · Historical and Literary Analyses · Historical and Literary Studies · History · Philosophy

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