Sandrine Berges
  • Home
  • The Voices of the Abolition
  • Liberty in thy name!
  • The Home: A Philosophical Project
    • The Philosophy of Domesticity
  • Women Philosophers Calendars
  • Research
  • Public Philosophy
  • Events
    • Wollstonecraft at Bilkent
    • Bridging the Gender Gap Through Time
    • Wollapalooza
    • Wollapalooza II
  • Historical zombies and other fiction
  • Teaching
  • Crafts and things
  • Feminist History of Philosophy

Liberty in their Names

Get the Free Calendar
Order the book!

Godless in Paris

5/30/2018

0 Comments

 
« I am not become an Atheist, I assure you, by residing in Paris ». ​
PictureThe atheis Cult of Reason, which preceded the theist Cult of the Supreme Being, imposed by Robespierre.
Mary Wollstonecraft wrote these words in a letter to Joseph Johnson, her publisher, on 15 February 1793, after she had resided in Paris for two months. She had travelled to Paris with a commission to write a series of letters on the French Revolution. 

Wollstonecraft had come to Paris at the beginning to the reign of Terror. A few months before her arrival, mobs had butchered aristocrats in their prisons, priests and nuns in convents and monasteries, supposedly on the order of Danton. The first few weeks of her stay had themselves been momentous: the King of France had been tried by the people, condemned to death and executed. She had the seen Louis drive past her window on the way to his trial, just a couple of weeks after she had settled in Paris. But even without the growing atmosphere of terror Wollstonecraft would have found it hard to settle in Paris: her French, while good enough for reviewing and translation purposes, was not really up to making conversation, and she was here alone despite having originally planned to travel with friends. Perhaps it is not surprising that her first impressions should be negative, bordering on the depressive. It would not have been surprising either if she had begun to lose her faith. 

Wollstonecraft's republican friends, the Girondins, were mostly atheists, Grouchy and Condorcet were, the Rolands were, as was Brissot. It seemed that for many French republicans of that time, the rule of reason precluded the belief in God. 
​

This may well indeed have been a Parisian thing. Thomas Paine, also ally to the Girondins, was not an atheist either. But he described the French of that time as ‘running headlong into atheism’, and saw his role as their friend to persuade them to give up such silliness. In the Age of Reason, which he wrote while incarcerated in the Palais du Luxembourg, he attempts to divert the French from the path of Atheism, showing them that one could be reasonable, defend the values of the Enlightenment and of the revolution, while still believing in God.
​

Picture
A misinterpretation of Paine's Age of Reason from the early 19thC
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    About

    This is where I live blog about my new book project, an intellectual biography of three French Revolutionary women philosophers.

    Categories

    All
    1789
    1793
    Abolitionism
    America
    Biography
    Bonheur Primitif
    Brissot
    Cabanis
    Champ De Mars Massacre
    Charity
    Charlotte Corday
    Childhood
    Conciergerie
    Condorcet
    Declaration Of The Rights Of Man
    Dumont
    Education
    England
    Eon
    Feminism
    Frances Wright
    Gender
    Germaine De Stael
    Ghostwriting
    Guillotine
    Haiti
    Hannah Mather Crocker
    Helvetius
    HIstorians
    Journalism
    La Fayette
    Les Trois Urnes
    Letters
    Letters On Sympathy
    Louise Keralio
    Macaualy
    Manon Roland
    Mary Shelley
    Memoir
    Olympe De Gouges
    Paine
    Painting
    Paris
    Pregnancy
    Prison
    Religion
    Roland
    Rousseau
    Saint-Domingue
    Salons
    September Massacres
    Sexism
    Sieyes
    Slavery
    Sophie De Grouchy
    Terror
    Theatre
    The Great Fear
    Theroigne De Mericourt
    Translation
    Trial
    Wollstonecraft

    Archives

    November 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    March 2021
    February 2021
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Home
  • The Voices of the Abolition
  • Liberty in thy name!
  • The Home: A Philosophical Project
    • The Philosophy of Domesticity
  • Women Philosophers Calendars
  • Research
  • Public Philosophy
  • Events
    • Wollstonecraft at Bilkent
    • Bridging the Gender Gap Through Time
    • Wollapalooza
    • Wollapalooza II
  • Historical zombies and other fiction
  • Teaching
  • Crafts and things
  • Feminist History of Philosophy