Description

---

L'abb de Saint-Pierre, connu pour son Projet de paix perp tuelle, a laiss un ensemble bien plus vaste et coh rent d' crits politiques et moraux jusqu'alors dispers's et partiellement tudi's. Le pr sent ouvrage, exploitant syst matiquement la totalit de l'oeuvre, en propose la compl te r valuation. D's les premi res d cennies du XVIIIe si cle, Saint-Pierre promeut une harmonisation artificielle des int r ts, assur e par l'intervention politique et s'affirme, avant Bentham, comme l'un des premiers utilitaristes. Il imagine de substituer la patrimonialisation, aux recommandations et client les qui structuraient la soci t de son temps et d terminaient l'exercice du pouvoir, une organisation rationnelle, m ritocratique et dynamique. ll remplace les valeurs charismatiques fondant la perfection chr tienne ou la grandeur aristocratique par les objectifs de l'utilit et du bien public. Pour ce d iste conciliant moralit et religion, la recherche du salut par une pi t active doit favoriser la justice et la bienfaisance. Selon lui, seul le pouvoir indivisible d'un monarque inform par des lites comp tentes peut r aliser des r formes n cessaires au bonheur du plus grand nombre. Promoteur d'un tat de bien- tre impos autoritairement, il repr sente, avant le plein essor de l' conomie politique, des sciences cam rales et de la doctrine des physiocrates, une dimension m connue des Lumi res politiques que cette tude entend souligner.

---

The Abb de Saint-Pierre, best known for his Project for Perpetual Peace, in fact left a much larger and more coherent body of political and moral writing, but it has been only partially studied. This book, the first systematic exploration of his entire corpus, offers a complete re-evaluation of this important author's contributions to the Enlightenment. From the first decades of the 18th century, Saint-Pierre set forth a pioneering vision of politics as the harmonization of interests, anticipating Bentham as a utilitarian. He imagines replacing the system of inherited power and clientele networks which structured Old Regime society and determined the exercise of power under absolutism, with a rationalized, meritocratic and dynamic organization. He argued for the political values of social utility and public good to take the place of the Christian ideals of perfection and the aristocratic ideals of personal charisma. As a deist seeking to reconcile morality and religion, Saint-Pierre argued that the search for salvation through active piety must also promote social justice and beneficence -- and that only the indivisible power of a rationalized monarch, informed by competent elites, could carry out the reforms necessary to yield a government which would produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number. Saint-Pierre, thus, provided among the first arguments for an imposed welfare state, well before the sources more frequently associated with that idea -- political economists, cameralists and the physiocrats.