In a speech delivered in 1794, roughly one year after the execution of Louis XVI, Robespierre boldly declared Terror to be an ‘emanation of virtue’. In adapting the concept of virtue to Republican ends, Robespierre was drawing on traditions associated with ancient Greece and Rome. But Republican tradition formed only one of many strands in debates concerning virtue in France and elsewhere in Europe, from 1680 to the Revolution. This collection focuses on moral-philosophical and classical-republican uses of ‘virtue’ in this period – one that is often associated with a ‘crisis of the European mind’. It also considers in what ways debates concerning virtue involved gendered perspectives. The texts discussed are drawn from a range of genres, from plays and novels to treatises, memoirs, and libertine literature. They include texts by authors such as Diderot, Laclos, and Madame de Staël, plus other, lesser-known texts that broaden the volume’s perspective. Collectively, the contributors to the volume highlight the central importance of virtue for an understanding of an era in which, as Daniel Brewer argues in the closing chapter, ‘the political could not be thought outside its moral dimension, and morality could not be separated from inevitable political consequences’.

Table of Contents:
List of figures Acknowledgements List of abbreviations James Fowler and Marine Ganofsky, Introduction: virtue and the secular turn, 1680-1794 Michael Moriarty, Virtue before the Enlightenment Nicholas Treuherz, Vertu et Lumières: Bayle’s ‘virtuous atheist’ and its afterlives James Fowler, Secular virtue: echoes of Shaftesbury in Diderot Alicia C. Montoya, From the religious virtues to Enlightenment virtue Ioana Galleron, Bernard-Joseph Saurin, the comédie de moeurs and the civic function of plays Karen Nehlsen Manna, Acting honnête: effeminacy, masculinity and the ethos of social virtue in Enlightenment comedy Jean-Alexandre Perras, The softness of the petit-maître and the decay of virtus Mathilde Chollet, ‘La vera nobiltà non consiste in altro che nella virtù’: a woman’s view on virtue, or Henriette de Marans’s nobility Marine Ganofsky, Virtue and invisibility: libertine variations on the myth of Gyges Lydia Vázquez, Female virtue and bliss in the eighteenth century Pierre Saint-Amand, The politics of virtue: Réflexions sur le procès de la reine by Mme de Staël Patrice Higonnet, Robespierre’s virtue in Marx and Tocqueville Daniel Brewer, Virtue and the ethics of the virtual Summaries List of works cited Index