The Idéologues

Although participating in the Enlightenment project of social renewal, the Idéologues saw the dark and bloody years of the Revolution and the Terror, the wars in Europe and the Napoleonic regime as the horrific and contradictory outcome of that great project. As a result, they had arrived at a more thought-out and less optimistic view of history. Moreover, although based on the rationalism and Sensationism of the earlier philosophes, their analysis extended into the complex and mysterious areas of spirituality, and while remaining within the confines of a generic natural Theism, encouraged the attentive Manzoni to reflect on the transcendence of and need for absolute truth. Manzoni arrived in Paris, the capital of modern thought, with a background of ideas on humankind and history developed through associating with the Neapolitan exiles. The Idéologues enabled him to develop his philosophical knowledge and acquire a method of reasoning that showed in all his writings. They educated him in scientific analysis, of a sort that was almost positivist in character, and constantly based on concrete historical fact, unlike the abstract rumination of metaphysics. They also brought about in him an irrepressible need to extend reflection to the source of a problem, after selecting and investigating specific aspects in detail. Rather than through his occasional conversations with Tracy, he acquired this method during walks with Pierre Cabanis at Auteuil, discussing the themes of Cabanis’s Lettre sur les causes premières, and especially in discussions with Claude Fauriel on Stoic philosophy, modern literature (including Shakespeare) and religion, a topic of considerable importance in the emerging Romantic culture (Chateaubriand’s Le génie du Christianisme was published in 1802).