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In articulating the uses of their art, late-medieval astrologers often invoked the maxim that "the wise man will rule the stars" (sapiens dominabitur astris). However, it is by no means clear whether this invocation sought to emphasize 'domination' over the natural and social world, or the ontological self-government that is at stake in the pursuit of 'wisdom'. Many historians have interpreted the past pursuit of astrology in terms of an interest in dominance over the natural and social world. Taking inspiration from a recent 'ascetic turn' in the history of early modern science and philosophy, however, this article argues that late-medieval astrology was approached and appreciated as an art of self-government (both in body and in soul) and uncovers what this entailed. In so doing, we also demonstrate that the undifferentiated view of astrology as a pre-modern counterpart of modern prospective knowledge practices is anachronistic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] more...

This article aims to analyse the governmental rationalities that took passions as an object in the French seventeenth century, unleashing the modern transformation in emotional power. The classical question of the intertwining between emotions and rationality is approached through a cultural and historical perspective, analyzing historically situated discourses that define political rationalities that propose to govern, with specific techniques and objectives, certain "emotions"' that are conceived in a certain way. Passions emerged as an object of government through the statement that passions and not inactive reason were the true drivers of human action. Analyzing the treatises on the government of passions as "arts of government" aimed at the authorities of the period, this article explores initially how Neostoic discourses promoted an exchange between Augustinian government of the will and reason of state's strategies of manipulation of interests. Subsequently, by scrutinizing the texts of French moralists of the second half of the century, this article shows how, under the influence of Jansenism, they invert Neostoic logic and affirm a new emotional rule for political government: enlightened self-love. The idea that the commerce of selfish passions in the market could promote social peace and material progress cleared the path for the acceptance of a concupiscent order. The article's contribution resides firstly in the history of the shift in the West's fundamental emotional rule, love, and secondly in the way in which emotional power could work as a condition of possibility for the emergence of modern economic rationality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] more...

In this essay, I analyze the efforts of a French Roman Catholic organization committed to reproducing the ubiquity of Roman Catholic built space in the landscapes of Paris and its suburbs. Over its nearly 100-year-existence, the "Cardinal's Construction Site" has variously advertised its efforts as those necessary to combat communism, modernism, and secular apathy. I argue that its labors demonstrate how two concepts central to the anthropological study of Roman Catholicism exist in powerful tension. While Roman Catholicism has the capacity to recede into the background—in part through the ubiquity of its built space—and appear as nothing more than the unmarked or normative culture in countries in which it is the majority religion, its power as a social "institution" is maintained by numerous practices that invoke the "passions." That is, in order to uphold the status that allows it to go unmarked, Roman Catholicism must also function as what Valentina Napolitano has described as a "passionate machine." It is in part Catholicism's capacity to uphold the normative by way of the passions that explains its current role in the xenophobic politics of Europe in the present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] more...

This article examines the excitement that Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments generated in France during the French Revolution, focusing particularly on the writings of political theorists, participants and commentators such as the abbé Sieyès, Pierre-Louis Rœderer, the Marquis de Condorcet and Sophie de Grouchy Condorcet, who were dismayed at their political opponents' use of Rousseau, and looked to Smith for an understanding of the passions that was compatible with democratic sovereignty and representative government. In the political context of the early 1790s, clarifying the concept of natural sociability, which Rousseau had rejected, but Smith and Helvétius, in different ways, each regarded as indispensible to a society dependent on advanced division of labour, became a central concern in the public lectures delivered by Pierre-Louis Rœderer as the Terror took hold. ☆ My thanks to Emma Rothschild, Michael Sonenscher, Brian Young and other participants in the History of Political Thought Seminar, Oxford, and The Hexagonal Forum, Cambridge, where earlier versions of this paper were presented and helpfully discussed. I'm also grateful for comments on an earlier draft from Carolina Armenteros, Clare Jackson, Duncan Kelly, Michael Sonenscher and Richard Whatmore. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] more...

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In seventeenth-century France there was an entire branch of rhetorical theory based upon the non-verbal notion of mouvement, prevalent not only in artistic and intellectual disciplines but also within the musical arts. Modern studies have examined this philosophy with regard to the visual arts and to the vocal art of song, but have not yet explored the relation of this notion to contemporary instrumental music. This article, however, will do just that, illustrating how the rhetoric of mouvement applied to seventeenth-century French harpsichord music. The article discusses the chief concepts of mouvement and its relation to passionate expression, demonstrating how they manifest themselves within different artistic disciplines by citing primary sources on painting, poetry, singing, and ballet. The principles discussed in these writings are echoed in Saint-Lambert's treatise on harpsichord playing, allowing us to apply them to harpsichord music. How mouvement in harpsichord music was engendered by directing the physical/temporal motion of sound on many levels — tempo, meter, melody, rhythm, harmonic rate of change, use of agréments — is examined, illustrating their participation in an intricate declamatory language used to create an expressive rhetorical discourse that reflected contemporary aesthetic values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] more...

One of the most salient features of French Baroque opera was its moulding of music, text and acting into a unified whole. This rigorous aesthetic resulted in a distinct performance style, one which melded the music and the singers' gestures on stage. This article will examine the possibility of a symbiotic relationship between stage action and passionate musical expression in France. Using the writings of Rousseau, Rameau and other participants of the Querelle des Bouffons as a starting point, the central place of the theory of the passions in the acting and musical aesthetics of the day will be examined. Special attention will be given to Lallemant's Essai sur le méchanisme des passions (1751), in which the physical manifestation of the passions in the human body is clearly linked to musical tempo. Having established the medical basis for such a link, it is easy to see how, aesthetically, a change of tempo would be felt as a change of affect and thus result in a physical change in the actor's gesturing body. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] more...