THOMAS CARLYLE ON EPICUREANISM IN THE FRENCH AND GERMAN ENLIGHTENMENTS.

The young Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) had perused many of the Epicurean writings of the French Enlightenment. According to Carlyle, such ‘Epicureanism’ consisted primarily in an emphasis upon pleasure and pain as the springs of human action, and a positing of self-interest as the foundation of sociability. However, Carlyle soon came to reject such notions, seeking salvation in the writings of Kant and Schiller, who stressed the possibility of disinterested virtue, and the importance of free, moral activity. Indeed, the Epicureanism debate continued to resonate in Carlyle's subsequent political writings, and particularly his notorious polemics against laissez-faire and ‘public opinion’. Finally, in Carlyle's last major work, Frederick the Great , he found himself faced with the unenviable task of painting an Epicurean into a patina of heroic virtue. Despite his best efforts, however, Carlyle's biography remained haunted by the spectre of Epicureanism. Nonetheless, as Carlyle's contemporaries recognized, his writings had done much not only to discredit the Epicureanism of the French eighteenth century, but also to shape the moral and political ideals of the British nineteenth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]