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- Title
Mably and the Montagnards.
- Authors
Hampson, Norman
- Abstract
Mably was one of the more utopian of the philosophes. Inspired by the example of Sparta, he dreamed of a future French society that would be not merely egalitarian but communist. Disillusioned by the failure of mid‐century attempts to challenge Bourbon absolutism, he turned pessimist, convinced that France was set on a course of irreversible decline. During the French Revolution he was respected by both pamphleteers and politicians. He was, however, very rarely mentioned in the debates of the various national assemblies and it is difficult to find any trace of his influence on people like Robespierre or Marat. To this general statement there are one or two important exceptions, such as Billaud‐Varenne and especially Saint‐Just. The latter's unpublished essay De la nature and his fragmentary Institutions républicaines suggest that he may have been converted to Mably's belief in the possibility of creating a new republican order that would revive, if not actually transcend, the glory of Sparta.
- Subjects
SPARTA (Extinct city); GREECE; FRANCE; MABLY, abbe de, 1709-1785; PHILOSOPHERS; EXTINCT cities
- Publication
French History, 2002, Vol 16, Issue 4, p402
- ISSN
0269-1191
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1093/fh/16.4.402