The Réflexions morales et métaphysiques: a key text in the evolution of freethought between the 17th and 18th centuries

Abstract

Our research began with a critical edition of the Réflexions morales et métaphysiques: two manuscript copies are known and we discovered a third. We first define the genealogy of the manuscripts and their relation to the lost original, and then seek to identify the author, known only by a letter sent from Lyon to the Rotterdam publisher Reinier Leers in 1715 and signed  Delaube”. The Lyon family De Laube proves to be a dead-end, but a particular expression in the Réflexions leads us first to Jean Terrasson, author of the Traité de l’infini créé, and then to Camille Falconet, a friend of Terrasson and founder-member of the Academy of Lyon. Falconet lived in Paris from 1707, and was well-known both as a member of the Académie des inscriptions, close to Fontenelle and to Malebranche, and as an obsessive bibliophile who opened up his library to a number of young writers and in particular, in 1748-50, to the encyclopédistes. We then explore two lines of inquiry: first, we observe that the Réflexions that we attribute to Falconet are derived from the atheist treatise entitled Theophrastus Redivivus (1659), which can now be attributed to Guy Patin, and we establish how this genealogy of the manuscripts was made possible; we then explore the reception of the Réflexions and conclude that they form the foundation of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s political philosophy.