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Mme de Staël and Political Liberalism in France pp 1–20Cite as

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Introduction

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Abstract

This book claims that Anne Louis-Germaine Necker de Staël-Holstein (1766–1817) was among the most influential liberal political thinkers in nineteenth-century France. I substantiate this assertion by demonstrating that Staël’s particular version of liberal political thought impacted the historical development of political liberalism in France.

The reason why we need to reassess her ideas and influence altogether is due to the peculiar nature of French liberalism: more than doctrine or attitude, French liberalism required the physical presence of the political force of the moderates against either ultraconservatives or radicals. From this viewpoint, this book is composed of three distinct themes: the first part from Chaps. 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 constitutes the constitutional and cultural analysis of Staël’s liberal political thought; the second part of the book, from Chaps. 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11, analyzes the public’s wide-raging opinions in the reception of Considerations on the Principal Events of the French Revolution after its posthumous publication in May 1818. The third part of the book, from Chaps. 12, 13, 14, and 15, shows that the political influence of Considerations permeated the liberal historiography of the French Revolution between 1818 and the 1860s.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Studies on Madame de Staël have existed over the last two hundred years. For a critical bibliography, Pierre H. Dupé, Bibliographie de la critique sur Madame de Staël (1789–1994), (Geneva: Droz, 1994); Perchellet, Jean-Pierre, “Bibliographie staëlienne, 1994–2000,” Cahiers staëliens, no. 52, 2001, 147–186. The nature of Staël’s biography gradually changed from personal and amorous accounts to ones that featured the intellectual, literary, and political dimensions of Staël’s life over recent decades. Lady Blennerhassett, Madame de Staël et son temps (1766–1817) vol. 1–3, (Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 2002); J. Christopher Herold, Mistress to an Age: A life of Madame de Staël, (New York: Grove Press, 1958); Simone Balayé, Mme de Staël: Lumières et liberté, (Paris: Kincksieck, 1979); Maria Fairweather, Madame de Staël, (New York: Caroll and Graft, 2005); Sergène Dixon, Germaine de Staël, Daughter of the Enlightenment: The writer and her turbulent Era, (Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 2007); Angelica Gooden, Madame de Staël: The Dangerous Exile, (Oxford: Oxford U.P., 2008); Michel Winock, Mme de Staël, (Paris: Fayard, 2010); Ghislain de Diesbach, Madame de Staël, (Paris: Perrin, 2017); Yoko Kudo, Mme de Staël and Modern Europe: The Mother of French Liberalism Living through the French Revolution and Napoleon’s Dictatorship, (Tokyo: Tokyo U.P., 2016). In addition, the re-edition of Staël’s original works have been in progress since the 1980s. Madame de Staël, Oeuvres complètes(b), (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2000–). (Hereafter OCb). I turn to the three volumes in these series: Lettres sur Rousseau. De l’influence des passions et autres essais moraux, ed. Florence Lotterie, vol. I–I, 2008; Des circonstances actuelles et autre essais politiques sous la Révolution, ed. Lucia Omacini, vol. I–II, 2009; and De la littérature et autres essais littéraires, ed. Stéphanie Genand, vol. I–II, 2009. I also turn to other versions of OE if necessary. Staëlian societies in France and the United States produced important contributions on diverse aspects of Staël’s intellectual, political, philosophical, and literary thoughts: Cahiers Staëliens vol. 1- the current issue, (Paris: Honoré Champion); Germaine de Staël: Crossing the Borders, ed. Madelyn Gutwirth, Avriel Goldberger, and Karyna Szmurlo, (Rutgers: Rutgers U.P., 1991); and Germaine de Staël: Forging a politics of mediation (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century), ed. Karyna Szmurlo, (Oxford: Oxford U.P., 2011).

  2. 2.

    In his magistral study on French liberalism, Lucien Jaume calls Staël the “mother of French liberalism,” featuring her contribution as an ethical philosophe to the “idealist” foundation of liberty under the influence of Kant’s philosophy. By contrast, Jaume makes little mention of her constitutional arguments, especially after 1800, asserting that Benjamin Constant completed the constitutional and theoretical dimension of their liberal current, which he calls the “liberalism of the subject” (Lucien Jaume, L’individu efface ou le paradoxe du libéralisme français, (Paris: Fayard, 1997).

    Fontana’s precious intellectual biography on Staël focused on neglected aspects of Staël’s liberal political thought, including public opinion. However, not unlike Jaume’s thesis, Fontana makes thorough mention of neither Staël’s constitutional thought nor her intellectual and political career after 1800 (Biancamaria Fontana, Germaine de Staël: A Political Portrait, Princeton: Princeton U.P., 2016). By contrast, Jainchill incorporates the constitutional dimension of Staël’s thought into his analysis of what he called “liberal republicanism” between 1794 and 1804: In order to legitimize that early modern civic traditions constitute the historical origin of French liberalism, Jainchill considers Staël’s political thought to be a revolutionalized version of Old Regime republicanism. I disagree with his thesis, emphasizing the notion of civility inherent in French monarchy rather than civic virtue relevant to the early modern civic traditions. Meanwhile, Jainchill also follows the pattern of other scholars, largely overlooking Staël’s political thought after 1800. Andrew Jainchill, Reimagining Politics after the Terror: The Republican Origins of French Liberalism (Ithaca: Cornell U.P., 2008) and “Liberal Republicanism after the Terror: Charles-Guillaume Théremin and Germaine de Staël,” in Pluralism and the Idea of the Republic in France, ed. Jones Stuart and Julian Wright (London and New York: Palgrave, 2012), 25–40. The same tendency is observed in K. Steven Vincent, Benjamin Constant and the Birth of French Liberalism (London: Palgrave, 2011): although his main focus is Constant’s political thought, he deals with Staël on occasion. Finally, Craiutu sheds light on Staël’s constitutional thought in 1795–1817, seen from the viewpoint of moderation and compares her thought with her male companions de route such as Jacques Necker and Benjamin Constant within the framework of the Coppet group. Aurelian Craiutu, “Moderation after the Terror: Madame de Staël’s Elusive Center,” A Virtue for Courageous Minds: Moderation in French Political Thought, 1748–1830 (Princeton: Princeton U.P., 2012), 158–197.

  3. 3.

    French Liberalism from Montesquieu to the Present Day, ed. Raf Geenens and Helena Rosenblatt (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 2012).

  4. 4.

    An important mass of studies on Staël’s political thought and actions analyzed from a gender perspective is available. Madelyn Gutwirth and Susan Tenenbaum pioneered the feminist and political interpretation of Staëlian literature in the United States. Madelyn Gutwirth, Madame de Staël, Novelist: The Emergence of the Artist as Woman (Chicago: Illinois U.P., 1978); Susan Tenenbaum, “Montesquieu and Mme de Staël: The Woman as a Factor in Political analysis,” Political Theory, vol. 1 (1973), 92–103; The Social and Political Thought of Mme de Staël, PhD Dissertation, City University of New York, 1976; “Staël: Liberal Political Thinker,” Gutwirth, Germaine de Staël: Crossing the Borders, 159–163; “Madame de Staël: Comparative Politics as Revolutionary Practice,” The French Revolution of 1789 and Its Impact, ed. Gail M. Schwab and John R. Jeanneney, (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1995), 61–68; Griffith E. Gzynne, Madame de Staël et la Révolution française, (Paris: Nizet, 2005).

  5. 5.

    Gautier reduced Staël’s political antagonism against Napoleon to an amorous chagrin in Mme de Staël et Napoleon. His idea was taken up and exaggerated by another Bonapartist historian, Guillemin. Guillemin focused on Staël’s attempt to be reimbursed her personal debt from Napoleon and denied her prevailing image as a champion of liberty. In some passages, he even described her as insane. Henri Gautier, Madame de Staël et Napoléon (Paris: Plon, 1903); Henri Guillemin, Madame de Staël et Napoléon, ou Germaine et le caïd ingrat (Paris: Seuil, 1987).

  6. 6.

    Wicnock, “préface” to Madame de Staël, 1.

  7. 7.

    Despite his insightful analysis on Staël’s political thought, Gauchet is influenced by gender, analyzing Staël’s liberal political thought essentially in relation to either Jacques Necker or Benjamin Constant, depending on the historical period as if she could not stand on her own. Marcel Gauchet, “Madame de Staël,” Dictionnaire critique de la Révolution française, ed. François Furet and Mona Oxouf (Paris: Flammarion, 1988), 1053–1060.

  8. 8.

    “Embracing Liberalism: Germaine de Staël’s Farewell to Republicanism,” Liberal Beginnings: Making a Republic for the Moderns, Andreas Kalyavas and Iva Katznelson (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 2008), 118.

  9. 9.

    Gauchet, “Madame,” 1054.

  10. 10.

    Vincent, Benjamin Constant, 3.

  11. 11.

    Kalyvas and Katzenlson, “Liberal,” 131–132.

  12. 12.

    James Livesey, “The Political Culture of the Directory,” A Companion to the French Revolution, (Oxford: Blackwell, 2013). 328–432.

  13. 13.

    Hereafter referred to as Considerations.

  14. 14.

    Robert Darnton, “Mme de Staël and the Mystery of the Public Will,” The New York Review of Books, June 23, 2016, 40. On Considerations, Gauchet writes: ‘Qu’apporte de novueau, maintenant, l’ouvrage de 1818? Sur le fond, assez peu de chose en vérité.’ Gauchet, “Mme de Staël,” 1058.

  15. 15.

    Fontana writes: “Considerations was written as a mere biographical narrative … without any substantial interpretative or theoretical content.” Fontana, Germaine, 208–209.

  16. 16.

    Darnton, “Mme de Staël,” 40. We may not necessarily find the mention of other French liberals, Jacques Necker, B. Constant, or François Guizot in standard books on the history of political thought either. No French liberals are mentioned other than Tocqueville , who appears only once in the following recent standard textbook: J.S. McClelland, A History of Western Political Thought, (London and New York: Routledge, 1998).

  17. 17.

    It consists in “the institutional issues on which the liberal figures were forced to take positions in order to acquire legitimacy and credibility … and on which specific and opposing variants of liberalism were mobilised.” Jaume , “The unity, diversity and paradoxes of French liberalism,” French Liberalism from Montesquieu, ed. Geenes and Rosenblatt, 38.

  18. 18.

    Stéphanie Tribouillard, Le Tombeau de Mme de Staël: Les discours de la postérité staëlienne en France (1819–1850), (Geneva: 2007), 916.

  19. 19.

    Ibid., 916.

  20. 20.

    The amount of historiography upon the reception of Staël’s Considerations is impressive. Albert Sorel, Madme de Staël, (Paris: Hachette, 1890); Jacques Godechot, “Introduction” to Staël, Considérations, (Paris: Tallandier, 1983), 7–41; Ezio Cappadogia, “The Liberals and Madame de Staël,” Ideas in History, ed. Richard Herr and Harold T. Parker, 182–198; Stéphanie Tribouillard, “Les Considérations sur la Révolution française et l’historiographie libérale de la Révolution du premier XIX siècle,” Le Groupe de Coppet et l’ histoire: VIII Colloque de Coppet, Annales Benjamin Constant 31–32, (Geneva: Slatkine, 2007), 227–250; Stéphanie Tribouillard, Le Tombeau de Madame de Staël; John Elster, “Tocquevile on 1789: Preconditions, precipitants, and Triggers,” The Cambridge Companion to Tocqueville, ed. Cheryl B. Welch, (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 2006), 49–80; John Elster, Alexis de Tocqueville, the First Social Scientist, (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 2009); Aurelian Craiutu, “introduction,” Staël, Germaine de, Considerations on the Pricipal Events of the French Revolution, (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2008), vii–xxviii. Despite the wide-spread reputation that Staël’s Considerations was influential, Staël is largely overlooked in the contemporary revisionist historiography of the French Revolution. In English, there is no mention of Staël in contemporary studies on the historiography of the French Revolution such as From Deficit to Deluge: The Origins of the French Revolution, ed. Thomas E. Kaiser and Dale K. Van Kley, (Stanford: Stanford U.P., 2011). In French, Le dictionnaire critique de la Révolution française constitutes the most thorough revisionist presentation of nineteenth-century historiography of the French Revolution in which Gauchet’s article on Mme de Staël’s political thought appears. Finally, after John Elster, my own article tries to secure an intellectual position for Staël’s Considerations in the liberal historiography of the French Revolution. John Elster, “Tocqueville on 1789,” 49–80; Chinatsu Takeda, “On a liberal interpretation of the French Revolution: Mme de Staël’s Considérations sur la Révolution française,” Forging a politics, 91–108.

  21. 21.

    Stéphanie Tribouillard, “Les Considérations,” 246–247.

  22. 22.

    Albertine Necker de Saussure. Staël. OC.a. vol. 1 12.

  23. 23.

    Sauvigny found the first example of libéralisme, in a political pamphlet titled Examen du libéralisme par un libéral in April 1819. Guillaume de Bertier de Sauvigny, “Libéralisme. Aux origines d’un mot,” Commentaire, 1979/3 (no. 7). 423.

  24. 24.

    Tribouillard, Le Tombeau, 104.

  25. 25.

    Sauvigny, “Liberalism,” 422–423.

  26. 26.

    Ibid., 422.

  27. 27.

    Libéral originates from a latin word, liberalis, which “attaches itself to the few who, by their way of life, rise above the multitude.” Claude Lefort, “Libéralisme et démocratie,” Le temps présent, (Paris: Berlin, 2007), 746. This semantic tradition directly impacted a current of political liberalism in nineteenth-century France that Kahan named aristocratic liberalism. Aristocratic liberalism is characterized by the members’ “common distaste for the masses and the middle classes, their fear and contempt of mediocrity, the primacy of individuality and diversity among their values.” Alan Kahan, Aristocratic Liberalism: The Social and Political Thought of Jacob Burckhaurdt, John Stuart Mill, and Alexis de Tocqueville, (Oxford: Oxford U.P., 1992), 3–5.

  28. 28.

    Sauvygny, “Libéralisme,” 422–423. Concerning Staël and Constant’s contribution to the historical emergence of the oppositional group against Napoleon , Louis de Ville-Fosse et Janine Bouissounouse, L’opposition à Napoléon, (Paris: Flammarion, 1969). By contrast, Vincent highlights the Directory and the Consulate within the historical rise of liberalism in France. Vincent, Benjamin, 76–80.

  29. 29.

    Jaume , L’individu, 13–14.

  30. 30.

    Sauvigny, “Libéralisme,” 420.

  31. 31.

    Lefort, “Libéralisme et démocratie,” 752.

  32. 32.

    This book follows Sauvigny’s semantic analysis on the historical origin of the word libéralisme and considers French Restoration the historical start of French liberalism.

  33. 33.

    Sauvigny, “Libéralisme,” 422.

  34. 34.

    Thibaudet, Les idées politiques, 49–50.

  35. 35.

    Vincent, Benjamin, 77.

  36. 36.

    “conservateur de … qui conserve, s’efforce de garder dans le même état ou en bon état, protège…” Ortolang. (Centre national de ressources textuelles et lexicales.) www.ortolang.fr

  37. 37.

    Le conservateur, vol. I (1818), xx.

  38. 38.

    Sanford Lakoff. “Tocqueville, Burke and the Origins of Liberal Conservatism,” The Review of Politics, vol. 60, no. 3 (Summer, 1998), 439–440.

  39. 39.

    René de Chateaubriand, Mémoires d’Outre-tombe. t. 3, (Brussels: Rozez, 1848a), 29.

  40. 40.

    The Oxford English Dictionary, The Philological Society, (Oxford: Oxford U.P., 1970).

  41. 41.

    The French dictionary confirms Chateaubriand’s viewpoint: “à propos de l’idéologie d’un parti conservateur étranger; spéc. Du parti conservateur anglais.” Ortolang.

  42. 42.

    Edmund Burke, Reflection on the Revolution in France and on the Proceedings in Certain Societies in London relative to that event, second edition, (London: J. Dodsley, 1790), 88–89.

  43. 43.

    Lakoff, “Tocqueville,” 435

  44. 44.

    Burke, Reflections, 435–464.

  45. 45.

    Lakoff, “Tocqueville,” 435.

  46. 46.

    The French translation of Reflections appeared on November 29, 1790 and the French version was re-edited ten times by June 1791. F. P. Lock, Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (London: Allen & Unwin, 1985), 132.

  47. 47.

    “With us the king and the lords are several and joint securities for the equality of each district, each province and each city.” Burke, Reflections, 269.

  48. 48.

    On the parallel between Staël and Chateaubriand, see Zeeve Sternhell, The Anti-Enlightenment Tradition, (New Haven: Yale U.P., 2009).

  49. 49.

    Strauss confirms that ‘Burke’s “intransigent opposition to the French Revolution must not blind us to the fact that … he has recourse to the same fundamental principle which is at the bottom of the revolutionary theorem.” Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History, (Chicago: Chicago U.P., 1953), 316. Cited by Lakoff, “Burke, Tocqueville,” 419.

  50. 50.

    Lefort, “Libéralisme et démocratie,” 752.

  51. 51.

    Finally, as this book tries to show, the fact that Staël was a woman gave her a unique outlook on politics and philosophy, including those of a women’s place in modernity. This gender implication decisively distinguishes Staël from her male counterparts in terms of political thought on French liberalism.

  52. 52.

    John W. Yolotn, “F. C. S. Schiller’s pragmatism and British empiricism,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Sep. 1950), 40–58. On pragmatism, The Cambridge Companion to Pragmatisme, ed. Alan Malachozki, (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 2013).

  53. 53.

    Mme Necker de Saussure, “notice,” Staël, OCa, vol. 1, 12.

  54. 54.

    The term, “pragmatism” was originally invented by William James. Quotation from Alan Malachowski, “Introduction: The pragmatist orientation,” The Cambrige Companion, 1.

  55. 55.

    Ibid., 1.

  56. 56.

    Nancy L. Rosenbulum, “introduction,”Liberalism and the Moral Life, ed. Nancy L. Rosenbulum, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard U.P., 1989), 21–38. Vincent also refers to “liberalism of fear” that emphasizes the imperious nature of political centrism, “because of the constant vigilance they believed was required to avoid the dangers on both extremes.” Vincent, Benjamin, 77.

  57. 57.

    On the enigmatic language, Hiroshi Takayama, Introduction to Cultural History among the Moderns (Japanese), (Tokyo: Kodansha, 2007).

  58. 58.

    François Mélonio, “Les libéraux français et leur histoire,” Les libéralismes, la théorie politique et l’histoire, ed. Siep Stuurmann, (Amsterdam: Amsterdam U.P., 1994) 35–47.

  59. 59.

    See Chap. 6 of this book.

  60. 60.

    Staël should have read Burke’s Reflections on the French Revolution under constitutional monarchy. The French translation of Reflections appeared on November 29, 1790 and was re-edited as many as ten times by June, 1791. F. P. Lock, Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (London: 1985, Allen & Unwin), 132.

  61. 61.

    Edmund Burke, Reflection on the Revolution, 113.

  62. 62.

    On the analysis of public opinion under Old Regime, Keith M. Baker, “Politique et opinion publique sous l’Ancien Régime,” Annales. Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations, 1987, vol. 42–1, 41–71.

  63. 63.

    Fontana, Germaine, 14.

  64. 64.

    Ibid., 9.

  65. 65.

    Ibid., 11–36 and 213–218.

  66. 66.

    Fontana emphasizes the similarity of opinions on public opinion between Necker and Staël. Fontana, Germaine, 9–18.

  67. 67.

    Mme Necker de Sausurre, “notice,” Staël, OCa, vol. 1, 17–18.

  68. 68.

    Jaume , L’individu, 19.

  69. 69.

    The absence of associative spirit in Constant’s political thought reflects his own perception that political dangers would arise among minorities rather than a majority in liberal democracy. Stephane Holmes, Benjamin Constant and the Making of Modern Liberalism (New Haven: Yale U.P., 1984), 25.

  70. 70.

    Hereafter referred to as O.R.

  71. 71.

    Pierre Rosanvallon, “Towards the Philosophical History of the Political,” The History of Political Thought in National Context, ed. Dario Castiglione, Ian Hampsher-Monk, (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 2001), 189–203.

  72. 72.

    Ibid., 196.

  73. 73.

    On Rosanvallon’s methodological tendency to fuse social reality and abstract theory, Moyen Samuel, “Imaginary Intellectual History,” Rethinking Modern European Intellectual history, ed. Darrin M. McMahon and Samuel Moyen, (Oxford: Oxford U.P., 2014), 112–130.

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  1. Faculty of Comparative Culture, Otsuma Women’s University, Tokyo, Japan

    Chinatsu Takeda

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Takeda, C. (2018). Introduction. In: Mme de Staël and Political Liberalism in France. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-8087-6_1

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