The bundle of lights: the historiographic production on the Chevalier de Jaucourt (1704-1780)

• Grant number: 16/19285-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: February 01, 2017
• End date: January 31, 2018
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - Modern and Contemporary History
• Principal Investigator: Rui Luis Rodrigues
• Grantee: João Gilberto Walmsley Melato
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This research has the aim to make a reassessment of the existing historiography, until now, on the encyclopedist Louis Chevalier de Jaucourt (1704-1780). Even though he is the author of about 28% of the articles of Diderot and D'Alembert's Encyclopédie, historians have shown relatively little interest on his figure. This situation aroused our interest in the subject, but simultaneously conditioned our methods to a research of historiographical balance (a necessary beginning approach to the studies' theme). Therefore, our approach will be to perform a synthesis of the historiographical debate on his figure and thought, starting from the identification of the axes on which turns the debate. Some of those axes, already identified, are: was De Jaucourt an original thinker provided with political autonomy, or he was merely a "compiler" and "provider" of another's theories? Considering that he used to make political decisions, by which means did he "conceal" them, as an strategy to escape retaliation (by thus entering the political culture of his time, which for the same reason actively practiced the act of concealing)? By which means his protestant faith and his family's experience regarding the huguenots persecution in France influenced his ideas and the very work to which he devoted himself (synthesizing a huge knowledge to an universal dictionary, the Encyclopédie)? The answers to those questions may be considered "gathes" we try to open to the comprehension of certains aspects of the past, going through religion, knowledge production, authorship notions and even the definition of free labor. (AU)