From Port-Royal to the “Philosophical Society”: Revisiting the Religious Origins of the French Revolution

From an early stage of research on the subject, the question of the religious origins of the French Revolution has been focused on the influence exerted by Jansenism on the transformation that political doctrines, social practices, and popular emotions underwent, particularly between 1710 and 1770. This influence is even said to have extended till the time of the adoption of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy (1790), although this timeframe remains greatly controverted. Within this explanatory outline, one of the points still to be clarified is that of continuity between 18th-century Jansenism and that of the preceding century, a question which in turn relates to the nature and channels of the movement’s impact in pre-revolutionary France. After reviewing the theoretical and methodological issues related to the question addressed here, this contribution attempts to reinterpret the role played by the Port-Royal circle, which, it suggests, was a matrix of the type of sociability manifested much later in the “philosophical society” whose importance was emphasized by Augustin Cochin and then François Furet. The demonstration is based on a threefold analysis: that of the epistemic changes that took shape around Port-Royal; that of the discursive positioning operated by this circle; and that of the type of sociability that its thought and practices helped to establish.