ABSTRACT
It would be difficult to overstate Fénelon’s influence on French political thought in the eighteenth century. The author of what is commonly considered to be the most-read work in eighteenth-century France after the Bible, Fénelon was admired by French thinkers from Montesquieu to Robespierre. Yet until recently this influence was relatively understudied and underappreciated (in the Anglophone world especially), with the key exception of his influence on Rousseau. A series of excellent studies – including those by Chérel, Pire, Gouhier, Charrak and Mendham – have presented extensive evidence of Rousseau’s debts to Fénelon across several fronts. The present essay focuses on Rousseau’s engagement with Fénelon on three of these fronts: politics and economics, ethics and religion, and education. In so doing, it aims both to survey the results of previous studies of the Fénelon-Rousseau connection and to supplement these on several additional points of contact that have not been emphasized.
