ABSTRACT
In a fascinating study, Martin S.Staum (1996) has explored the roles played by the Institut National and, more specifically, the public policy roles played by the prize essay competitions sponsored by the Institut. Staum explores the ways in which this institution, established to promote Enlightenment social science culture, was gradually transformed very largely through the efforts of the various idéologues into an institution, the primary goals of which were to end political chaos and establish social order.2 On 15 Messidor Year 5, a prize competition was announced by the second
class of the Institut National on the question: ‘After political revolutions, what are the most appropriate means to restore a people to the principles of ethics?’, subsequently revised to ‘What are the best means to establish the morality of a people?’, and revised on 15 Vendémiaire Year 6 to ‘What are the best institutions on which to base the morality of a people?’ This first competition ran until 15 Germinal Year 6, and attracted sixteen entrants. The judges did not award the prize, but they gave honourable mentions to Villaume, Silvestre and Louis-Germain Petitain. The competition drew fire from critics within the Institut. Jacques-Henri
Bernardin de Saint-Pierre was a member of the Ethics section of the class of Moral and Political Sciences, but was not one of the idéologues who were a force within the class. He criticised this first round of the contest on the grounds that it promoted a secular morality based on strict legislation and well-run police forces alongside the natural inclinations of self-love and sympathy (Bernardin de Saint-Pierre 1818). These he considered an inadequate
foundation on which to base social order and harmony. As a deist, he advocated a morality explicitly based on Christianity. He identified self-love with greed and ambition, and argued that any system of ethics based on ‘natural morality’ would encourage repressive social control in the name of social order. Duty, and particularly the human duty to please God, rather than human inclination would provide a more certain foundation for civic virtue. On 15 Vendémiaire Year 7, the question was revised again, at least partially
in response to Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s criticism of the first round of the competition, to ‘What are the most suitable institutions to give man in society habits capable of making him happy? Discuss the nature of habit.’ A second round of the contest ran from 15 Vendémiaire Year 7 to 15 Vendémiaire Year 8 and attracted eight entrants. The prize was again not awarded, and three men received honourable mentions: Louis-Germain Petitain, Jean-Baptiste Say and Canolle.3 This particular competition, one of four topics set by the second section
of the class of Moral and Political Sciences between its creation in 1795 and its suppression in 1803, casts light on the intellectual life of France in the period after the reign of Terror. It documents the demands placed upon the social sciences, including economic analysis, to help establish political and social order in the context of political uncertainty, and establishes public morality as an important area of application for idéologie. This competition allows the reconstruction of the broader intellectual context within which the specifically economic writing of three significant economists of the period— Jean-Baptiste Say, Pierre-Louis Roederer and Antoine-Louis-Claude Destutt de Tracy— developed. Al l three ident if ied with the pr inciples and preoccupations of idéologie, as these essays document, and all three contributed significantly to the development and institutionalisation of nineteenth-century economic analysis in France.
