ABSTRACT
In Margaret Jacob’s opinion, modern civil society was invented during the Enlightenment in the new enclaves of sociability, ‘of which freemasony was the most avowedly constitutional and aggressively civic’. Many philosophes, as well as a handful of government ministers and advisers, realised this and fought to protect those critics who wanted to reconstruct the monarchical house that Louis XIV had built, not raze it to the ground. Audisio’s comment may be exaggerated, but it is true that the conservative Enlightenment had very little to say to peasants: most mid-century philosophes wrote them off, literally and metaphorically, until such time as the Goddess of Reason could spread her wings over the countryside. Jean-Louis Flandrin advances the argument that, despite the undoubted influence of the family home, the village square may have been a more influential space for teaching young people about sexuality, love and romance.
