Educational Philosophy in the French Enlightenment: From Nature to Second Nature

Though Rousseau's Emile is still considered the central pedagogical text of the Enlightenment, a myriad of lesser-known thinkers paved the way for Rousseau's masterpiece. Natasha Gill traces the arc of these thinkers as they establish the powerful link between early childhood experiences and the success or failure of political and social relations, and set the terms for the modern battle between the relative weight of nature and nurture in individual growth and collective life. Her book is the first to offer a comprehensive analysis of the educational debate before Rousseau, to interpret Rousseau's arguments in Emile as a series of responses to his predecessors, and to analyze in detail the influence of new political and philosophical ideas in French pedagogical thought during the early eighteenth century.Gill begins with a thorough discussion of the educational ideas of John Locke and their profound influence on French theories of education during the eighteenth century. Her examination of influential educational theorists such as the Abbé Claude Fleury, the rector of the University of Paris Charles Rollin, and Swiss educator Jean-Pierre Crousaz illustrates the extent to which early Enlightenment thinkers reevaluated childhood on the foundation of sensationist principles well before Rousseau. Etienne-Gabriel Morelly, usually studied as a marginal thinker in the history of utopian thought, is here revealed as a key transitional figure in pedagogical thought. Gill concludes by offering one of the first detailed analysis of the educational dispute between Helvétius and Rousseau that took place in the 1760s, situating the claims of both in the context of the educational debate as it stood at mid-century.