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Век Просвещения. Вып. VI: Что такое Просвещение? Новые ответы на старый вопрос.
Le sixième volume de la collection "Siècle des Lumières" comprend des ctes du colloque international «Qu'est-ce que les Lumières? Nouvelles réponses à l'ancienne question", tenue à Kouskovo en juin 2017. Les auteurs présentent leurs méthodes de recherche de cette époque. Les thèmes de leurs travaux se distinguent par une grande variété: les caractéristiques générales des Lumières et son cadre chronologique; Lumières et transformation du langage politique; pratiques des Lumières; la laïcisation dans le discours des Lumières; Lumières et Révolution; Lumières "globales". Le volume comprend également de nouvelles publications de sources et des recherches sur l'histoire des relations culturelles entre la Russies et l'Occident, des comptes rendus importants et une liste index des publications sur le XVIIIe siècle, publiées en russe en 2013-2014.
Dans les "Mélanges philosophiques" pour Catherine II, Diderot, reprenant un projet de l’impératrice, insiste sur la nécessité de confectionner un petit catéchisme moral. Il avance quelques propositions dans ce sens et revient sur ce sujet dans les lettres écrites à Ivan Betskoï et à Catherine II en 1774, pendant son second séjour à La Haye. Des découvertes récentes dans les archives de Moscou permettent de préciser certaines circonstances de son intervention, mais soulèvent de nouvelles questions sur ce que fut son rôle dans cet épisode, qui comporte plusieurs points obscurs.
The duty of the patriot prince: Russian manuscript translations and monarchical discourse of the Enlightenment in the third quarter of the XVIII-th century
The article examines three translations made in the 1750s-1760-s from French into Russian. The first is François de Fenelon’s Directions pour la conscience d'un roi, which was translated by prince Mikhail Shcherbatov (1758), the second is the anonymous Pensées politiques sur les devoirs d’un roi citoyen, which was the work of an unknown translator, most likely by the order of Roman or Mikhail Vorontsov (between 1754 and 1756), and the last one is known in two copies and was done from the French translation of Idea of a Patriot King by Henry Bolingbroke (first half of the 1760s) - one of them belonged to the brothers Nikita and Pyotr Panin.
Studying the Russian translations of Western political writings allows us to reconstruct the intellectual context in which a new discourse of power emerged in the third quarter of the XVIII-century. These texts reflected the “state of mind” of the Russian ruling elite, who, under the influence of the Enlightenment ideas, demanded «freedom of the Nobility» and «moderate monarchy». Circulation of these translations in handwritten form showed a limited circle of readers for whom these books were intended. All three texts are characterized by an almost messianic expectation of a perfect monarch, who will improve the morals and manners of his subjects and return their liberties by the establishing of a true «uchrezhdenie» (constitution). The Russian educated nobility had a common way of thinking and it was very similar to the political conceptions of the Western European elite, which actively produced in the Age of Enlightenment an updated monarchical discourse, at the centre of which was the idea of the «king - citizen/patriot», who dedicated himself to society’s good. At the same time, the “common good” in this conception always coincided with the basic interests of the ruling elite.
The case of Petr Saltykov, which stretched on between 1758 and 1765, with a surprising coda in 1796, is noteworthy in many respects. The material collected in connection with Saltykov’s crime is useful for an investigation into magic belief as such, offering parallels and supplementary information to the dozens of “magic trials” of the 18th century. However, what makes the Saltykov case unique is how the chancellor’s “superstition” managed so compellingly to bring together two cultures – traditional folk culture and the “Europeanized” culture of the imperial court. The case of Saltykov’s “sorcery” brought the diametrically opposed cultures of the court elite and the masses into confrontation. But even opposites can come together. As it turned out, the magic beliefs of the masses and medical practices of archaic traditional culture continued to attract adherents at court, getting along just fine in a high-culture, “Europeanized” environment. The chasm that lay between the culture of the aristocratic court elite and popular culture in the 18th century was not unbridgeable, although possible intersections of these two cultures sometimes took on rather strange configurations.
Les travaux récents consacrés au rôle de l’Italie et Rome en particulier comme étape la plus emblématique du Grand Tour au XVIIIe siècle mettent l’accent non seulement sur la réflexion pédagogique ou à l’expérience de jeunes nobles complétant leur éducation, mais aussi sur la relation sociale majeure du temps: la sociabilité. Cette étude s’inscrit aussi dans cette tendance sur l’exemple d’un voyage qui n’a jamais été étudié: celui que les comtes Nikolaï et Sergueï Roumiantsev ont effectué en 1775–1776 en compagnie de Friedrich Melchior Grimm.
The paper is devoted to the translation of the famous German novel "Die Asiatische Banise" into Russian. The conclusions are made about the time and the interpreter of the novel.
This article is dedicated to Benjamin Rush,one of american Enlightmen of XVIII century.He was prominent physician («father of american phychiatry»),publisist,political figure and phylosopher. In his time Rush had no peer as a social reformer. Among many causes he championed were prison and judicial reform, abolition of slavery and death penalty, conservation of natural resources, education in USA and women's education.
The article is devoted to a previously unknown translator, Vassily Grinkov (the middle of the XVIII century). His translation, made from German in 1745, of Lodovico Guicciardini’s compilation, is not widely known, but the circumstances of its appearance and the reconstruction of the environment in which it appears are extremely important to understand the mechanisms of European culture reception in Russia.