Sans-culottes : an eighteenth-century emblem in the French Revolution / Michael Sonenscher.

Includes bibliographical references(pages [425]-474) and index.

1. Introduction: "One of the Most Interesting Pairs of Breeches Recorded in Modern History" -- 2. An Ingenious Emblem -- New Year's Gifts and an Eighteenth-Century French Joke -- Fashion's Empire: The Moral Foundations of Salon Society -- A "Poor Devil": The Short, Unhappy Life of Nicolas-Joseph-Laurent Gilbert -- Mercier and Rousseau: Vitalist and Contractual Conceptions of Political Society -- 3. Diogenes and Rousseau: Music, Morality, and Society -- Diogenes and the Ambiguities of Cynic Philosophy -- Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Politics of Public Opinion -- Rousseau and His Cynic Critics -- John Brown and the Progress of Civilisation -- "That Subtle Diogenes": Immanuel Kant and Rousseau's Dilemmas -- 4. Property, Equality, and the Passions in Eighteenth-Century French Thought -- Reform, Revolution, and the Problem of State Power -- Property and the Limits of State Power -- Physiocracy, Reform, and the Fruits of the Tree of Life -- John Law's Legacy and the Aftermath of Physiocracy -- Dominique-Joseph Garat, the Modern Idea of Happiness, and the Dilemmas of Reform -- 5. The Entitlements of Merit -- Visions of Patriotism -- The Army and Its Problems in the Eighteenth Century -- Constitutional Government, Taxation, and Equality -- Political Liberty, Public Finance, and Public Worship -- Etienne Claviere, Law's System, and French Liberty -- Feuillants and Brissotins -- Antoine-Joseph Gorsas and the Politics of Revolutionary Satire -- 6. Conclusion: Democracy and Terror -- Politics and History in Jacobin Thought -- Rousseau and Revolution -- Mably, Rousseau, and Robespierre -- Epilogue.

"This is a bold new history of the sans-culottes and the part they played in the French Revolution. It tells for the first time the real story of the name now usually associated with urban violence and popular politics during the revolutionary period. By doing so, it also shows how the politics and economics of the revolution can be combined to form a genuinely historical narrative of its content and course. To explain how an early eighteenth-century salon society joke about breeches and urbanity was transformed into a republican emblem, Sam-Culottes examines contemporary debates about Ciceronian, Cynic, and Cartesian moral philosophy, as well as subjects ranging from music and the origins of government to property and the nature of the human soul. By piecing together this now forgotten story, Michael Sonenscher opens up new perspectives on the Enlightenment, eighteenth-century moral and political philosophy, the thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and the political history of the French Revolution itself."--BOOK JACKET.