The emotions of a moralist as a basis for an ethical standard: Charles–François Le Maître de Claville’s portrait of Honnête homme

Abstract

Le Maitre de Claville belongs to the tradition of classicist moralism and attempts to fulfill the difficult task of portraying the honorable man, honnete hommme. Trying to define the concept of virtue, he refers to his own aesthetic taste, subjective emotions of happiness, ecstasy and bliss which come from the experience of beauty. With much liberty, he includes in his account of the honorable man what he himself considers most perfect from antiquity, the Bible and the most recent philosophical developments of his time (i.e. from rationalism). A coherent mixture of those elements is not easy. His deliberations show a moralist’s effort to give to his theory the shape of a logically ordered doctrine made from freely chosen elements which are not always compatible.