The Post-Revolutionary Self : : Politics and Psyche in France, 1750-1850 / / Jan GOLDSTEIN.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter HUP eBook Package Backlist 2000-2013
• VerfasserIn: GOLDSTEIN, Jan,
• Place / Publishing House: Cambridge, MA : : Harvard University Press, , [2009]; ©2005
• Year of Publication: 2009
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource

In the wake of the French Revolution, as attempts to restore political stability to France repeatedly failed, a group of concerned intellectuals identified a likely culprit: the prevalent sensationalist psychology, and especially the flimsy and fragmented self it produced. They proposed a vast, state-run pedagogical project to replace sensationalism with a new psychology that showcased an indivisible and actively willing self, or moi. As conceived and executed by Victor Cousin, this long-lived project singled out the male bourgeoisie for training in selfhood --Cousin and his disciples deemed workers and women incapable of the introspective finesse necessary to appropriate that self in practice.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Preface -- Introduction: Psychological Interiority versus Self-Talk -- I. THE PROBLEM FOR WHICH PSYCHOLOGY FURNISHED A SOLUTION -- 1. The Perils of Imagination at the End of the Old Regime -- 2. The Revolutionary Schooling of Imagination -- II. THE POLITICS OF SELFHOOD -- 3. Is There a Self in This Mental Apparatus? -- 4. An A Priori Self for the Bourgeois Male: Victor Cousin's Project -- 5. Cousinian Hegemony -- 6. Religious and Secular Access to the Vie Intérieure: Renan at the Crossroads -- 7. A Palpable Self for the Socially Marginal: The Phrenological Alternative -- Epilogue -- Notes -- Note on Sources -- Index