La Monarchie claire de labb de Saint-Pierre

Labb de Saint-Pierre, connu pour son Projet de paix perptuelle, a laiss un ensemble bien plus vaste et cohrent dcrits politiques et moraux jusqualors disperss et partiellement tudis. Le prsent ouvrage, exploitant systmatiquement la totalit de loeuvre, en propose la complte rvaluation. Ds les premires dcennies du XVIIIe sicle, Saint-Pierre promeut une harmonisation artificielle des intrts, assure par lintervention politique et saffirme, avant Bentham, comme lun des premiers utilitaristes. Il imagine de substituer la patrimonialisation, aux recommandations et clientles qui structuraient la socit de son temps et dterminaient lexercice du pouvoir, une organisation rationnelle, mritocratique et dynamique. ll remplace les valeurs charismatiques fondant la perfection chrtienne ou la grandeur aristocratique par les objectifs de lutilit et du bien public. Pour ce diste conciliant moralit et religion, la recherche du salut par une pit active doit favoriser la justice et la bienfaisance. Selon lui, seul le pouvoir indivisible dun monarque inform par des lites comptentes peut raliser des rformes ncessaires au bonheur du plus grand nombre. Promoteur dun tat de bien-tre impos autoritairement, il reprsente, avant le plein essor de lconomie politique, des sciences camrales et de la doctrine des physiocrates, une dimension mconnue des Lumires politiques que cette tude entend souligner. --- The Abb de Saint-Pierre, best known for his Project for Perpetual Peace, in fact left a much larger and more coherent body of political and moral writing, but it has been only partially studied. This book, the first systematic exploration of his entire corpus, offers a complete re-evaluation of this important authors contributions to the Enlightenment. From the first decades of the 18th century, Saint-Pierre set forth a pioneering vision of politics as the harmonization of interests, anticipating Bentham as a utilitarian. He imagines replacing the system of inherited power and clientele networks which structured Old Regime society and determined the exercise of power under absolutism, with a rationalized, meritocratic and dynamic organization. He argued for the political values of social utility and public good to take the place of the Christian ideals of perfection and the aristocratic ideals of personal charisma. As a deist seeking to reconcile morality and religion, Saint-Pierre argued that the search for salvation through active piety must also promote social justice and beneficence -- and that only the indivisible power of a rationalized monarch, informed by competent elites, could carry out the reforms necessary to yield a government which would produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number. Saint-Pierre, thus, provided among the first arguments for an imposed welfare state, well before the sources more frequently associated with that idea -- political economists, cameralists and the physiocrats.