In a wide-ranging interpretation of French thought in the years 1670-1789, Daniel Gordon takes us through the literature of manners and moral philosophy, theology and political theory, universal history and economics to show how French thinkers sustained a sense of liberty and dignity within an authoritarian regime. A penetrating critique of those who exaggerate either the radicalism of the Enlightenment or the hegemony of the absolutist state, his book documents the invention of an ethos that was neither democratic nor absolutist, an ethos that idealized communication and private life. The key to this ethos was "sociability," and Gordon offers the first detailed study of the language and ideas that gave this concept its meaning in the Old Regime. Citizens without Sovereignty provides a wealth of information about the origins and usage of key words, such as société and sociabilité, in French thought. From semantic fields of meaning, Gordon goes on to consider institutional fields of action. Focusing on the ubiquitous idea of "society" as a depoliticized sphere of equality, virtue, and aesthetic cultivation, he marks out the philosophical space that lies between the idea of democracy and the idea of the royal police state. Within this space, Gordon reveals the channels of creative action that are open to citizens without sovereignty--citizens who have no right to self-government. His work is thus a contribution to general historical sociology as well as French intellectual history.
Originally published in 1994.
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	Acknowledgments	
	Introduction	3
1	Absolutism and the Ideal Types of Sociability	9
	The Well-Policed State	9
	Sociability and Democracy	24
	Five Ideal Types	33
2	The Language of Sociability	43
	The Enlightenment as a Lexicon	43
	Historical Semantics	48
	The Rise of "Society"	51
	The Concept of Latent Sociability in Natural Law	54
	The Amalgamation of Natural Law and Politeness	61
	Self-Centered Cosmopolitanism	73
	The Religion of Society	76
3	The Civilizing Process Revisited	86
	The Varieties of Civility	86
	The Rules of Irrelevance	94
	The Public Sphere in Apolitical Form	107
	The Douceur of the Gentleman	116
	Politeness and the Lineage of the Enlightenment	126
4	Sociability and Universal History: Jean-Baptiste Suard and the Scottish Enlightenment in France	129
	Universal History	129
	France and the Scottish Enlightenment	133
	Storm over Suard	137
	The Virtues of Being Lazy	141
	Ossian: The Savage Poet	145
	Robertson: The Progress of Refinement	150
	Hume: The Elimination of Politics	160
5	Andre Morellet and the End of the Enlightenment	177
	Form versus Substance	177
	The Rules of Criticism	182
	The Quest for Integration	189
	Public Opinion and Civility	199
	The Philosophy of Grain	208
	Revolution and the New Liberalism	226
	Conclusion	242
	Select Bibliography	247
	Index	267
