The impossible reflection: Ideologie, habit and language from Condillac to Stendhal.

Abstract

This dissertation offers a systematic examination of the concepts of habit and language in the late-Enlightenment science-philosophy of Ideologie, and how these concepts are applied and transformed by Stendhal, particularly in his earlier works. Though Destutt de Tracy coined the term ideologie in 1796, he credits Condillac with founding the movement half of a century earlier. Condillac's works revolve around the thesis that all knowledge derives from the sensing body. By studying this body's habits, the origin and purpose of human behavior can be understood, so that humans will not only contract habits most conducive to their happiness, but they will communicate in a language that represents simply and unequivocally the reality of human nature. Tracy sought to codify and refine Condillac in his Elements d'ideologie (1801), and P. F. Lancelin and P.-J.-G. Cabanis followed suit in producing their Ideologist texts around this time. But in their efforts to present a unified theory or science of all knowledge, these authors inevitably, if unwittingly, expose the enormous complexity of human thought. Maine de Biran concludes, in fact, that the Ideologist project is not only impossible, but undesirable, since the perfection of knowledge acquisition must entail a mechanization of thought that would stifle creativity and, eventually, the capacity for thought itself. Stendhal takes from Ideologie the optimistic notion that language can express the truth of individual experience. Through his own writing, however, Stendhal uncovers what Ideologie must repress to maintain its appearance of order and simplicity--namely, passion and originality. In his attempt to recuperate these elements and still adhere to the Ideologist prescription for knowledge acquisition, Stendhal is, I suggest, a Romantic author devoted to the Enlightenment cult of reason, order and truth. I conclude this dissertation by observing that these two tendencies (represented by Romanticism and Ideologist or Enlightenment thought) continue to this day to inform scientific, literary and philosophical discussions on the nature of knowledge.