Figural Judaism and Political Thought in the Marquis d'Argens'sLettres juives

Abstract

AbstractDespite its immense popularity at the time of publication in the 1730s, the marquis d'Argens's (Jean-Baptiste de Boyer)Lettres juivesis largely overlooked by contemporary political theorists and the history of political thought. TheLettres’ contribution is noteworthy in its multilayered literary presentation incorporating many of the polemics and paradoxes of Enlightenment ideas. It is also significant as an early example of one way that post-Christian thought made use of imagined Jews and Judaism to articulate, debate, and popularize philosophical and political ideas. In this paper, I submit that d'Argens appropriated Christian figural Judaism in the service of secular philosophical inquiry. D'Argens's imagined “Jew in speech” proved to be a fertile ground upon which to conceptualize and debate post-Christian ideas about human nature and secular politics that subsequent diverse thinkers would make use of in the centuries that followed.