POLITICAL MENTALIZATION OF THE FRENCH RULING ELITES: A POLITICAL-PSYCHOLOGICAL ESSAY

Abstract

The study focuses on the main stages of the historical past of French civilization, in the depths of which the political mentality of the ruling elites was formed. The authors explore the mental and civilizational results of the five-hundred-year Romanization of Gaul. The role of Christian proselytism in the formation of a monotheistic mentality and the political role of the Church of Gaul are revealed. The thesis about the mental heritage of the Roman Empire in the formation of the foundations of the new Christian nation is revealed. As a result of the convergence of Roman culture and barbaric cults, an original mental space was formed, where Catholicism became the state religion of the Frankish Empire. The conclusion is made about the historical and mental-political significance of chivalry not only for France, but also for Europe. Next, the authors turned to the topic of the influence of the Renaissance on the elites, who, having assimilated the mental models of the Italian Renaissance, built their national identity on their basis. In the Renaissance epoch, the centuries-old theologo-political nature of French political power was transformed into a subject-pragmatic system of absolutism. For the first time in the history of Europe, politics was separated from religion. Christian dogmas as the basic mental attitudes of the elites have given way to the sense-generating primacy of secular principles of real politics. During this period, anti-absolutist and anticlerical mental and political attitudes emerged in the elite environment on the soil cultivated by the Renaissance, which determined the course and nature of the revolutionary events of the 18th-19th centuries. During the period of the Consulate and the First Empire, Napoleon I and then his followers pursued a policy of mental reconstruction of the elites. The final two sections talk about the philosophical, theological and scientific heritage of the great intellectuals of France, the power activities of its outstanding rulers, who had a significant impact on the evolution and development of the political mentality of modern French elites.