Mme de Staël et l'esprit national

Abstract

Theodora Zemek : Mme de Staël and the national spirit. This article attempts to show the originality of Mme de Stael's thought and the modernity of the theories of society, through an analysis of her conception of the decline of the national spirit. The author shows how Mme de Stael's view of the perfectibility of the human spirit, which excludes all determinism, differs from that of her predecessors. Mme de Stael attempts to give a social basis to morality by demonstrating how man, thanks to the faculty of sympathy, is drawn into community with his fellows. The sense of community, source of moral values, which becomes the national spirit, declines as society progresses ; the individual is alienated in the depersonalised modern society, in which the national spirit has been replaced by the ideal of the State.