The City in French Writing: The Eighteenth-Century Experience/Écrire la ville au dixhuitième siècle ed. by Síofra Pierse (review)

Abstract

MLR, ioi.i, 2006 245 know reality in itself,or is knowledge limited to our personal and human perspective? What is the basis of moral conduct? Are there any universal moral guidelines that should be followed by all human beings, or is ethics a matter of custom and even subjective opinion?' (p. 1). Moscovici explores the ideas of writers who posed and responded to these questions, examining in particular Kant's Critique ofPure Reason, D'Alembert's 'Discours preliminaire' to the Encyclopedie, Diderot's Supplement au Voyage de Bougainville, and Chateaubriand's Atala. Twentieth-century reappraisals of Enlightenment ideas include Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition, Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth, and Said's Orientalism. The works chosen are well-known texts by canonical authors. Moscovici responds to the material in a robust manner, exploring ideas with rigorous and dense analysis, looking at the effortsof thinkers to philosophize common sense, itself a slippery concept, depending on shared cultural values and assumptions. The philosophical basis forcommon sense is taken as Habermas 's 'lifeworld', a shared and often implicit set of assumptions that make human communication possible. The problem of the interplay of universalism and relativism was one of the most fundamental issues of the Enlightenment, and was increasingly problematized in the twentieth century. Moscovici gives attention to thinkers who pursue a double dialectic. A single dialectic, she explains, hierarchically opposes two terms, one term made positive by virtue of negating the qualities of the other. Thus, universalists create unity by negating differences, and relativists create heterogeneity by eliminating unity. By contrast, a double dialectic describes a semiotic process whereby two terms acquire meaning by excluding from their definition qualities as? sociated with an opposite term. Philosophers who pursue a double dialectic transcend opposing extremes in an attempt at overcoming the impasse posed by the conflict of relativism and universalism. Moscovici addresses questions of epistemology, subjec? tivity,ethics, and cultural difference. The scholarship and the rigour of the argument are impressive. This book marks a sound contribution to the field. University of Bristol Martin Calder The City in French Writing: The Eighteenth-Century Experience/Ecrire la ville au dixhuitiemesiecle . Ed. by Siofra Pierse. Dublin: University College Dublin Press. 2004. xii+195 pp. ?29.95. ISBN 1-904558-08-9. This volume presents eight studies of representations of the city in French writings of the eighteenth century. Rather than constituting a study of architecture, planning, or population, The City in French Writinglooks at the metropolis fromthe perspective of everyday life on the streets. Siofra Pierse explains in the introduction that the city in the eighteenth century was very differentfrom the cities the Western world knows to? day: 'surrounded by muddy streets filled with beggars and dogs, carriages and horses, poverty and pungent smells, the average city-dweller had little concept of the country beyond' (p. 2). The studies focus on particular cities: Paris, Geneva, and the utopian ideal city. The studies are divided into two sections: 'Urban Mobility' and 'Moral Fragility'. The firstof these brings together studies united by the theme ofmovement, understood as physical movement around the city and social mobility. Will McMorran examines the treatment of Paris in Marivaux's novels La Vie de Marianne and Le Paysan parvenu, showing how Marivaux's geographical omissions are as significant as the information he gives in his exploitation of Parisian topography. John P. Greene looks at carriages and coachmen in the memoir novel L Histoire de Guillaume, cocher, showing how vehicles and their drivers are not just means of transport or signs of so? cial standing, but catalysts in the plot. Josephine Grieder looks at the marginal world inhabited by Des Grieux and Manon Lescaut in Prevost's novel. Ioana Galleron 246 Reviews Marasescu studies Mouhy's Paris ou le mentor a la mode as a novel of education. All of these texts, Pierse writes, are concerned 'with unimpeded movement. Whether it be from country to city,or within the city itself,and in coaches of varying degrees of luxury, textual interest in the individual's social movement is paramount' (p. 5). The section on 'Moral Fragility' focuses on the city as a place of vice, and 'explores the image of the...