Volney and the science of morality in Revolutionary France

Today, Constantin François Volney (1757-1820) is an obscure figure. He was once one of the most notorious philosophers in Europe. Celebrated and reviled in equal measure, this philosopher, historian, linguist, travel writer and politician was for two generations the most widely read philosopher of the French Revolution. His work was banned in many countries, but it was distributed by networks of admirers across Europe and its colonial world. Throughout one of the most turbulent eras in European history, Volney sought to develop a philosophical system that would ground private morality and public governance in a scientific understanding of the physiology of the human body and the laws of collective life. His attempts to do so, and the context in which those attempts were made, shed light on the genealogy and early politics of the social sciences in Europe.