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Brief Lives

Volney (1757-1820)

John P. Irish travels the path of a revolutionary mind.

The Enlightenment thinker known as Volney remains an overlooked figure in the history of political philosophy despite his significant contributions. His influence on Enlightenment thought, particularly during the formative years of the United States, underscores the importance of his work. Volney emerged as a prominent leader in the materialistic wing of the deist movement, challenging traditional religious and political structures.

Constantin-François Chassebœuf, later called the Comte de Volney, was born on February 3, 1757, in Craon, a town in the French province of Maine. He was the son of Jacques-René Chassebœuf de Boisgirais, a prominent lawyer, and Jeanne Gigault de la Giraudais, who tragically passed away in 1759 when Volney was only two. This early loss contributed to a troubled childhood, marked by a joyless home environment and abusive experiences at school.

Volney by Gilbert Stuart c.1795

In 1769, Volney’s maternal uncle, Joseph Gigault, took him in and transferred him to the College d’Angers. By 1773, Volney had enrolled at the faculty of law there. But in 1775, upon reaching the age of maturity and inheriting wealth, he left Anjou for Paris, where he settled in the Latin Quarter. The lack of parental affection had stunted his character-development, leaving him aloof, sour, and morose, though he was studious by nature and demonstrated great promise. His volatile personality often led to outbursts, particularly when publicly contradicted.

In Paris he studied medicine and befriended Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis, a leading materialist philosopher. Volney also developed an interest in Arabic. Cabanis introduced him to prominent figures of the French Enlightenment, making this period crucial for Volney’s intellectual development.

In 1782, Volney set out from Marseille on a three year journey to the Middle East. It was during this period that he changed his name to Volney, paying homage to his literary and intellectual hero Voltaire by combining the first syllable of that name with the final syllable of Voltaire’s estate, Ferney. The expedition resulted in the successful publication of Travels in Egypt and Syria (1787), which included detailed accounts of the region’s physical and social geography, climate, terrain, economics, religion, institutions, and recent history. The Travels offered a demystified view of the East, grounded in facts and observations, although it was tinged with typical European disdain.

Volney’s early work challenged the ideas of Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755), particularly those found in The Spirit of the Laws (1748), where the Baron argued that physical factors such as climate strongly influenced the development of a society’s manners and institutions. Volney, however, contended that while climate influenced government and culture, it was as a contributing factor, not a determining one in societal development.

Upon his return to France in 1785, Volney became acquainted with Thomas Jefferson, the American ambassador to France, with whom he maintained a close friendship and long correspondence throughout his life.

In 1788, Volney published his second major historical work, Considerations on the Turkish War, a philosophical study that contrasted the vigor of the westernizing Russian state with the enfeebled condition of the Ottoman Empire. In this work Volney warned of the difficulties associated with acquiring overseas colonies, which he argued led to a vicious cycle of luxurious consumption, warfare, and financially debilitating military burdens. He also advocated for improving and cultivating France’s fertile lands. In the same year Volney also edited a polemical anti-aristocratic newspaper, The People’s Sentinel, publishing five issues between November and December. This brought him to the attention of political figures, and he was named the Director of Agriculture on the island of Corsica. In 1789, he was elected to the Third Estate of the Estates-General, a legislative assembly in pre-revolutionary France composed of representatives from the three estates: the clergy, the nobility, and the commoners. Here he became known for his radical political views.

In 1791, Volney published The Ruins: Meditations on the Revolutions of Empires, his most notable historical work. It’s challenging to categorize, as it embodies Enlightenment ideas influenced by social contract theorists and deist philosophy while employing a structure reminiscent of romantic fantasies. It is a major critique of traditional forms of government in both church and state, presented with considerable literary flair in the form of a dream-tale set in the Near East of 1784, during Volney’s travels in the Middle East. He falls asleep in the ruins of Palmyra and receives a revelation from a genie. What follows are meditations on government, the rise and fall of civilizations, the emergence of parasitic classes both aristocratic and ecclesiastical, and the competing claims of different religions to a monopoly on truth – all framed in a vivid allegory of revolutionary transformation. Volney’s semi-poetic presentation of his philosophical arguments, combining deistic philosophy with literary elements that appealed to Romantics, made them accessible to a wide audience.

Perhaps the book can best be described as a study in what would today be called ‘comparative religion’. Its central thesis is that all religions are products of their geographical, environmental, and traditional contexts, and thus are contingent on both historical and temporal factors. Volney also argues that no particular creed has a monopoly on universal and immutable truth, including Christianity. Instead, though they all share some core beliefs, each religion is relative to its own time and place. The purpose of The Ruins was to identify the core beliefs and establish a religion worthy of human reason.

In early 1792, while in Corsica, Volney met a young military officer, Napoleon Bonaparte. They spent some time together, and Volney bought land, hoping to live a life of agrarian improvement. However, local hostility towards outsiders thwarted his plans, and Volney returned to Paris in 1793. That year he published the second part of his manifesto: The Law of Nature, or Physical Principles of Morality. This short work, presented in the form of a catechism or list of ideas, outlines the legal framework entrusted to the legislator at the end of The Ruins. Here, Volney emulated fellow Enlightenment philosophers who used the catechism format to promote their naturalistic ethics. Unlike The Ruins, this work lacks Voltairean satire and adopts a serious tone, although Volney does criticize Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s (1712-78) idealization of the primitive state.

Volney’s politics increasingly diverged from those of the French Revolution’s ascendant Jacobins, leading to his arrest and a ten month imprisonment during the Reign of Terror. Despite accusations of civil debts related to his Corsican property, and of atheism – which he denied, as The Ruins is a classic statement of the deist position – he survived, and was released after Robespierre’s fall. He then moved to Nice, but was soon recalled to the capital, where he was appointed to the École Normale, responsible for training school teachers. He delivered a series of lectures, later published in 1800 as a manual for teaching history: Lectures on History. These lectures, given in early 1795, explained various historiographical abuses. Volney argued for the necessity of understanding mathematics and geography before studying history, emphasized the probabilistic nature of historical findings – demonstrating the influence of John Locke (1632-1704) – and contended that local history should precede broader studies. He also warned against radicals who idolized the Ancients, arguing that ancient models were irrelevant to modern economic, social, and political realities.

In 1795 Volney also published On the Simplification of Oriental Languages, proposing a new approach to transliteration between the Arabic and European alphabets. This was not merely a linguistic interest; a universal alphabet, he believed, could foster transparency between civilizations and promote the triumph of reason over religious superstition.

In 1795, after the closure of the École Normale, Volney left for America, first arriving in Philadelphia, the hub of the American Enlightenment. A year later he travelled across the country, ultimately reaching Thomas Jefferson’s home at Monticello in Virginia. This journey exposed Volney to a variety of social groups, which provided him with valuable insights. For example, he observed a desperate community of French settlers descending into a rudimentary state of misery, low morale, and poor health – far from the idyllic primitive life described by Rousseau.

In 1798 Volney returned to France. He dined with Bonaparte at Napoleon’s house on the rue de la Victoire just days before the coup of 18 Brumaire which brought Napoleon to power. The coup was seen as a means of safeguarding the gains of the revolution from the excesses of Jacobinism and Royalism. While Napoleon sought to stabilize the revolution, he turned towards the old order instead of reaching out to the people and republicans. This compromise with the discredited ancien régime was a significant disappointment for Volney, leading to a fallout between the two men.

In 1803 Volney published On the Climate and Soil of the United States of America. This work mirrored his first publication, focusing on physical geography and social institutions. His remarks on Native Americans reiterated his rejection of Rousseau’s belief in an original human state of virtuous happiness. Instead Volney observed the American wilderness as a combination of poverty, conflict, insecurity, and enslavement to basic needs. So Rousseau’s speculations on the state of nature faltered in the face of Volney’s empirical investigations of actual primitive societies.

In 1808 Napoleon made Volney a count (Comte). Two years later, in 1810, Volney married his cousin, Charlotte Gigault de la Giraudais. But his literary pursuits continued unabated. In 1808 he published a study of Herodotus, the ancient Greek historian, titled The Chronology of Herodotus. In 1813-14 he released a scathing critique of the supernatural claims of Christianity in New Researches on Ancient History. In 1819, he readdressed his interest in language and the reconciliation of European and Middle Eastern alphabets with The European Alphabet Applied to the Languages of Asia.

Despite the Bourbon restoration in 1814, Volney retained his rank. Although he had some sympathies for this movement, especially in contrast to Napoleon’s coup, he took a critical stance when in 1819 Louis XVIII announced his intention of being anointed with holy oil. Volney published an anonymous pamphlet, A History of Samuel, in which he ridiculed this practice as an absurd ritual from a primeval age of savagery and superstition.

On April 25, 1820, Volney died, leaving behind a legacy of international renown.

Volney emerged as a seminal figure in the intellectual landscape of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. His life was marked by a relentless pursuit of knowledge and a profound commitment to rationalist philosophy. His travels, and his keen observations on various cultures, significantly influenced his writings. His works, most prominently The Ruins, challenged traditional religious and political structures, advocating for a deist perspective and a rationalist approach to human institutions. His writings, marked by empirical rigor and philosophical insight, offer valuable perspectives that warrant greater attention today.

John P. Irish is an educator and independent researcher living in Bridgeport, Texas.