La Rochefoucauld | Donald Furber (essay date December 1969)
Donald Furber (essay date December 1969)
SOURCE: Furber, Donald. “The Myth of amour-propre in La Rochefoucauld.” The French Review 43, no. 2 (December 1969): 227-39.
[In this essay, Furber analyzes La Rochefoucauld's concept of self-love, which the critic argues is at once a principle of unity and disunity in the human personality and a mysterious aspect of human nature.]
It is difficult not to accept the critical position which emphasizes the futility of searching for a system in the writings of La Rochefoucauld.1 Contradictory in their affirmations, ambiguous in their moral point of view, paradoxical in their composition, the seventeenth-century Maximes and Réflexions diverses continue to pose an intricate problem of synthesis and comprehension. Having rejected the traditional viewpoints which saw in these writings a rigid, superficial thesis on human behavior, recent critics tend to agree with Will...
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