La Rochefoucauld | Philip E. Lewis (essay date 1977)
Philip E. Lewis (essay date 1977)
SOURCE: Lewis, Philip E. “A Problematic Work.” In La Rochefoucauld and the Art of Abstraction, pp. 15-54. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1977.
[In this excerpt, Lewis offers an introduction to the problematical aspects of reading La Rochefoucauld, focusing on the difficult and ambiguous nature of the maxim.]
Just as reading La Rochefoucauld has almost always meant reading the Maximes, reading the Maximes has almost automatically entailed reflecting on the nature of the maxim, on its status as a genre or type of statement. The apparently simple question—what is a maxim?—leads into a tangle of complex problems in La Rochefoucauld's work. To each answer, to each notion or definition of the maxim, corresponds a particular image or interpretation of La Rochefoucauld. Examining divergent perceptions of the Maximes and various accounts of the maxim proposed by La...
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