What view of man did the French Revolutionaries hold? Anyone who
purports to be interested in the "Rights of Man" could be expected to
see this question as crucial and yet, surprisingly, it is rarely raised.
Through his work as a legal historian, Xavier Martin came to realize
that there is no unified view of man and that, alongside the "official"
revolutionary discourse, very divergent views can be traced in a variety
of sources from the Enlightenment to the Napoleonic Code. Michelet's
phrases, "Know men in order to act upon them" sums up the problem that
Martin's study constantly seeks to elucidate and illustrate: it reveals
the prevailing tendency to see men as passive, giving legislators and
medical people alike free rein to manipulate them at will. His analysis
impels the reader to revaluate the Enlightenment concept of humanism. By
drawing on a variety of sources, the author shows how the anthropology
of Enlightenment and revolutionary France often conflicts with
concurrent discourses.