Biography of Jean de La Bruyère

Moral stillness

August 16 1645
10 March 1696
Jean de La Bruyère was born in Paris on 16 October 1645. Bourgeois extraction, the future writer and moralist, in 1684, he was hired by the Grand Condé as a tutor of his nephew, Duke Louis II de Bourbon, all thanks to a recommendation of the Bishop Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet. The life of La Bruyère takes place therefore in contact with the nobles, parca of satisfaction and in many respects humiliating. Contact with the aristocratic and fashionable environment allows him to accumulate material for the writing of "the characters of Theophrastus, translated from the Greek by the characters or costumes of this century" (Les caractères de Théophraste, traduits du grec, avec les caractères ou les moeurs de ce siècle). Published in 1688, the work has a tremendous success. The original part, placed in an appendix to the translation of Theophrastus, but which is also the most important, consists of maxims and short portraits that analyze human behaviors.
The work also has strong contrasts: in some passages the author wants to indicate celebrities of the time; La Bruyère also takes a clear position in favour of the "anciens" in the quarrel between ancient and modern. The "characters" do not have a definite structure, nor have a systematic doctrine, but they offer portraits that stand out for the satirical spirit and intense acute moral breath. The style used in the work is original, quick and varied, based on the use of a wide range of expressive instruments and on a precise calculation of the effects. In the field of literary criticism La Bruyère is a proponent of a classical type of dogmatism, tempered by awareness of the evolution of language and literature. French mixes analysis of period costumes with historical examples of stereotypes eternal and universal, and with social commentary and political daring, which opens the way to rebuttal rationalistic institutions, placing the logic and irony in the service of sentiments of Justice and humanity. In his later years also intervenes in the dispute between Fénelon and Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet about quietism-doctrine Mystique, which aims to point the way towards God and Christian perfection, consisting in a State of passive and confident stillness of soul-beginning to roll out the unfinished "dialogues on quietism." Jean de La Bruyère died at Versailles on 10 January 1696.
Article contributed by the team of collaborators.