Enforcing Virtue: Social Norms and Self-Interest in an Eighteenth-Century Merchant Court

2004 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amalia D. Kessler
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Values ◽  
Court Order ◽  
Old Regime ◽  
Applicable Law ◽  
Court Judge ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Bill Of Exchange ◽  
Poor Children

Recent scholarship on law and norms has emphasized that important social values are at work in the law. But nothing could prepare us for the “Red Ink Case.” Decided by an eighteenth-century French merchant court, the suit was brought by a young woman driven by poverty to prostitute herself in return for a bill of exchange, written with her lover's blood. When the person on whom the bill was drawn refused to accept it for payment, the women sued her lover, demanding that he honor it instead. Although the applicable law required the defendant to pay the bill, the merchant-court judge declined to enforce payment on the ground that “humanity is the primary law.” Instead, the judge ordered the defendant to marry the plaintiff and thereby restore the virtue he had taken. With virtue thus saved, “[t]hese poor children withdrew satisfied.”What are we to make of this case? It appears in Le négotiant patriote, an account of Old Regime commercial life and merchant-court practice penned by a successful eighteenth-century merchant named Bedos, who claimed to have served as a merchant-court judge and president of a chamber of commerce. Although Bedos' depiction of the Red Ink Case may well be exaggerated, his professional experience suggests that it must be taken seriously—if only as an expression of what contemporary merchants believed merchant-court litigation should be like. Yet, as familiar as we have become with the notion that law shapes and expresses social values, the case remains puzzling. What commercial interests are served, we might ask, by enforcing norms of sexual virtue? And how does a court order of marriage promote the transactional efficiency that bills of exchange, as a defining feature of merchant-court jurisprudence, were presumably intended to facilitate?By examining the workings of a merchant-run court in eighteenth-century Paris, this article seeks to make sense of the Red Ink Case and its place in merchant-court jurisprudence.

The Family Model of Society and Russian National Identity in Sergei N. Glinka's Russian Messenger (1808-1812)

Slavic Review ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander M. Martin
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
Upper Class ◽  
Old Regime ◽  
Common People ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Patriarchal Ideology ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Common

It was long accepted throughout the European world that a father's authority over his children should be unchallengeable and that the authority of monarchs and noble lords was absolute because they, too, were “fathers” to their subjects. A profound shift in this thinking occurred during the eighteenth century, however, as increasingly critical attitudes toward paternal authoritarianism subverted the patriarchal ideology that undergirded the old regime. Recent scholarship has even linked the outbreak of the American and French Revolutions to these changing beliefs about the nature of the family. These ideas had a powerful impact among Russia's westernized upper class and drove conservatives to search for a less harshly authoritarian justification for the old regime. Much soul-searching went into their attempt to reconcile autocracy and serfdom with the respect for human dignity and the delicate moral sensibilité that were increasingly expected of any cultivated European. Slavophilism, which glorified the common people and emphasized the duties of monarch and nobility, represented one outcome of this quest. The anguished process by which proto-Slavophile beliefs evolved out of the noble culture of the Catherinian age is strikingly apparent in the turbulent biography of the poet, playwright, journalist, and amateur historian Sergei Nikolaevich Glinka.

Contribution à l'étude des idées politiques de Napoléon Ier

Res Publica ◽  
1975 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-144
Author(s):  
André Cabanis
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Old Regime ◽  
To Come ◽  
Napoleon I ◽  
The Revolution

The writings of Napoleon I and his contemporaries' testimonies reveal the image of a statesman more taken up with action than theories and whom circonstances have made go through different stages in his political  convictions. During his youth, he takes up all the ideas of the eighteenth century, even to their contradictions, though the temper of the leader to come, sometimes shows through already. During the Consulate - a time of dissimulation - he tries to conciliate around him the most antagonistic ideas in order to strengthen his popular dictatorship. When at the height of his glory - about 1808-1811 - he longs to enter the «European Concert» white building a universal Empire, and he thinks of reviving the old regime society, white not admitting any intermediary between the Nation and himself. Defeated, then deported, he clearly analyses the causes of his failure and makes the most of future by reappealing to the ideas of the Revolution.

Old Age in the Old Regime: Image and Experience in Eighteenth-Century France.

1990 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 268
Author(s):  
Jean A. Perkins ◽  
David G. Troyansky
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Old Age ◽  
Old Regime

Sympathy and Social Order

2008 ◽  
Vol 71 (4) ◽  
pp. 379-397 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyle Irwin ◽  
Tucker Mcgrimmon ◽  
Brent Simpson
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Social Values ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Generalized Trust ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Greater Good ◽  
Vignette Experiment

Social order is possible only if individuals forgo the narrow pursuit of self-interest for the greater good. For over a century, social scientists have argued that sympathy mitigates self-interest and recent empirical work supports this claim. Much less is known about why actors experience sympathy in the first place, particularly in fleeting interactions with strangers, where cooperation is especially uncertain. We argue that perceived interdependence increases sympathy towards strangers. Results from our first study, a vignette experiment, support this claim and suggests a situational solution to social dilemmas. Meanwhile, previous work points to two strong individual-level predictors of cooperation: generalized trust and social values. In Study Two we address the intersection of situational and individual-level explanations to ask: does situational sympathy mediate these individual-level predictors of cooperation? Results from the second study, a laboratory experiment, support our hypotheses that sympathy mediates the generalized trust-cooperation link and the relationship between social values and cooperation. The paper concludes with a discussion of limitations of the present work and directions for future research.

Monarchy

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joël Félix
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Reform Initiatives ◽  
Old Regime ◽  
Political Crises ◽  
The Social ◽  
Major Reform ◽  
Louis Xvi ◽  
Louis Xv

This chapter examines the social and political structures of the absolute monarchy. It explores the extent to which tensions and conflicts in the mid-eighteenth century, in particular disputes between government and parlements, divided the elites over reform and policy, and opened up the realm of politics to public opinion. Reviewing the fate of major reform initiatives through the reigns of both Louis XV and his grandson Louis XVI, it argues that political crises paralysed the ability of royal institutions to enforce authority and generate consensus, thus making the transition from the old regime to the modern world necessary and inevitable.

Gratitude in the Early Eighteenth Century

2020 ◽  
pp. 77-105
Author(s):  
Ashraf H. A. Rushdy
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century

This chapter explores the writings of four philosophers who were either directly or implicitly responding to the philosophers of the seventeenth century discussed in the previous chapter. The chapter looks at two philosophers who seem to adopt parts of the Hobbesian worldview—Pufendorf and Mandeville—and two who explicitly contest it: Shaftesbury and Butler. The primary questions they ask involve human motivations—whether they can be altruistic or must be acts of self-interest or self-love.

The Anglican Hierarchy and the Reformation of Manners 1688–1738

1982 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 391-411 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tina Isaacs
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
Church Historians

Few have studied the early eighteenth-century Church. Caught between puritan triumphs and the Methodist revival, its polemics and efforts at rejuvenation have gone largely unnoticed. Those historians who have noticed describe an Anglican hierarchy lacking in talent and drive and a population devoid of piety and religious fervour. Both of these images are incorrect, as more recent scholarship has begun to suggest. Church historians now concentrate primarily on biographies of famous ecclesiastics and monographs (and articles) on some of the more lively events such as SacheverelPs trial and the Convocation controversy. But no one has systematically explored the Church's attempts to combat the decline brought about by the Toleration Act of 1689 and by its own avoidance of earlier enthusiasms.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document