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1991
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17th century Myrddin Emrys (Legendary character) Merlin Ambrosius (Legendary character) MerlinCiter ce document
Hélène Merlin, « Figures du public au 18e siècle : le travail du passé », Dix-Huitième Siècle, ID : 10.3406/dhs.1991.1822
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Hélène Merlin : The public in the isth century. The legacy of the past. 18th century saw the division of the body politic into the State and civil society, a process which had already begun in the 17th century. Civil society, seen as a person with a conscience and an opinion, is called the "public". But in the 17th century the "public" still meant the organic unity of the res publico, the union of individuals in the body politic, and thus it preserved, even in literary debates, a "political" rather than a "civil" meaning. A study of this meaning seems to show that the Enlightenment public, retaining, but on other bases, the legitimacy and the cohesive function of the old word, was attempting to identify civil society with public good. The "public", even without an explicit political content, thus functions implicitly in opposition to the state.