10 octobre 2022
https://www.openedition.org/12554 , info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
Marianne Schaub, « Naudé et Gassendi », Vrin, ID : 10.4000/books.vrin.7337
As the assassination of King Henry the IVth of France provoked a new strategy in the defense of absolutism and forced the libertines to wear a mask, secrecy became a crucial issue, and understatement a means of communication among the happy few – a characteristic evolution from the Baroque to the Classical. The very complex and sophisticated relationship between State and Court, Roman Catholicism and the Reformation, and the censorship prevailing in France at that particular moment, all called for new approaches: instead of founding a new science (politics), Gabriel Naudé offered a kind of « Discours de la méthode » for the education of the Prince, e.g. a System of references embodied in a prejudice-free library – and provided the necessary clue for understanding the function and mechanisms of the Reason of State.