François de La Rochefoucauld
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François VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld, le Prince de Marcillac (September 15, 1613 – March 17, 1680), was a noted French author of maxims and memoirs, as well as an example of the accomplished 17th-century nobleman. He was born in Paris in the Rue des Petits Champs, at a time when the royal court oscillated between aiding the nobility and threatening it. Until 1650, he bore the title of Prince de Marcillac.
He gathered the results of Gassendi' quests on Epicurus in the salon of Madame de Sablé, through the conversations of Saint-Evremond and Ninon de Lenclos. Mme de Sablé was a tardy Jansenist; perhaps, thinking to her, Saint-Evremond wrote: "Devoutness is the last of our love affairs". Nor the Duke L.R. led a sage life, apart from his writer's old age: "Old persons set sound advice in order to console themselves they cannot set bad examples any more" - he wrote [M.93].
Chevalier de Méré (a "libertine") report a talk with him: " All men want to be happy, that is where all our deeds strive for; I gladly noticed that what is called vice is generally sweet and comfortable, and some badly understood virtues are sour and tiring. It did not come to me as a surprise that the great man [Epicurus] had so many enemies [...] But the false honest people, as the false devout, seek nothing but appearance, and I think that in his morals Seneca was an hypocrite and Epicurus was a virtuous. [Letter to Mme ***,undated ]
“Life is short and ideally should taste it? Interesting position, but I remember you that the very Epicurus advised all pleasure to be by definition a good, but each pleasure has not to be searched for, and symmetrically each evil has not to be avoided" [Letter to Princess ***]
A veritable Epicureanism could be found in his spirit of frankness (parrhesias), but without a sage shrink who lights up the dualities of purposes of human mind. He resumed the critical function of Epicureanism to unmask the society values (the "honnète homme") and he showed the love of self. "What people names virtue is generally nothing but a ghost invented by our passions, to which is given a honorable name, in order to do what is wanted." [Maximes 36; (1678)]. According to his courtier's analysis, a person unfit to ataraxic friendship, the soul's pleasures gravitate around conceit, in order to be loved with utilitarian or erotic aim. One give value to one's circle in order to be significant. The ambitious person is feeling each superfluous desire as vital interest: no room for sentimentalism and unselfishness.
Strength and weakness of mind have assumed names; they are nothing but good or bad functions of body organs. [M. 44]
Assessing the love by his results, it's more like to hate than to friendship. [M. 72]
Jealousy is the biggest among agitations, and the one by which the involved person is less moved to pity. [M. 503]
Liberality is mostly self-importance through the gift, which gives more pleasure than the given object. [M. 263]
In friendship, as well as in love, one is often happier for what he doesn't know than for what he knows. [M. 441]
We are so much accustomed to masking ourselves vis-à-vis other people, that we are dooming to be concealed vis-à-vis ourselves. [M.119]
