The supportive voice in the midst of solitude and melancholy: Volney’s génie des tombeaux et des ruines

Abstract

The article treats the universal history Ruins, or Meditation on the Revolutions of Empires (Les ruines ou Méditations sur les révolutions des empires) of the French cultural philosopher Constantin-François Volney (1757-1820. Using a textual, interdisciplinary study, which focuses upon Volney's complex cultural and historical philosophical contexts, I demonstrate that his primary concern was a nearly 2500 years coherent Europe of tradition and reception: this Europe did not represent a western corner of a larger Asian landmass but, in the late eighteenth century, rather offered the opportunity for a complex and harmonious unity of European peoples under French circumstances. Volney chose the ruins of the desert town of Palmyra as the starting point of his historical and philosophical reflections. As a cultural philosopher of the late Enlightenment, he looks past the divine workings of the course of history in order to take instead the finite, man-made world as his focal interest. The following pages emphasize these reflections on human history thatin the face of a melancholic modehighlighted the cultural anthropological characteristics and committed them to the promotion of a self-creating future. KEYWORDS Constantin-François Volney; cultural history; French Enlightenment; universal history; intellectual history of Enlightenment; melancholy je te révélerai la sagesse des tombeaux et la science des siècles … Volney, Les Ruines Biographical Notes on VolneyOn October 26, 1799 according to the pages of Le Moniteur universel, a meeting occurred between Napoleon Bonaparte and Constantin-François Volney. Napoleon praised Volney's travel report Le voyage en Égypte et en Syrie published in 1787. According to him, Volney had the greatest talent for observation. 1 Although the French philosopher was not an unknown personage during his lifetime, Volney is now largely unknown except to specialists. Thus, it seems appropriate to present a short biography. 2 Constantin-François de La Giraudais Chasseboeuf was born in 1757 in Craon (Anjou). Through an extensive inheritance of his mother gained in his maturity, Volney was able to leave the northwest of France in order to study in Paris. Against his father's advice to follow him professionally, he