(1613-1680) historian, moralist
Francois de La Rochefoucauld was born into a noble family of ancient lineage. He came of age during the Fronde, or French civil wars, when the French monarchy fought to consolidate its power against the nobility. These wars eventually led to Louis XIV’s decision to create an absolute monarchy in which the nobles were divested of real political power. La Rochefoucauld fought against the monarchy and its prime ministers and, in 1652, surrendered and went into self-imposed exile on his estates in Angoumois. He missed the social and intellectual stimulation of court life and later settled in Paris, where he attended salons, the literary gatherings of noblemen and women that welcomed philosophers, critics, and writers. La Rochefoucauld developed a very close friendship with the writer Madame de lafayette; some of her detractors even thought he wrote her novels. In reality, he probably served as a trusted sounding board for her ideas and drafts.
While La Rochefoucauld published memoirs that have been invaluable to scholars of 17th-century France, his literary fame rests on his collection of elegantly worded, worldly aphorisms, Reflexions ou sentences et maxims morales (Reflections or moral sentences and maxims, 1665). La Rochefoucauld’s cynical and pessimistic attitude toward humans’ self-absorption and vanity does not detract from the insight and elegance of his phrases: “Our virtues are most frequently but vices disguised” and “Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue” are examples of his well-balanced sentences and awareness of people’s ability to delude themselves. To La Rochefoucauld, words such as love, honor, and virtue were meant to disguise people’s baser emotions from themselves in order to maintain a favorable self-image or amour propre. At the dawn of the enlightenment, La Rochefoucauld knew that “the understanding is always the dupe of the heart.”
English Versions of Works by Francois, duc de La Rochefoucauld
Moral Maxims. Edited by Irwin Primer. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2002.
The Maxims of La Rochefoucauld. Translated by Louis Kronenberger. New York: Random House, 1959.
Works about Francois, duc de La Rochefoucauld
Bishop, Morris. The Life and Adventures of La Rochefoucauld. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1951.
Hodgson, Richard G. Falsehood Disguised: Unmasking the Truth in La Rochefoucauld. West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press, 1995.
Horowitz, Louise K. Love and Language: A Study of the Classical French Moralist Writers. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1977.
Mourgues, Odette de. Two French Moralists: La Rochefoucauld & La Bruyere. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978.
