Honnetete

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Honnêteté ( French honesty ) is a personality ideal that was particularly widespread in France in the 17th and 18th centuries . People who corresponded to him were referred to as honnête homme or honnête femme , the plural form is honnêtes gens .

The term was first defined in 1538 by Robert Estienne in his Dictionarium latinogallicum : “Celui qui a une certaine culture d'esprit, un certain rang et point de prétention”, i.e. an educated person without conceit.

At the time of King Louis XIV , a model of court society developed from this . It was characterized by extensive, but not particularly specialized, education , cosmopolitanism, the ability to have witty conversation and good manners. One of the models of this ideal was Michel de Montaigne . It was propagated, among other things, through the writings of François de La Rochefoucauld .

Criticism came first from the Jesuits , who criticized the excessive worldliness in tracts and the lack of Christian virtues and tried to bring values ​​such as morality into the concept of the honnête homme .

Enlightenment figures such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau later criticized the honnêteté from a different point of view ; for them it was the epitome of a superficial and decadent court culture.

After the French Revolution , the term increasingly lost its original meaning and was used for respectable and honest people of all walks of life.

literature

  • Henning Scheffers: Courtly Convention and the Enlightenment. Changes in the Honnête-homme ideal in the 17th and 18th centuries (= studies in German, English and comparative literature. Volume 93). Bouvier, Bonn 1980, ISBN 3-416-01587-X (also dissertation, Technical University Berlin, 1978).
  • Oskar Roth: The society of the honnêtes gens. On the socio-ethical foundation of the honnêteté ideal at La Rochefoucauld. Winter, Heidelberg 1981, ISBN 3-533-03084-9 (also habilitation thesis, University of Marburg).
  • Christoph Strosetzki: Rhétorique de la conversation. Sa dimension littéraire et linguistique dans la société française du XVII e siècle (= Papers on French Seventeenth Century Literature. Vol. 17). Translated into French by Sabine Seubert. Paris, Seattle, Tübingen 1984 (PDF) .
  • Anette Höfer: Honnête homme, honnêteté, honnêtes gens. In: Rolf Reichardt (Ed.): Handbook of political-social basic concepts in France 1680-1820. Volume 7 (= Ancien Régime, Enlightenment and Revolution. Volume 10). Oldenbourg, Munich 1986, ISBN 3-486-53671-0 .