Jean de La Bruyère

Jean de La Bruyère (UK: , UK: ; French: [ʒɑ̃ d(ə) la bʁɥijɛʁ]; 16 August 1645 – 11 May 1696) was a French philosopher and moralist who was noted for his satire.

Jean de La Bruyère was born in Paris, in today's Essonne département, in 1645. His family was middle class, and his reference to a certain "Geoffroy de La Bruyère", a crusader, is only a satirical illustration of a method of self-ennoblement then common in France, as in some other countries. As such, he signed his surname as Delabruyère in one word, as evidence of this disdain.

La Bruyère could trace his family back on his father's side at least as far as his great-grandfather, who along with his grandfather had been dedicated members of the Catholic League. His great-grandfather had been exiled from France when Henry IV came to the throne and Catholics fell into disfavor.

La Bruyère's father also had been active in the league under the Duke of Guise in 1584. His father was controller general of finance to the Hôtel de Ville, and despite the turmoil in the country, was able to pay for La Bruyère's education and to leave him a considerable sum as an inheritance.

He was educated by the Oratorians and at the University of Orléans. He was called to the bar, and in 1673 bought a post in the revenue department at Caen, which gave him status and an income. His predecessor in the post was a relation of Jacques Benigne Bossuet, and it is thought that the transaction of the change was the cause of La Bruyère's introduction to the great orator, Bossuet, who, from the date of his own preceptorship of the Dauphin, was a kind of agent-general for tutorships in the royal family, and, in 1684, who introduced La Bruyère to the household of Louis, Grand Condé.

La Bruyère became tutor to the prince's grandson, Louis, as well as to the prince's child-bride, Mlle de Nantes, a natural child of Louis XIV. The rest of his life was passed in the household of the Prince or else at court, and he seems to have profited by the inclination that the entire Condé family had for the society of men of letters.

When La Bruyère's Caractères appeared in 1688, Nicolas de Malézieu predicted at once, that it would bring "bien des lecteurs et bien des ennemis" (many readers and many enemies). That proved to be true.

Foremost among the critics were Thomas Corneille, Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, and Isaac de Benserade, who were clearly critical of the book. They were joined by innumerable others, men and women of letters as well as of society, who are identifiable by manuscript "keys" compiled by the scribblers of the day.

The friendship of Bossuet and protection of the Condés sufficiently defended the author, however, and he continued to insert fresh portraits of his contemporaries in each new edition of his book, especially in the fourth edition (1689). Those whom he had attacked were powerful in the Académie française, however, and numerous defeats awaited La Bruyère before he could make his way into becoming a member among their ranks.

He was defeated three times in 1691, and on one memorable occasion, he had but seven votes, five of which were those of Bossuet, Boileau, Racine, Paul Pellisson, and Bussy-Rabutin.

It was not until 1693 that he was elected, and even then, an epigram, which, considering his admitted insignificance in conversation, was not of the worst, haeret lateri:

Although it is permissible to doubt whether the value of the Caractères has not been somewhat exaggerated by traditional French criticism, they deserve a high place.

The plan of the book is thoroughly original, if that term may be accorded to a novel, and skillful combination of elements exists in it. The treatise of Theophrastus may have furnished the concept, but it gave little more. With the ethical generalizations and social Dutch paintings accompanying his original, La Bruyère combined the peculiarities of the Montaigne Essais, of the Pensées, and Maximes of which Pascal and La Rochefoucauld are the masters respectively, and lastly of that peculiar seventeenth-century product, the "portrait" or elaborate literary picture of the personal and mental characteristics of an individual. The result was quite unlike anything that had been seen previously, and, it has not been exactly reproduced since, although the essay of Addison and Steele resembles it very closely, especially in the introduction of fancy portraits.

La Bruyère's privileged position at Chantilly provided him with a unique vantage point from which he could witness the hypocrisy and corruption of the court of Louis XIV. As a Christian moralist, he aimed at reforming people's manners and ways by publishing records of his observations of aristocratic foibles and follies, which earned him many enemies at the court.

In the titles of his work, and in its extreme desultoriness, La Bruyère reminds the reader of Montaigne, but he aimed too much at sententiousness to attempt even the apparent continuity of the great essayist. The short paragraphs of which his chapters consist are made up of maxims proper, of criticisms literary and ethical, and above all, of the celebrated sketches of individuals baptized with names taken from the plays and romances of the time.

These last are the feature of the work which gave it its immediate popularity. They are considered to be piquant, extraordinarily lifelike, and to have conferred pleasure or exquisite pain to the apparent subjects.