Gabriel Bonnot de Mably

Gabriel Bonnot de Mably (Grenoble, 14 March 1709 – 2 April 1785 in Paris), sometimes known as Abbé de Mably, was a French philosopher, historian, and writer, who for a short time served in the diplomatic corps. He was a popular 18th-century writer.^[1]

Gabriel Bonnot de Mably

(1709-03-14)March 14, 1709

April 2, 1785(1785-04-02) (aged 76)

French

Concerning the Rights & Duties of the Citizen – Comtal Publications, 2008 – 0-9557974-0-3

ISBN

Letters to Madame the Marchioness of P **** on the Opera – Comtal Publications, 2010 – 978-0-9557974-1-5

ISBN

Mably's most well-known work is Entretiens de Phocion, a dialogue first published in 1763, which introduced themes of his mature thought. Two of his works were published posthumously and they had a profound effect on the early deliberations on the assembly of the Estates-General of 1789: an enlarged version of his Histoire de France (first published in 1765), which was published in May 1789 to great acclaim. Authorities tried unsuccessfully to suppress it by confiscating many copies. Secondly, Des droits et des devoirs du citoyen, written in 1758, was also published after his death. He warned against events that later developed during the French Revolution.

These two works were seen to contribute to the later concepts of both communism and republicanism. He advocated the abolition of private property, which he saw as incompatible with sympathy and altruism, and conductive only to one's antisocial or egotistical instincts. Mably's writings contain a paradox: he praises elitist Plato, but also the enlightened Stoic views on natural human equality. Mably went further than the traditional Stoic argument that all men possessed a divine spark. He also went beyond the liberal concept of equality before the law, and argued for the equality of needs. He argued that virtue was more valued than the acquisition or possession of material wealth, and criticized idleness. He found an audience among those who were critical of the inherited wealth and privilege of the nobility, who did no work.

Mably's complete works were published in 15 volumes in 1794–1795, with an obituary/biography by Gabriel Brizard.

List of 18 published works by Gabriel Bonnot de Mably (1709–1785)

Posthumous publications of individual works, published in 1786-1794

Posthumous Complete works to 1795

Recent Translations in English by Simon de Vries

Johnson Kent Wright, A Classical Republican in Eighteenth-Century France: The Political Thought of Mably (Stanford University Press, 1997).

L'Abbé de Mably, moraliste et politique (Paris: 1886)

V. I. Guerrier

Mably's work is catalogued at the

French National Library

Charles Philippe Dijon de Monteton, Der lange Schatten des Abbé Bonnot de Mably. Divergenzen und Analogien seines Denkens in der Politischen Theorie des Grafen Sieyès, in: Thiele, U. (ed.): Volkssouveränität und Freiheitsrechte. Emmanuel Joseph Sieyes' Staatsverständnis, Nomos, Baden-Baden, 2009, S. 43–110

Gabriel Bonnot De Mably. (London, UK: George Routledge and Sons, 1930, reprinted as New York, NY: Augustus M. Kelley Publishers, 1969).

Ernest A. Whitfield

History Guide

The French Revolution and the Socialist Tradition: Early French Communists

abstract only

Conversations with Phocion: the political thought of Mably, History of Political Thought, 1992, vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 391–415(25), JK Wright

[./ Works At Project Gutenberg In French] [1]

Gabriel Bonnot de Mably