Authors starting with L

- François de La Rochefoucauld (September 15, 1613 - March 17, 1680) -

Ancestry: Paris, France

François de La Rochefoucauld was a noted French author of maxims and memoirs. The view of human conduct his writings describe has been summed up by the words "everything is reducible to the motive of self-interest," though the term "gently cynical" has also been applied.[1] Born in Paris in the Rue des Petits Champs, at a time when the royal court was oscillating between aiding the nobility and threatening it, he was considered an exemplar of the accomplished 17th-Century nobleman. Until 1650, he bore the title of Prince de Marcillac.

His importance as a social and historical figure is perhaps overshadowed by his importance to literature. His work consists of three parts — letters, Memoirs and the Maximes. He left more than one hundred letters, and they are of both biographical and literary value. The Memoirs exceed all others of their time in literary merit, in interest, and in value, exceeding even those of Retz, between whom and La Rochefoucauld there was a strange mixture of enmity and esteem which resulted in a couple of most characteristic "portraits." But their history of publishment is a strange one. It has been said that a pirated edition appeared in Holland, and despite the author's protest, continued to be reprinted for some thirty years. Typical of the habitual plagiarism of the day, this work has now been proved mostly to be a mere cento of the work of half a dozen other men, scarcely a third of it being La Rochefoucauld's. Some years after La Rochefoucauld's death a new recension appeared, with some errors corrected, but still largely adulterated. This was unchallenged for more than a century. Only in 1817 did anything like a genuine (though by no means perfect) edition appear.

The Maximes, however, had no such fate. The author made frequent alterations and additions to them during his life; a few were added after his death, and it is usual now to publish them in their totality of approximately seven hundred. The majority consist of just two or three lines, and hardly any exceed half a page. The view of human conduct they describe has been summed up by the words "everything is reducible to the motive of self-interest."

But this is somewhat unfair. La Rochefoucauld reflects on the conduct and motives of himself and his fellows. His Maximes represent the mature thoughts of a man deeply versed in the business and pleasures of the world, and possessed of an extraordinarily fine and acute intellect. There is no spite in them, nor is there any boasting or gloating, but their literary value even surpasses this ethical soundness. For brevity, clarity, fullness of meaning and point, La Rochefoucauld has no rival. His Maximes never become platitudes, nor yet dark sayings. He has packed them so full of meaning that it would be impossible to pack them closer. He has sharpened their point to the utmost, yet there is no loss of substance. The comparison which occurs most frequently, and which is perhaps the most just, is that of a bronze sculpture -- a completed work, yet one whose workmanship is not over-detailed. The sentiment is not merely hard, as the sentimentalists pretend, but has a vein of melancholy poetry running through it which reflects La Rochefoucauld's appreciation of the romances of chivalry. The maxims are never singular; each gives rise to a whole sermon of application and corollary which any person of intellect and experience could furnish. And the language in which they are written is French, still at the peak of its power, chastened, but as yet not emasculated by the reforming influences of the 18th century.

La Rochefoucauld's theories on human nature concern self-interest and self-love, the passions and the emotions, love, conversation and sincerity (and the lack of it).