Manners in a Commercial Society. Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, Pierre Louis Roederer, and the Transformations of Republicanism under the Directoire (c. 1795-1799)

Under the Directoire, manners and morals (m oe urs) became an essential political instrument for 'forming' citizens and conveying republican values. Intensive reflection on how republican convictions and identification with the republic could be conveyed under modern social and economic conditions accompanied the Directorial government's educational and symbolic political activities. The article examines, in particular, the theories of Emmanuel Joseph Siey & egrave;s, Pierre Louis Roederer, and Jean Baptiste Say. These authors shared the conviction that the ancient idea of republican virtue was no longer realizable in the modern age. In their theories, the concept of 'vertu' was replaced by considerations of manners and morals (m oe urs). However, as the study shows, what took place was not simply a conceptual replacement of 'vertu' by 'm oe urs', with the latter retaining the moral connotation of the former. In fact, the authors mentioned wanted to develop 'm oe urs' into a unifying concept for describing autonomous social and economic processes. The discourse on manners, it is argued, underwent another significant transformation around 1800 not only for political reasons but also due to the insight into the limited scope for controlling these processes, thereby opening the way for early liberal conceptions.