Charles de Brosses

Charles de Brosses, Comte de Tournay, Baron de Mont Falcon, Seigneur de Vezins et de Prevessin ( born February 7, 1709 Dijon, France; † May 7, 1777 in Paris) was a French jurist and scholar of the 18th century. As one of the articles he Enzyklopädistenverfasste for the Encyclopédie.

Life and work

Charles de Brosses was a close friend of the naturalist Georges- Louis Leclerc de Buffon (1707-1788), who wrote the Histoire naturelle and a personal enemy of Voltaire, which had prevented de Brosses admission to the Académie française in 1770. And he stood against the absolute power of the French king, he was banished in 1744 and 1771.

De Brosse has authored numerous scientific papers on the history of antiquity, philology and linguistics, which were used primarily by Denis Diderot and Jean Baptiste le Rond d' Alembert for the Encyclopédie. On de Brosse, the term " Polynesia " is due, he for the first time used in relation to the whole of the islands in the Pacific in 1756.

He also lived with his 1760 dissertation published for les dieux fetiches, Christian Brandanus Hermann Pistorius to " About the service of the fetish gods or comparison of ancient religions Egyptens with today's religion Negritiens " the concept of fetishism " in the European language of books ". To him, it is also thanks to that from the mere concept of the fetish, the concept of fetishism found its beginning.

He was from 1741 President of the Parliament of Dijon and member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres (from 1746 ) in Paris and the Académie des Sciences, Arts et Belles Lettres (from 1761) in Dijon.

Works (selection)

• Lettres sur Herculaneum (1750 ), the first published work on this topic
• Histoire des navigations aux terres australes (1756 )
• Dissertation sur les dieux fetiches (1760 )
• Formation mécanique des langues ( 1765 ), an important work for etymologists
• L' Histoire du IVe siècle de la République romaine (1777 ), a French translation of Sallust's Historia, partially restored from ancient fragments and illustrated with topographical maps and archaeological sites.
• L'Italie il ya cent ans, ou Lettres à quelques amis écrites d'Italie en 1739 et 1740 (1795 and 1836). De Brosses is especially known for this posthumously published letters from Italy to friends in Dijon in France. Among other things, Pushkin and Stendhal this publication was very much appreciated.