Chamfort (1740-1794)

Martin Jenkins looks at the life of a wry observer of society, cut short by that society's revolutionary turmoil.

- Martin Jenkins

Montaigne invented the essay. Another Frenchman, La Rochefoucauld, invented the maxim: the presentation of profound ideas in short selfstanding statements. The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche used that form extensively; but most practitioners seem to have been French. The French call them moralistes, which, like its English equivalent, implies commentators on the moeurs, or customs, of society.

What is the attraction of expressing ideas as aphorisms, usually without argument, inviting the reader to accept them as ‘self-evident truths’? One suggestion is:

“Maxims, axioms, are, like summaries, the work of people of spirit [or of ‘wit’], who, it seems, have laboured for the benefit of mediocre or lazy minds. The lazy reader takes on a maxim, which releases him from having himself to make the observations which led the author of the maxim to the conclusion which he shares with the reader. The lazy and mediocre person thinks himself released from going any further…”

The author of this typically cynical observation was the last of the great French moralistes, Chamfort.

Who was Chamfort? Nobody knows for certain. His birth was registered in 1740 at Clermont-Ferrand as Sébastien-Roch Nicolas, son of François Nicolas, grocer, and his wife, Thérèse Croiset. There were, however, suggestions that he was really the illegitimate child of a churchman; and his closest friend Guinguené (who probably did not know, either) referred to ‘the secret of his birth’. In any case he was brought up as the child of the Nicolases. Thérèse doted on him, and he remained devoted to her until her death.