Thèse soutenue

Le problème de l'unité du genre humain au XVIIe siècle : contribution à l'histoire de l'idée polygéniste
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Auteur / Autrice : Elisabeth Quennehen
Direction : Jean Devisse
Type : Thèse de doctorat
Discipline(s) : Histoire
Date : Soutenance en 1993
Etablissement(s) : Paris 1

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Résumé

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The book of preadamites, written by the french Huguenot Isaac de Lapeyrère and published anonymously in 1655 in Amsterdam, is usually considered as the beginning of this way of thinking which was named afterwards "polygenism", and according to which menare issued from several stocks, and not from one ancester only, commonly known as adam. The polygenist idea, however, is not new in the 17th century : it had been first masterly expressed by lucrece in his poem, de rerum natura and it had been since formulated in different ways by several authors before the 17th century. The first part of the dissertation studies the polygenist idea in the works of two of them, guillaume de conches, a philosopher of the 12th century, and giordano bruno (1548-1600), as well as the possible influence of lucrece on their writings. Anyway lapeyrere is the first ane who means to prove this idea from the bible itself : according to him, men had not only been created by god all about the earth, but this creation had heppened long before adam, who is the father of the jewish people only. Lapeyrere develops especially that point in the books iii & iv of his theological system, which is the main part of the preadamites. The second part of the dissertation gives a translation from latin to french of these two books. The third part is a study of the preadamite system, mainly centered on the question of a pre-adamite time and of a pre-adamite history.