Entre la gloire et le plaisir La distinction des riches au XVIIIe siècle

Abstract

Drawing on Guido Alfani’s As Gods Among Men, this article examines eighteenth-century representations of wealth against the backdrop of the Christian condemnation of avaritia inherited from the Middle Ages. As shown by Giacomo Todeschini, late medieval theologians distinguished between a virtuous economy oriented toward the spiritual salvation of the res publica christiana and an illegitimate economy grounded in materiality and selfish accumulation, symbolically embodied by figures such as Judas. Adopting a longue durée perspective, the article treats the Middle Ages as the matrix of Western economic thought while focusing on the eighteenth century as the moment in which these moral and theological presuppositions were destabilized by the rise of sensualist materialism, the valorization of the private sphere, and a modern ethics and aesthetics that privilege the transgression of limits over the ancient ideal of the golden mean. The analysis then turns to literary texts such as Giuseppe Parini’s “Fable of Pleasure” (Il Meriggio), where the rich are figured as ‘gods among men’, liberated from necessity and defined by an unlimited capacity for pleasure.

Keywords: Wealth and Social Distinction, Eighteenth-Century Moral Ideas, History of Economic Ideas, Theology of Avarice, Ideas of Luxury and Pleasure