Abstract

Jacques Abbadie's L’Art de se connoı̂tre soi-même was an influential attempt to describe an alternative to Jansenist moral theory. Abbadie drew upon René Descartes’ theory of the passions in order to arrive at an Epicurean moral theory that was based on the pursuit of happiness as pleasure, but that avoided the materialism of Epicurean physics. In this way, Abbadie was able to distinguish between the natural and legitimate principle of self-love and its corruption, and to argue that genuine moral behaviour and ultimately even human moral perfection could arise from the former