Word used to describe authors of reflections on human nature and society. While this characteristically French term can be applied to authors of large-scale works such as Montaigne or Rousseau, it tends to be used primarily of those writers of the 17th and 18th c. who specialized in the brief maxim, sketch, portrait, or thought. Pascal's Pensées may be seen as the work of a moraliste, though they were meant as materials for a different kind of book. The pungent maxims of La Rochefoucauld proved a more typical model; to them should be added the Caractères of La Bruyère, whose concern is as much with social observation as with so-called universal human traits. In both cases, what the reader derives from these short texts is less a moral truth than a stimulus to self-examination, observation, reflection, and discussion. Such maxims and portraits belong essentially in a salon culture.
Of later moralistes, Vauvenargues and Chamfort are outstanding, though one might also mention the aphoristic writings of Diderot (e.g. Pensées philosophiques), Voltaire (e.g. Le Philosophe ignorant), or Rivarol. Montesquieu's Mes pensées and Joubert's Pensées are examples of revealing private writings which acquired the status of moraliste texts when published posthumously.
[Peter France]
