One hundred years of answers to Lanson's “Questions diverses”

Abstract

The invention of the clandestine philosophical manuscripts by Gustave Lanson in 1912 is, undoubtedly, one of the most important points of the scientific research on eighteenth century in France. To understand the importance of this discovery, and the victory it represents to-day, one must measure the slowness of its penetration in the university culture as well as the broadness of the results of the very search launched a hundred years ago. Under a modest title, « Questions diverses sur l’histoire de l’esprit philosophique en France avant 1750 », Lanson prepared a project , giving the means and the method. In 1938 is published a remarkable synthetic work by Ira O. Wade, who sticks to the program of his predecessor. In 1969 is published the first of numerous editions which develop more and more on an intensive rythm. In 1980 Olivier Bloch organizes the fist synthetic congress on the whole phenomenon discovered by Lanson. Since then, all over the world, quests in libraries, papers, meetings, publications confirm Lanson’s intuitions as well as the fertility of the clandestine lode. This international success is inevitably accompanied by acute problems of definition and of interpretation of the corpus.