"I would not like to see a person who is sober, moderate, chaste and just say that there is no God. They would speak disinterestedly at least, but such a person is not to be found"
About this Quote
La Bruyere doesn’t argue for God so much as he disqualifies the jury. The line is engineered like a trap: he says he’d respect an atheist verdict if it came from someone impeccably sober, moderate, chaste, and just - the kind of person whose passions can’t be blamed for their metaphysics. Then he snaps it shut: “such a person is not to be found.” The move is less theology than social psychology, a character attack dressed as a compliment.
The intent is to relocate the God question from evidence to motive. If no one meets the saintly standard, then every denial of God can be read as interested speech: the libertine wants permission, the ambitious want autonomy, the vain want to be their own judge. It’s an early-modern version of what we’d now call “follow the incentives,” except the incentives are moral and bodily. Skepticism becomes not an intellectual position but a symptom.
Context matters: La Bruyere writes in a France where Catholic order is political order, and where the salon moralist thrives on diagnosing hypocrisy among “reasonable” people. His wit is in the ostensibly fair setup. He appears open-minded - he’d listen, really he would - while making the conditions of being heard practically impossible. It flatters believers by implying their side attracts the virtuous, and it scolds doubters by assuming a hidden vice.
What makes it work is its counterfeit neutrality. By framing unbelief as something only a rare paragon could responsibly hold, La Bruyere turns the debate into a referendum on the speaker’s purity. The cleverness is also the cruelty: it’s not that atheists are wrong; it’s that they’re untrustworthy.
The intent is to relocate the God question from evidence to motive. If no one meets the saintly standard, then every denial of God can be read as interested speech: the libertine wants permission, the ambitious want autonomy, the vain want to be their own judge. It’s an early-modern version of what we’d now call “follow the incentives,” except the incentives are moral and bodily. Skepticism becomes not an intellectual position but a symptom.
Context matters: La Bruyere writes in a France where Catholic order is political order, and where the salon moralist thrives on diagnosing hypocrisy among “reasonable” people. His wit is in the ostensibly fair setup. He appears open-minded - he’d listen, really he would - while making the conditions of being heard practically impossible. It flatters believers by implying their side attracts the virtuous, and it scolds doubters by assuming a hidden vice.
What makes it work is its counterfeit neutrality. By framing unbelief as something only a rare paragon could responsibly hold, La Bruyere turns the debate into a referendum on the speaker’s purity. The cleverness is also the cruelty: it’s not that atheists are wrong; it’s that they’re untrustworthy.
Quote Details
| Topic | God |
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