Epistemological Reflections in the Prize Contests of the French Academies (1720–1760)

The presentation deals with the development of the prize contests (concours académiques) held by the French academies in the 18th century as media of knowledge in the context of the Republic of Letters. The focus is especially on the rhetorical and moral prize questions of the provincial academies between 1720 and 1760.
Research on the prize contests has so far mainly concentrated on the scientific
and technological competitions of the 18th century – considering them as proof of the
academies’ agenda of innovation. Yet, despite the changing functions and topics of the concours académique, the tradition of the rhetorical prize questions remained one of the vital pillars of the genre during the 18th century. Increasingly influenced by
Enlightenment discourse, the prix d’éloquence deal with the burning philosophical issues of the epoch, above all the changing role of the arts and sciences, the development of morals and the status of the rhetorical knowledge production as
compared to the new knowledge of the empirical sciences. What becomes evident is a process of transformation towards topics and modes of reflection that go beyond the traditional patterns of the genre. The famous concours of the Académie de Dijon won by Rousseau in 1750: “Si le rétablissement des sciences et des arts a contribué à épurer les moeurs?” is only the most prominent example of this development.
The major focus in analysing the changing epistemic status of the concours
académique is the question to what extent the rhetorical competitions of the provincial
academies turned into a textual medium reflecting the crucial epistemic
transformations within the Republic of Letters since the 17th century, that is especially the shift towards written communication and towards the serial production and accumulation of factual knowledge.
In the rhetorical prize contests, an explicit reflection on the contrasting modes
of knowledge production emerges regarding the method of the exact sciences on the one hand and the knowledge of the textual tradition on the other hand. What is
particularly striking, is the epistemological critique of scientific method developed by
the defenders of rhetoric in the prix d’éloquence.