History Denied: Theories of Harmony in the tournant des Lumières

In a somewhat clichéd historiography, the introduction of the variable of temporality into conventional natural history marks the dissolution of the concept of ‘harmony’, expressed by the spatial doctrine of the great chain of beings, in temporalised history. The aim of this article is to show how – in the period known as ‘le tournant des Lumières’ (c.1770-1820) – the relationship that the theories of harmony established with the time variable is more complex. The attempt to reinstate the harmonic perspective on the level of temporal development has its fullest expression in the work of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre and Charles Fourier.