Abstract
The second half of the18th century saw the emergence of theories of "civilization", based on the rationalization of morals brought about by L'Esprit des lois. In France and Scotland, these emerging theories inherited Montesquieu's representation of historical causality, and attempted to assess the role of the great legislators, as well as the part to be played by the irrational and involuntary in history, in the context of a relegation of the contractualist scheme. But whereas the former, in France, generally give primacy to moral causes of a political nature, the latter, in Scotland, reconstruct the relationship between the physical and the moral thanks to the contributions of a new science, political economy.
Our paper will address the following questions. How did the project for a "science of morals", which still had emulators in Montesquieu's day, come to be replaced by a desire to provide an empirical description of the diversity of societies? Why did this initially descriptive or explanatory attempt rapidly give way, in the 18thcentury , to the advent of theories of civilization - sometimes taking the form of philosophies of history or natural histories of man? Under what theoretical conditions did this change take place, and if so, at what cost?
