Experimental Selves: Person and Experience in Early Modern Europe by Christopher Braider (review)

Experimental Selves is a fascinating, yet complex, philosophical journey led by a compelling argument: the ontological shift in the early modern period is not the invention of the self but, instead, the role of experimentations in defining this self. Rather than being only the product of social order, rules, or a divine plan, early modern persons are both experimentations in themselves and are defined by their own, concrete experiences, the ones that could be reproduced "in a behavioral form." Therefore, the early modern world, and especially its cultural production, should be considered a universe of experiences, whether it is "to sit through Don Juan, read Descartes's Meditations or watch … mercury in a tube set." In advocating for such central ontological evolution in the seventeenth century, Experimental Selves somewhat recalls Jean Rohou's Le Dix-Septième Siècle: Une révolution de la condition humaine (2002); by highlighting how experience defines persons in the seventeenth century, it provides some genealogy for works such as Jessica Riskin's Science in the Age of Sensibility (2002); by giving some attention to the fact that early modern artworks are an experience, it is reminiscent to some extent of digital databases such as Naissance de la critique dramatique (The Rise of Dramatic Criticism, www.ncd17.fr) that focus on the spectator's experience instead of the plays themselves.

Each of the seven chapters unveils the importance of the central argument and displays its transformative power. In the two first chapters, "The Shape of Knowledge" and "The Art of Inside Out," Christopher Braider explains the relationship between the self and early modern experiments. He shows how Blaise Pascal, Baruch Spinoza, and Robert Boyle's air pump experiments, or the invention of probability, redefine the self (chapter one) and how Samuel van Hoogstraten's Peepshow questions the persons' relationship to reality and representations (chapter two). Chapter three, "Persons and Portraits," is somewhat reminiscent of Tzvetan Todorov's work in Eloge de l'individu (2004). By challenging Charlotte Louise Burckhardt's reading of portraits as "relational creatures" and by dissociating the subject and the painting techniques, Braider highlights fundamental tensions between the subject and the preconceived models and shows how pictorial representations shape their viewer's behaviours. Since Experimental Selves opens on a scene from Molière's Don Juan (1665), two chapters are about theatre. Chapter four discusses Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fayre (1614) as an experiment on the level of a fair and the relation between the stage and the audience. Chapter five, "Actor, Act, and Action: The Poetics of Agency in Corneille, Racine, and Molière" argues that theatre is "not just entertainment [but also] experiments" – I would argue that the experiment is not necessarily opposed to entertainment but maybe part of it – exploring how characters not only free themselves from the theatrical order but also behave in experimental ways. Chapter six rereads the debate on La Princesse de Clèves (1678) by confronting it as an everyday experience of debauchery and money-motivated sexual favours depicted in books such as Roger de Rabutin's Histoire amoureuse des Gaules (1660). Finally, chapter seven closes the arc with the eighteenth century to focus on Immanuel Kant's and Denis Diderot's aesthetic of sensibility, which is fundamentally based on experience.

Braider's command of literature, history of ideas, and his ability to make philosophers, scientists, and writers think together is definitely impressive and insightful. Going from Parcelses to Walter Benjamin, nourishing each with encyclopaedic references, he creates a world where ideas circulate across time and borders. This wide variety of examples and the intricate mixture of cultural history and critical debate do not make Experimental Selves easy to read. Ultimately, bringing a Weimar-era philosopher to discuss Jean Racine can trigger some skepticism. Yet Braider elegantly accounts for material, social, and contextual issues, recognizing the various context in which these theories are issued, whether it is Benjamin's German corpus, comparing Ren...