3 The Philosophie Sociale of 1793: A New Thought

In this second chapter I will delve into the Philosophie sociale, on which Moses Dobruska began to work feverishly, in Paris, towards the end of 1792. In all likelihood, Dobruska wrote the first version of the opus in German. Of this Urauffassung only a few sheets remain: these were among the papers seized from the author at the time of his arrest in November 1793 and were then deposited at the Archives nationales of Paris. The German text, which I am publishing for the first time here in the appendix, and which I will quote where the pages are available, although limited to a small part of the work, is very significant. It shows us how much Dobruska was deeply immersed in the German culture of his time, and how the Philosophie sociale, composed in France and so closely linked to French politics and the Revolution, has a fundamental German intellectual component.