Résumé
My objective in these article will be not so much to emphasise the elements constituting the specifically feminine originality of the work of Madame Du Châtelet than to attempt to explore the general knowledge defining what is described here as the "Emilian Ageˮ, and to do so by studying the position occupied by Émilie within a very particular facet of the intellectual life of the eighteenth-century -that of clandestine philosophical literature. In fact, the Marquise not only translated Newton (1643-1727) and Mandeville 1670-1733), she realized her own scientific experimentations, debated with philosophers and scientists of her time and thus defied dominant masculine thought 1 . Émilie Du Châtelet goes even further: she is also the author of one of the most virulent clandestine philosophical manuscripts against religion, the Examens de la Bible (Examinations of the Bible) i . This text was composed in the first half of the 18th century and remained anonymous for a long time; it offers a sacrilegious reading of each of the books of the Old and New Testaments and of the morality that results from them, in the name of critical reason considered superior to revelation.
In this context, I will attempt to demonstrate how the work of the Marquise Du Châtelet contributes to the definition and interpretation of a major field within Enlightenment thought, which is still sometimes ignored, that of the clandestine philosophical manuscripts, a corpus of which the Examens de la Bible, now attributed to Émilie, is undoubtedly one of the most outstanding examples 2 . Here again, it would appear necessary to proceed with the greatest methodological caution, in order to avoid succumbing to another danger, namely that of applying anachronistic analytical matrices to the work of the Marquise. I would like, on the contrary, to return to the criteria by which the least well known work of Du Châtelet (unknown for good reason, since it has only recently been attributed to her 3 ) is incorporated into this corpus, in order to reveal what this document tells us about her era; in other words, what we may learn about the relationship that Émilie maintained with the thought of her time