Editing François Fénelon (section)

==Fénelon as reformer and defender of human rights==
Fénelon wrote about the dangers of power in government. Historian [[Paul Hazard]] remarks that the author posed hard questions for his fictional hero Telemachus to put to Idomeneus, King of Salente: 
{{quote|text=...those same questions, in the same sorrowing tone, Fénelon puts to<!--not a mistake--> to his pupil, the Duc de Bourgogne, against the day, when he will have to take over the royal power: Do you understand the constitution of kingship? Have you acquainted yourself with the moral obligations of Kings? Have you sought means of bringing comfort to the people? The evils that are engendered by absolute power, by incompetent administration, by war, how will you shield your subjects from them? And when in 1711, the same Duc de Bourgogne became Dauphin of France, it was a whole string of reforms that Fénelon submitted to him in preparation for his accession|source=Paul Hazard, ''The European Mind, 1680-1715'', translated by J. Lewis May (Cleveland Ohio: Meridian Books [1935] [1963], 1967) p. 282.}}

Fénelon defended [[universal human rights]], and the unity of humankind. He wrote:

{{Quote|text=A people is no less a member of the human race, which is society as a whole, than a family is a member of a particular nation. Each individual owes incomparably more to the human race, which is the great fatherland, than to the particular country in which he was born. As a family is to the nation, so is the nation to the universal commonweal; wherefore it is infinitely more harmful for nation to wrong nation, than for family to wrong family. To abandon the sentiment of humanity is not merely to renounce civilization and to relapse into barbarism, it is to share in the blindness of the most brutish brigands and savages; it is to be a man no longer, but a cannibal.|source=Fénelon, "Socrate et Alcibiade", ''Dialogue des Morts'' (1718), quoted in Paul Hazard, ''The European Mind, 1680-1715'' (1967), pp. 282–83.}}

He also wrote of women's education as a means against heresy.

{{quote|text=The world is not abstraction; it is the sum total of families; and who can civilize it more effectively than women .  .  .  .  [The concerns of women] are scarcely less important to the public than those of men, since women have a household to rule, a husband to make happy, and children to bring up well .  .  .  .   In short, one has to consider not only the good which women do when they are well brought up, but also the evil which they cause in the world when they lack an education which inspires them to virtue..."|source=H.C. Barnard, Fénelon on Education:  A Translation of the 'Traité de l'education des filles' and Other Documents Illustrating Fénelon's Educational Theories and Practice, Together with an Introduction and Notes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966),  2-3., quoted in {{cite thesis |title=Finding their Place in the World: Meiji Intellectuals and the Japanese Construction of an East-West Binary, 1868-1912.|last1=Racel|first1=Masako N. Thesis|institution=Georgia State University|year=2011|url=https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/history_diss/26}} }}