The revolutionary philology of Eugene Burnouf

The work of Eugene Burnouf (1801 - 1852) reveals that Indo-European comparatism was able to function within a universalist perspective and serve the revolutionary conception of a Promethean humanity creating from within itself its languages and its gods. In positioning himself within the tradition of sens commun as inherited form Vico interpreted by Michelet, Burnouf considers that Sanskrit and ``Zend'' texts allow privileged access to the primitive history of the human mind, without a specific Indo-European identity per se. This resourceful concept, whose politics, during the Restauration, are liberal, allows for a revolutionary use of philology as opposed to a counter-revolutionary one, in a position directly at odds with traditional Catholic hold-outs.