["Death of beautiful youth" or youthful suicide in Geneva in the 18th century].
Whether it is the unhappy ending of family grief, the only solution to an unrequited love or due to some pathological behaviour, juvenile suicide horrifies the community of the Ancien Régime, which tends to interpret it as an "illness of the soul" characteristic of a youth that combines bodily vitality with moral frailty, but whose role would be nonetheless to ensure the morrows of mankind. Juvenile suicide underlines the flaws of social solidarity in the tightly knit community of the Ancien Régime, and it deepens the social resentment against willful death which, since 1774, has often been attributed to the harmful influence of the kind of "philosophy" or free will advocated by Goethe's unfortunate Werther.
Porret
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Département d'histoire générale, Université de Genève.
D000293:Adolescent; D049671:History, 18th Century; D006801:Humans; D009014:Morals; D012945:Social Values; D013405:Suicide / Q000266:history*; D013557:Switzerland
La "mort de la belle jeunesse" ou le suicide juvénile à Genève au XVIIIe siècle.