Anthology of Ideas

Philosophy is by definition any theory that can’t be proven scientifically. In La Rouchefoucauld’s case this is especially obvious as he attempted to explain in terms of philosophy the behavior of humans because there was at his time no way to prove them scientifically. He used a version of the scientific method to arrive at his final maxims and although he couldn’t prove it in doing so he stumbled on to some very scientific principles.
In La Rouchefoucauld’s day humans where still popularly considered distant and distinct from animals however four centuries after La Rouchefoucauld the idea that humans are bound to nature just as animals is now becoming prevalent. Thus even though originally the maxims were written to be a sort of scientific understanding of humans they instead are a defendable philosophy. Although it does not make La Rouchefoucauld “laws” of human nature any less real, understanding the scientific basis of the laws allows one to understand not just the effect but also the cause of human nature.