Benchmarking the Self: François-Marc-Louis Naville and His Moral Tables

This paper examines the self-measurement and self-tracking practices of one individual, François-Marc-Antoine Naville, a turn of the eighteenth century Genevan pastor and pedagogical innovator, who extensively used self-measuring instruments to choose a destiny in life and improve his moral character. I situate his practices within emerging regimes of time measurement, ranging from Benjamin Franklin’s tools of moral calculation via Marc-Antoine Jullien’s moral thermometer, to Benthamite systems of moral control. I provide a detailed examination of how Naville used and adapted these tools to his own, strongly religious purposes. My contribution thus sheds lights on how technologies of quantification molded notions of autonomy, personal responsibility and citizenship within an emerging utilitarian context that aimed to regulate, control, and optimize human behavior.