French moralist and essayist whose belief in the individual's capacity for goodness played a part in the shift of opinion away from the pessimistic view of human nature elaborated by such 17th-century thinkers as Blaise Pascal and the Duke de La Rochefoucauld. He shared with others of his time a renewed respect for the emotions, thus prefiguring Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He stood out in his day, however, for his exaltation of action, through which he believed fulfillment and dignity were achieved. In this he anticipated the novelist Stendhal. The hero, he believed, is one who is impelled by strong passions to win renown through the performance of great deeds—preferably (but not necessarily) those contributing to the well-being of humanity.

Vauvenargues first sought his own fulfillment in military glory, joining the army and serving in the wars of the Polish (1733–39) and Austrian (1740–48) successions. In 1745, disappointed by the army and broken in health, Vauvenargues reluctantly turned to literature as a way to achieve fame. The rest of his life was spent in Paris in poverty. Among his few friends were Jean-François Marmontel, secretary of the French Academy, and Voltaire. He published one moderately successful book, which grew in esteem with time, Introduction à la connaissance de l'esprit humain, suivie de réflexions et de maximes (1746; “Introduction to an Understanding of the Human Mind, Followed by Reflections and Maxims”). It consisted of the title essay and some 700 maxims, aphorisms, and reflections.

He appears to have been a deist in the Voltairian manner, although he opposed Voltaire in the value that he attributed to nonrational and emotional experience. Despite their divergent viewpoints, Voltaire proclaimed the Maximes as possibly one of the best books in the French language.