By the last third of the eighteenth century in France, the concept of libertinage had evolved from its earlier association with free thought to a much more specifically sexual radicalism. In a sense, this change reflected the general rise of individualism and self-awareness, but its effects were not uniformly positive. Peter Nagy has shown that while the new libertinism freed some, it enslaved others: it dehumanized sexual relationships and removed from the desiring subject all need to show genuine feeling toward the object of desire. Paradoxically, at a time when Rousseauistic sensibility was revaluing emotion, the libertine countercurrent redefined the self in narrower physical and egocentric terms. Celebrated rakes such as the Comte de Richelieu and the Prince de Conti gave a public lead; ignoring the responsibilities traditionally associated with their rank, they rode roughshod over social and moral conventions. The philosophes warned against unbridled self-interest but, like Diderot, found it difficult to draw a line between legitimate self-expression and the duties of all men to their neighbors. The liberty semantically implicit in libertinism, however, proved to be an increasingly attractive proposition. As the ancienrégime drew to a close, a preoccupation with explicit eroticism emerged as a cipher for a wider, conscious subversiveness. Thus may the French Revolution be said to have been sexual long before it became openly political.