Foundations and the public good

The first entry is l’objet de la fondation, and the noun at its head works four shifts in French administrative prose. The first is the one we share: the thing itself, the umbrella at the lost property desk. The second is the purpose written into a founding document, which is the sense here. A statute says la fondation a pour objet de where we would write « the foundation exists to », and English charity law still speaks of a charity’s « objects », so a reader who has seen a trust deed will not be surprised. The third sits at the top of every formal letter: Objet : is the subject line, the place where an English letter puts « Re: ». The fourth is where readers trip. Faire l’objet de means to be the subject of something done by others, so la fondation a fait l’objet d’un contrôle says only that the foundation was audited, and il fait l’objet d’une plainte that a complaint has been lodged against him. And once the purpose has gone, the phrase is sans objet: a question that has become moot, a request with nothing left to decide.