Abstract

Isaiah Berlin, English Liberalism and a Third Concept of Liberty. The concept of Jacobinism, while lacking any strong anchorage in the historiography of the French Revolution, nonetheless represents the central category in the Marxist analysis of the revolutionary phenomenon in general. The aim of the present article is to examine the concept of Jacobinism in its relation to a series of other categories : the individual, the universal, and sovereignty, categories prominent in recent historical debates. Our aim is therefore to propose a typology of the concept, by way of a provisional three-way division of political liberalism : the constituent liberalism of moderate Jacobinism, the egalitariam liberalism of centrist Jacobinism, the civic liberalism of radical Jacobinism. Going beyond the historical existence of the Jacobins as a group, the aim of our analysis is to give the largest possible extensive definition to the concept of Jacobinism, in order to evaluate its organic dimension within the political tradition which has its source in the French revolution