A distinguished collection of historians and political scientists reflect on France's evolution as a political community from the nineteenth century to the present. The volume offers an original and timely evaluation of the 'French model' of state building and sheds light on specific aspects of modern French political culture.

By what process was the Jacobin identity transplanted into nineteenth-century Russian radical culture? According to the conventional account, the Jacobin label was coined by proponents like Zainevskij and Tkaev. Lenin, in turn, is said to have derived his Jacobin identity from them, thus revealing the non-Marxian source of his political ideas. This article contests that interpretation through a study of the origin and spread of the Jacobin terminology in post-emancipation Russia. I show that the Jacobin (...) identity in Russia was invented by anti-Jacobin populists and that there were scarcely any self-proclaimed Jacobins prior to Lenin. I also reconstruct the path by which Lenin came to identify with French Jacobinism. That path remained within the territory of Marxist theory from beginning to end. (shrink)

For over a century, the Oxford English Dictionary has defined Enlightenment as “shallow and pretentious intellectualism, unreasonable contempt for tradition and authority.” But this definition misreads two passages from Stirling's Secret of Hegel (1865) and misrepresents how “enlightenment,” “illumination,” and “Aufklärung” were employed in the wake of the French Revolution. An examination of British critiques of the Revolution and early translations of texts by Kant, Mendelssohn, and Hegel shows that, prior to the close of the nineteenth century, “enlightenment” designated a (...) process, not a period, and had few negative connotations. (shrink)

John Oswald was a Scottish journalist and pamphleteer who gained fame in the 1790s for his scandalous lifestyle and democratic political views. He was considered by his British contemporaries as the incarnation of the crimes of Jacobinism. This article seeks to reassess Oswald’s place in the history of political thought by placing him within the context of his own Scottish background. Oswald’s radical views were neither directly inspired by his French revolutionary friends, nor typical of the English and Scottish radical (...) scenes. Rather, Oswald is better understood as a paradoxical heir to a mixed Scottish tradition of civic virtue and historical analysis of commercial society. (shrink)

In Climate Leviathan, Mann and Wainwright address the political implications of climate change by theorizing four possible planetary futures: Climate Leviathan as capitalist planetary sovereignty, Climate Mao as non-capitalist planetary sovereignty, Climate Behemoth as capitalist non-planetary sovereignty, and Climate X as non-capitalist non-planetary sovereignty. The authors of the present article agree that the depth and scale of destabilizations induced by climate change cannot be navigated justly from within the present social-political-economic system. We disagree, however, on which of the non-capitalist orientations (...) is better suited for generating viable alternatives to the worst dystopian futures. The article thus stages a debate to elucidate the theoretical and political divergence between Climate X and Climate Mao. (shrink)

While in Western discourse terrorism first referred to the “Reign of Terror” imposed by the Jacobin state in France, in recent decades it has become increasingly associated with non-state actors. Studies on the undertheorized concept of “state terrorism” have by and large neglected its role in liberal democratic states. In this essay I attempt to re-establish the link between the state and terror by challenging the Weberian definition of the state as holding “the monopoly of the legitimate use of (...) physical force.” In 1990, the European Parliament called upon each of its member states to dismantle the formations popularly known as “Gladio,” the clandestine organizations stationed in NATO countries during the 1950s to counter potential Soviet invasions. Investigations ranging from Italy’s Operation Gladio in 1990 to the recent Ergenekon Affair in Turkey reveal that many terrorist activities were perpetrated by those intrastate clandestine military networks. The aim of the essay is thus to bring the agentival state back into terrorism studies through an analysis of Gladio operations in Cold War Europe. (shrink)

L’usage des termes de jacobin et de jacobinisme dans la vie politique ne renvoie jamais exclusivement aux membres du club de la Révolution française ni aux idées souvent contradictoires et mouvantes dans le temps qui y furent débattues. Ils servent à désigner, souvent de manière disqualifiante, des personnages politiques et des courants d’idées, jusqu’à nos jours, qui peuvent n’avoir qu’un lointain rapport avec la pensée révolutionnaire française. Les événements politiques qui marquèrent la Suisse dans les années 1847-1848 fournissent une (...) excellente illustration de la transposition et de l’usage de ces termes en tant que catégories politiques hors du contexte de la Révolution française mais en écho à celle-ci. Les événements des années 1847-1848 sont en effet, encore aujourd’hui, souvent analysés de manières savante ou profane à travers ces catégories qui contribuent à une historiographie particulière souvent teintée de présupposés idéologiques. Cette historiographie reprend, parfois sans recul, les termes utilisés par les contemporains les plus opposés à une construction fédérale helvétique, lesquels n’hésitèrent pas à la comparer aux épisodes sanglants de la Révolution française, dont les jacobins étaient censés être les acteurs. L’usage des termes de jacobin et de jacobinisme s’inscrit dans une vision mécaniste et répétitive de l’histoire et remplit ici une fonction disqualifiante de courants et d’acteurs politiques pourtant fort éloignés des idéaux révolutionnaires français. (shrink)

Piketty underestimates the disposable income of the poor, while he overestimates the corresponding income of the rich, for systemic reasons. Recently, global income inequality has gone down. Piketty's belief that in the long run the rate of return for capital will surpass economic growth is not plausible. Capital tends to disperse, and the creative powers of capitalism, leading to economic growth, should not be underestimated. Piketty is worried about the superrich, but he should rather be worried about the increased power (...) of government. What will happen if the rich cease to create wealth, as described in Atlas Shrugged? (shrink)

DIVUses C.L.R. James’sThe Black Jacobins as a jumping-off point for a reconsideration of colonial and postcolonial concepts of history, politics, and agency./div.

The self-limiting revolutions of 1989 in Central Europe offer an alternative paradigm of revolutionary change that is reminiscent more of the American struggle for independence in 1776 than the Jacobin tendencies that grew out of the French Revolution of 1789. In order to understand the contradictory impulses of the revolutions of 1989—the desire for a radical renewal and the concern for preservation—this article takes as its point of departure the political thought of Hannah Arendt and Edmund Burke.

This article sets out from an analysis of the pioneering work of Susan Buck-Morss to rethink, not only Hegel and Haiti, but broader questions surrounding dialectics and the universal brought to light by the Haitian Revolution. Reading through the lens of C.L.R. James’ The Black Jacobins , I seek to correct a series of ironic silences in her account, re-centering the importance of Toussaint’s successor, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, and underlining the dialectical importance of identitarian struggles in forging the universal. Finally, I (...) offer Frantz Fanon’s reformulation of the Hegelian master-slave dialectic—overlooked in Buck-Morss’ account—as a corrective that allows us to truly rethink progress toward the universal in decolonized dialectical terms. (shrink)

Early commentaries on the Tractatus, such as Russell's introduction and Ramsey's review in Mind already noted and commented on Wittgenstein's peculiar views concerning nonsense and elucidation. Ramsey also complains that 'sentences apparently asserting such properties of objects are held by Mr Wittgenstein to be nonsense, but to stand in some obscure relation to something inexpressible'. However, there would not be 'the orthodox reading' of the Tractatus exemplified by these remarks, were it not for the emergence of the 'resolute reading', the (...) 'New Wittgensteinian', the 'therapeutic reading', or the 'post‐modernist interpretation', which challenge it. Resolute readings can be divided into 'strong' and 'weak' readings or, more or less equivalently, 'Jacobin' and 'Girondin' readings. The resolute reading proposes a new way of reading the Tractatus, and tries to give prominence to its distinctness and correctness by attacking the orthodox reading. It should then be seen as an unorthodox reading. (shrink)

The articles reviews the problem of humanitarian terrorism that is a terrorism of self-proclaimed humanitarian goals and self-inflicted constraints. This type of terrorism justifies itself by lofty aspirations and claims that its actions are targeted killings of guilty individuals only. This terrorism is the product of the Enlightenment, it emerged by the end of the 18th century and passed three stages in its development. The first stage is the classical terror of the Jacobins 1793–1794. The second one is Russian revolutionary (...) terror of the end of the 19th – early 20th centuries. The third stage is the contemporary American warfare waged by the unmanned aerial vehicles, called drones. From the perspective of the contemporary just war theory, this terrorism is not only morally superior to the ordinary primitive terrorism of straightforward attacks on civilians (this terrorism may be no less fair in terms of self-imposed goals, but is doubtful in terms of means), but even contemporary war. Terrorists of this type kill the few but teach a lesson to many. But it must be clearly born in mind that humanitarian terrorism is not only the summit of just war but also the summit of absolute war. It is founded in personal and individual enmity, which makes the core of absolute enmity. Absolute enmity may at times be inevitable and even justified, but it blocks the road to peace. Revengeful spite, stemming from absolute enmity, is capable of creating its own phantoms of justice, propelling the war. The author concludes that the vicious circle is thus completed. The logic of just war drags in the direction humanitarian terrorism, humanitarian terrorism drags in the mire of absolute enmity. Absolute enmity proclaims just war. (shrink)

István Hont identified a point in the history of political thought at which republicanism and commercialism became separated. According to Hont, Emmanuel Sieyès proposed that a monarchical republic should be formed. By contrast the Jacobins, in favour of a republic led by the people, rejected not only Sieyès’s political proposal, but also the economic ideology that went with it. Sieyès was in favour of a commercial republic; the Jacobins were not. This was, according to Hont, a defining moment in the (...) history of political thought. In this article, I offer a different analysis of that particular moment in the history of the commercial republic, one that instead of focusing on Sieyès and the Jacobins, looks at the thought of Girondins philosophers Nicolas de Condorcet and Sophie de Grouchy. I argue that their arguments provide sound models for a commercial republic, reconciling late 18th century republican ideals in which virtue was central, with the need for a flourishing and internationally active market economy. (shrink)

Mill's On Liberty has turned out to be, as he predicted, the most widely read and long-lasting of his writings. It has proved, however, extremely difficult to pin Mill down to any definite political doctrines. His contemporaries clearly had the same problems as have beset modern commentators. Some portray Mill as a dangerous revolutionary, a latter-day Jacobin; others see him as peddling mere platitudes. This volume traces the reception of On Liberty in the periodical literature, from the "rave" review (...) of Buckle in Fraser's Magazine, by way of the furious denunciations in such Tory journals as Blackwood's and the Quarterly, down to later liberals like John Morley and Leslie Stephen. (shrink)

In the last two centuries, our world would have been a safer place if philosophers such as Rousseau, Marx, and Nietzsche had not given intellectual encouragement to the radical ideologies of Jacobins, Stalinists, and fascists. Maybe the world would have been better off, from the standpoint of sound practice, if philosophers had engaged in only modest, decent theory, as did John Stuart Mill. Yet, as Ronald Beiner contends, the point of theory is not to think safe thoughts; the point is (...) to open intellectual horizons. In Philosophy in a Time of Lost Spirit, Beiner reflects on the dualism of theory and practice. The purpose of the theorist is not to offer sensible guidance on the conduct of social life but to test the boundaries of our vision of social order. Whereas the liberal citizen should embody the practical virtues of prudence and moderation, the theorist should be radical, probing, and immoderate. Looking back at the liberal-communitarian debate of the 1980s, Beiner recognizes that the antidote to our spiritless times lies neither in the embrace of community over individualism nor of individualism over community: both individual and community need to be submitted to radical questioning. It is by exposing ourselves to the challenge of fearless thinking encountered at the philosophical extremities that we are most likely to understand our own world at a deeper level. In this collection of essays and reviews, Ronald Beiner helps us to think critically about the thought-worlds of our foremost contemporary thinkers, including Hannah Arendt, Allan Bloom, Michel Foucault, Hans-Georg Gadamer, J¦rgen Habermas, Will Kymlicka, Christopher Lasch, Richard Rorty, Judith Shklar, Leo Strauss, Charles Taylor, and Michael Walzer. (shrink)

The connection between Godwin and Fénelon has traditionally been restricted to the famous and controversial moment in the first edition of Political Justice (1793) in which Godwin presents an example of the interdependence of rationality and ethical action. This paper argues, however, that Fénelon, and particularly his political and educational treatise Telemachus (1699), plays a significant role in a number of Godwin's subsequent fictional works. Employing Telemachus to explore the theories of education presented by Godwin in the various editions of (...) Political Justice and The Enquirer (1797), this paper explores the manner in which Godwin's version of the Enlightenment transcendence of pedagogical power comes up against its limits. Reading this issue in relation to Godwin's argument, in ‘Of Choice in Reading’, that literature remains outside of socio-ethical corruption, three of Godwin's major novels are shown to demonstrate that Telemachus provides the chance for meta-textual moments in which the appeal to reason (the reader's rational capacity or ‘private judgement’) is at once reflected upon and produced. Reading educational theories and problems into Godwin's major fiction in this fashion helps to clarify aspects of the Godwinian (or ‘Jacobin’) novel. (shrink)

This is a case study of the birth of conservative historicism out of the Jacobin Terror. The historical rupture represented by the French Revolution provoked reflections on the course and meaning of history among those who, opposed to the Revolution, would become heralds of conservatism. Highly significant -- and heretofore neglected -- among these reflections were those that the Savoyard thinker Joseph de Maistre developed in De la Souverainete du peuple, the precipitate critique of Rousseau's Du Contrat social that (...) he composed during the years 1794 to 1796. This paper contends that De la Souveraineté introduced an influential and original form of historicism founded on a combinatorial theory of political constitutions. It likewise demonstrates that, in devising a model for the history of nations, Maistre also defined concepts that would become integral to nineteenth-century positivism, to the then- nascent science of moral statistics, and to French sociology. (shrink)

Dans ce pays où, à la façon du Dictionnaire des idées reçues, il convient de tonner contre les méfaits de l’État jacobin, nul ne s’avise de savoir au juste comment celui-ci fonctionne ni ce qu’il fait. J’adopte en quelque sorte la position en miroir de l’idée reçue : je ne suis pas sûr de savoir ce qu’il faut penser de l’État en général, mais je sais empiriquement et en détails ce qu’il fait et comment il fonctionne. Je ne déduis (...) pas de proposition de réforme d’une théorie de l’État mais je tire de mon expérience l’idée d’une nouvelle façon d’agir ; je ne dessine pas la cité idéale mais je cherche ce qui pourrait faire revenir l’action dans l’institution. (shrink)

This volume examines the evolving reputation of Rousseau as an authority on education in France from the publication of Emile in 1762 to the fall of the Jacobins in 1794. It takes as its focus the centrality of the debate over private and public education. The author argues that what unites Rousseau and the Revolutionaries is their holistic approach, which perceives an organic relationship between the internal constitution of the person as a moral and emotional being and what are normally (...) thought of as external public matters such as politics. Education is, in fact, the key to Rousseau's philosophy and it is also the key to revolutionary change. The Revolutionaries may start by looking at the necessary reform of the monarchy or the taxation system, but as things develop, they realise that if the Revolution is to last, education must be appropriate to it. In this way the Revolutionaries are obliged to consider education as a tool for thinking about the very problem Rousseau had perceived: the connection between the inner self and society and its institutions. The study examines the way in which the early revolutionaries are faced by Rousseau's already established reputation as an authority on private education and how this poses problems for them. Linked too emphatically with individualism and the private sphere, Rousseau represents an ambiguous symbol for those concerned with the reform of public education. Yet, his reputation in the field of child care the developing cult of him as inspiration and symbol of the Revolution make him an almost obligatory reference point for educational reformers. The author's analysis traces the progression of the Revolutionaries' attitudes. The volume demonstrates how the first thirty to thirty-five years of the fortunes of Rousseau's reputation as an educationist have, arguably, more to do with politics than pedagogy. Two major phases of the intermeshing of education and politics around the figure of Rousseau can be seen: the first in the years following the publication of Emile, when the supporters of absolute monarchy show their suspicion of the radical implications of Emile, and the second in mid-Revolution, when the association of Rousseau and his political doctrine spills over into the plans of educational reform. This volume charts the progress of these developments and casts new light on the vexed question of the relationship of Rousseau to the French Revolution. (shrink)

Fugitive Politics explores the intersection between politics and ecology, between the requirements for radical change and the unprecedented challenges posed by the global crisis, a dialectic has rarely been addressed in academia. Across eight chapters, Carl Boggs explores how systemic change may be achieved within the current system, while detailing attempts at achieving change within nation states. Boggs states that any notion of revolution seems fanciful in the current climate, contending that controlling elites have concentrated their hold on corporate power (...) along three self-serving fronts: technology (Big Tech) and the surveillance order, militarism and the warfare state, intensification of globalized power. Combined with this Boggs cites the fundamental absence of revolutionary counter-forces, arguing that after decades of subservice relevant, allied to the rise of identity politics and social movements, the Marxist theoretical legacy is now exhausted, and will not provide an exit from the crisis. Boggs concludes that the only possibility for fundamental change will come from an open style of politics, in the Jacobin tradition, operating within the overall structures of the current democratic state. Written for both an academic and general readership, in the US and beyond, Fugitive Politics will be of vital importance to those studying political theory, political philosophy, political history, Marxism and Marxist theory, authoritarian politics, ecology, environmental politics, and climate politics. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article seeks to explain why the Roman dictatorship, which had served as a positive model of constitutional emergency government until the French Revolution, acquired a negative meaning during the Revolution itself. Both Montesquieu and Rousseau regarded the dictatorship as a legitimate institution, necessary to protect the republic in times of crisis. For the French revolutionaries, the word ‘dictatorship’ acquired negative connotations: it became a rhetorical tool for accusing their political opponents of authoritarian rule. This article argues that Carl (...) Schmitt’s distinction between commissarial and sovereign dictatorship is unhelpful for understanding why the dictatorship was rejected by the French revolutionaries. Instead, it shows that it was the early identification with Montesquieu’s aristocratic dictatorship, which caused the delegates of the National Assembly to reject it as a threat to popular sovereignty. The exception was Marat, who proposed to establish a popular dictatorship à la Rousseau to purge the state from counterrevolutionary forces. However, Marat’s proposal found little support with his fellow-Jacobins, as it allowed the Girondins to accuse them of a conspiracy against the Convention. This caused the Jacobins to reject the dictatorship altogether and to propose alternative models of emergency government. (shrink)

This article signals at a dearth of critical engagement with Thomas Carlyle's Presbyterian heritage resulting from the received whiggish narrative of his Calvinism as unenlightened, anachronistic, and backward-looking. It proceeds to challenge this view by examining closely Carlyle's creative use of key Calvinist concepts in his cosmopolitan and enlightened dialogue with the contemporary periodical press over British and European cultures. Carlyle is shown to be an adept purveyor both of the Edinburgh Magazine's enlightened idiom and of Blackwood's morally conservative and (...) artistically cosmopolitan agendas, while also making creative capital of the Anti-Jacobin's powerful Gothic imagery and of the critical verve of the Westminster Review. The main addressees of Carlyle's reading of the signs of the times, I argue, are contemporary Whigs. Carlyle's depiction of Macaulay as a ‘spiritual hippopotamus’ spells Carlyle's broader critique of the modern lack of imagination of the spiritual which sponsors deterministic religious and secular readings of reality. Carlyle displays his enlightened Calvinist perspective in discussing the French Revolution through such key Scottish Enlightenment concepts as free will, conscience, civilisational and moral progress, and divine providence. Insightful and creative use of his inherited Scottish Calvinist heritage characterises Carlyle's open, cosmopolitan reading of the signs of the times. (shrink)

Moderation and liberalism are different and in some cases antagonistic concepts. In recent years, the view that Sieyès’s idea of constituent power is a moderate and liberal rendering of sovereignty has gained acceptance in intellectual history and constitutional theory literature. This claim is based on the premise that radical and illiberal readers of Rousseau’s idea of sovereignty, such as Robespierre and the Jacobins, were opposed to representing the general will (volonté générale). Thus, constituent power as the exercise of power by (...) extraordinary representatives to draft a constitution would be a liberal attempt at political moderation in the French revolution. In contrast to this liberal reading, my analysis shows that Sieyès’s idea of constituent power is an illiberal attempt at political moderation. Against moderate liberal theories, constituent power demands that the extraordinary representatives of the constituent assembly must will, deliberate, and act as if they were the people themselves. These representatives have absolute powers and the mandate to create a constitution but also the imperative to perceive and mirror the sovereign will. From a political theory approach, I conclude that constituent power is not a liberal idea but a key notion of moderate illiberalism that prevailed during the French Revolution. (shrink)

Historians and political theorists have long been interested in how the principle of people’s power was conceptualised during the French Revolution. Traditionally, two diverging accounts emerge, one of national and the other of popular sovereignty, the former associated with moderate monarchist deputies, including the Abbé Sieyes, and the latter with the Jacobins. This paper argues against this binary interpretation of the political thought of the French Revolution, in favour of a third account of people’s power, Sieyes’ idea of pouvoir constituant. (...) Traditionally, constituent power has been viewed as a variation of sovereignty, but I show it to be an independent conceptualisation of people’s power. Sieyes’ political theory led him to criticise and refuse contemporary theories of sovereignty in favour of what he understood as a fully modern account of people’s power. Based on extensive research in the archives, I show how Sieyes opposed the deployment of sovereignty by the revolutionary Assemblies and reco... (shrink)

This essay seeks to bring into focus the latent political theory of CLR James’s World Revolution, 1917-1936, and to show, on this basis, how World Revolution explains certain difficult aspects of The Black Jacobins. The core of James’s theory is the thesis that social classes are organically and internally identified, and that each has a preformed and unitary interest, which can be articulated as a set of political principles. A class is called to act by the voice that expresses the (...) class’s interest in the terms of its political principles. Once these points are made clear, several problems regarding the interpretation of The Black Jacobins disappear. First, James’s claim that the slaves of San Domingo were “closer to a modern proletariat than any group of workers in existence at the time” follows from his organic concept of the proletariat. Second, James’s revision of his account of the Haitian Revolution over the decades does not signify a move in the direction of “history from below” but a changed estimation of the conditions under which the mirroring operation he assigned to political leadership might take place. What seems to be James’s inordinate interest in the individual leader, finally, is more properly understood to be his antipathy to institutions and organizations. (shrink)

This essay seeks to bring into focus the latent political theory of CLR James’s World Revolution, 1917-1936, and to show, on this basis, how World Revolution explains certain difficult aspects of The Black Jacobins. The core of James’s theory is the thesis that social classes are organically and internally identified, and that each has a preformed and unitary interest, which can be articulated as a set of political principles. A class is called to act by the voice that expresses the (...) class’s interest in the terms of its political principles. Once these points are made clear, several problems regarding the interpretation of The Black Jacobins disappear. First, James’s claim that the slaves of San Domingo were “closer to a modern proletariat than any group of workers in existence at the time” follows from his organic concept of the proletariat. Second, James’s revision of his account of the Haitian Revolution over the decades does not signify a move in the direction of “history from below” but a changed estimation of the conditions under which the mirroring operation he assigned to political leadership might take place. What seems to be James’s inordinate interest in the individual leader, finally, is more properly understood to be his antipathy to institutions and organizations. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 61.3 (2000) 453-471 [Access article in PDF] Liberty, Authority, and Trust in Burke's Idea of Empire Richard Bourke When Edmund Burke first embarked upon a parliamentary career, British political life was in the process of adapting to a series of critical reorientations in both the dynamics of party affiliation and the direction of imperial policy. During the period of the Seven Years' War, (...) a reconstituted militia became a focus for patriotic enthusiasm, uniting national sentiment against France and effectively eradicating the remnants of Jacobite rhetoric and aspiration. Traditional opposition between Tory and Whig became irrelevant, while Court and Country jointly came to the support of the Pitt-Newcastle ministry. However, in due course the Old Corps disintegrated as George III succeeded to the throne with the promise of an end to factional strife and the beginning of a patriotic alliance in government. But while competing ideologies and interests on the domestic political scene were undergoing comprehensive realignment, the pursuit of a blue-water policy in tandem with strategic continental campaigns brought Britain's struggle against France into North America, the Caribbean, and India. Trade continued to expand into Asia and West Africa, but the principles of commercial advantage were continually brought into open conflict with the exigencies of war. The division of power in Europe became embroiled in a substantial redivision of empire, and by 1763 British territorial expansion had reached its zenith.When Burke was appointed private secretary to the Marquis of Rockingham, with the national debt standing at an all time high and the demands of imperial defense unlikely to diminish, the politics of empire called for urgent attention from all sections of the political establishment. In particular the Rockinghamites, adopting a posture of aloofness from venality and petty interest, were obliged to advance policies for imperial government on the solid basis of political principle. 1 Coming into parliament as a member for Wendover in the wake of [End Page 453] Grenville's Stamp Act, at a time when the East India Company was assuming control of the revenue in Bengal, Burke set about formulating a doctrine of imperial sovereignty which would be serviceable to the party either in power or in opposition and which would be adequate to the complex reality of detached and extensive empire. The immediate reception of that inquiry, both in Britain and on the Continent, into the fraught world of post-Revolutionary political debate has had the long-term effect of distorting the order of emphasis in terms of which his career as a whole ought properly to be understood.The vigorous elaboration, in opposition to the Jacobin experiment in France, of the conditions under which moderate government could be exercised within the context of an absolute sovereignty was expressed in terms which had originally been invoked as part of a sustained attempt to reconcile civility with empire. As we shall see, that attempt involved a process of delicate coordination by means of which the interests of freedom would be brought into harmony with the demands of public power. In that sense the effort to make liberty and authority mutually responsible can be said to constitute the core ambition of Burke's political rhetoric. In this context responsibility defines the optimally beneficial relation between government and people on the one hand and national sovereignty and the extended empire on the other. This article outlines the practical and theoretical exploration of those relations within the frame of Burke's intervention in the world of eighteenth-century political discourse.Burke was of course well placed in 1765 to evolve a theory of imperial government that was at once ideologically compelling and politically viable. In his capacity as secretary to William Gerard Hamilton in the early 1760s he had already examined the corruption of legitimate empire as represented by the introduction of penal legislation into Ireland after 1694. The Tracts Relating to Popery Laws set out to convict the Irish Parliament in Dublin of flagrant misrule. A subordinate legislature within the empire is charged with having employed... (shrink)

Nicolas de Condorcet, the innovating founder of mathematical thinking in politics, was the last great philosophe of the French Enlightenment and a central figure in the early years of the French Revolution. His political writings give a compelling vision of human progress across world history and express the hopes of that time in the future perfectibility of man. This volume contains a revised translation of 'The Sketch', written while in hiding from the Jacobin Terror, together with lesser-known writings on (...) the emancipation of women, the abolition of slavery, the meanings of freedom and despotism and reflections on revolutionary violence. The introduction by Steven Lukes and Nadia Urbinati sets these works in context and shows why Condorcet is of real interest today as we reinterpret the meaning of Enlightenment, the very idea of progress and the founding ideas of social democracy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:A Modern Maistre. The Social and Political Thought of Joseph de MaistreAbraham AndersonOwen Bradley. A Modern Maistre. The Social and Political Thought of Joseph de Maistre. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999. Pp. 320. $55.00.In A Modern Maistre, Owen Bradley has sought to defend both the theoretical penetration and the practical wisdom of Joseph de Maistre, most famous of all "reactionaries" or royalist opponents of the French Revolution. (...) Bradley's own explicit philosophical premises are those of the contemporary academic Left—the blend of Foucault, Adorno, and other authors commonly known as "theory." He defends Maistre's claims on our attention partly by pointing to the kinship between the latter's critique of the Enlightenment and that of Foucault, Adorno, et al. Further, Bradley reminds us of the intimate relation between anti-revolutionary thought and historicism, here understood as the doctrine that new climates of belief and social arrangements always have their roots in what precedes them. In this as in other respects he allows us to see the kinship between the thought of Maistre and that of his younger and more liberal contemporary Tocqueville.Maistre was, moreover, a seminal thinker for the French tradition of sociology whose best-known representatives are Comte and Durkheim, and which, like him, was concerned above all with the religious conditions of social order. Maistre was himself a disciple not just of Vico's New Science but of Plato's Republic and Laws, works equally preoccupied with this topic. One of the most interesting themes of the book, in fact, is Maistre's concern with political theology.Maistre was particularly attracted, Bradley shows, to the neo-Platonic and possibly heterodox theology of Origen. The neo-Platonic emphasis on symbols, talismans, and cosmic hierarchy, according to Bradley, helped Maistre formulate his criticism of the "mechanical philosophy" of the Cartesian Enlightenment, the metaphysical premise, according to Maistre, of the Revolution. Maistre, Bradley shows us, argued against the Enlightenment's attempt to replace a politics dependent on faith with one based on modern science partly by showing that modern science itself has its roots in mysticism, magic, and enthusiasm. The Enlightenment, which understood itself as entirely secular in spirit, was ruled by a project of salvation descended from ancient gnosticism. As the gnostics sought salvation through the rejection of the world of creation, the Enlighteners sought political salvation through a rejection of all traditions and institutions, a project which culminated in the Jacobin Terror.But political violence, in Maistre's view, does not stem from theological error alone. According to Maistre, "sacrifice" in the larger sense is central to all human societies. The problem of political order is in large part how to channel the impulse to collective cruelty, which is necessary to political order but can be restrained or allowed to run [End Page 287] wild. Politics is largely theater and symbol; the wise use of these elements is indispensable for taming the love of violence.Maistre's famous assertion of the authority of the Pope is not, Bradley insists, a formula for theocracy; rather, the preservation of a spiritual power distinct from and independent of the sovereign serves to check tyranny without subverting sovereignty (132). Such a spiritual power is necessary partly to preserve "unity of fables, which will never happen without unity of doctrine and authority" (195).Maistre's interest in political theology is continuous with an interest in the political significance of cosmology. Every society, Maistre held, including the Enlightenment, has a view of the cosmos to which its conception of society precisely corresponds. Maistre himself seeks to inflect modern cosmology in various ways. Like Tocqueville and Vico, Maistre uses the doctrine of historical forces to propound a teaching on Providence. The Jacobins themselves, Maistre asserts, were instruments of Providence. Far from emancipating mankind, the Revolution "abruptly shortened" the "chain that binds man" within his proper bounds (215).Bradley does Maistre a valuable service by criticizing misinterpretations of his thought by later defenders of extra-constitutional authority, like Maurras and Carl Schmitt; Maistre himself, Bradley shows, was deeply concerned to preserve constitutional legitimacy and opposed absolutism. Bradley's most interesting chapter is his last one, on Maistre... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 63.4 (2002) 697-716 [Access article in PDF] "La Mère Humanité":Femininity in the Romantic Socialism of Pierre Leroux and the Abbé A.-L. Constant Naomi J. Andrews Humanity, my mother, since you have led me, by so many paths, to conceive this design, support me, inspire me, affirm me. —Pierre Leroux, "Invocation to my Muse." 1It was during the July Monarchy in France, in the (...) era immediately preceding the Revolution of 1848, that the ideology we call socialism became more than an abstraction held by isolated intellectuals and conspirators. 2 A series of individuals, loose-knit associations, and more formal écoles were active during the 1830s and 1840s, developing a varied agenda of social reform, economic cooperation, or association, mystical Christianity, and women's liberation. Roughly lumped under the pejorative rubric of utopian socialism, and perhaps more accurately called romantic socialism, this movement was ultimately unsuccessful in achieving its diverse goals, but contributed significantly to the political discourse of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 3Socialism at this stage of its development overlapped in many ways with republicanism, both being, to quote one historian of the latter, "an amalgam of responses to the Enlightenment, the 1789 Revoluation and above all economic [End Page 697] change." 4 Many early socialists were also republicans, and socialist ideas influenced the ideology articulated by republicans such as Alexandre Ledru-Rollin and Auguste Blanqui. Louis Blanc, perhaps the best-known socialist of the decade surrounding the 1848 revolution, was and is known as a Jacobin socialist. 5From a certain perspective republicanism and socialism shared common origins and assumptions during the July Monarchy. Most socialists had come out of the political milieu of republicanism, whether through the carbonarist movement, opposition political clubs such as Droits de l'Homme and Les Amis du Peuple, or through the influential journalism trade of the Bourbon Restoration and early July Monarchy. Pierre Leroux, for one, had been a co-founder of the widely read journal le Globe, a bastion of liberalism, which he later turned over to the Saint-Simonians upon his conversion to their "church." 6 Although diverse in many ways, the left of this era did share certain core tenets, chief among them opposition to the Orleanist monarchy and, to varying degrees the belief in more democratic rule of the French nation.To say this, however, might erroneously imply a unity that was certainly not a feature of socialism during this period. In fact socialism, despite its near mystical devotion to ideas of unity, was anything but singular during its pre-Marxian phase. The spectrum of socialist thinkers and groups ranged widely. Standing closest to the republicans in their beliefs about politics and the revolutionary tradition were Jacobin socialists, most usually associated with Louis Blanc. Blanc and others articulated a social philosophy that sought "to unite two distinct ideologies: Jacobin democracy and co-operative socialism." 7 Thus Jacobin socialism combined republican political priorities and commitment to national political processes in general and to a centralized state in particular with attention to economic change, to reforming the distribution process along more equitable lines and to putting the situation of working people at the center of political change. In this goal Jacobin socialism reflected, as did other strains of socialism, the economic instability of the era and the emergence of an organized working class movement which followed the aborted revolution of 1830. 8At the other end of the spectrum one might put the Saint-Simonians and the Fourierist École Sociétaire. 9 Vehemently anti-republican, these groups shared [End Page 698] very little with the Jacobin socialists, other than a certain concern with the emerging working class, one of the few consistent features of early socialism. Unlike Jacobin socialists, these groups focused their theories of community at a very low level, having a strongly utopian component to their thinking. As a result, they tended to see national politics as irrelevant to the situation of ordinary people and even as a... (shrink)

ABSTRACT: This article analyzes the relation between Godwin (1756-1836), Republican and author of Politcal lustice (1793), and French philosophers, particularly Helvetius. Both Godwin and Helvetius were in favour of a political understanding of the theory of knowledge as opposed to an intellectual treatment of policy. They continually questioned the links between policy, history of the human understanding, and moral science from the perspective of the question of education. After the September Massacres (1792), Godwin’s thought changed radically and began to revolve (...) around the notion of perfectibility. The final disagreement marked a distinction between French reformers, who advocated state control, and English writers, influenced by dissent and reformation, who held the idea of perfectibility.RÉSUMÉ: Cet article examine le rapport de Godwin (1756-1836), écrivain anglais «jacobin», auteur de Political Justice (1793), aux philosophes français, Helvétius en particulier. Partisans d’une politisation de la théorie de la connaissance plutôt que d’une intellectualisation de la politique, ils interrogent sans cesse, via la question de l’education, les liens du pouvoir politique, de l’histoire de l’entendement humain etde la science morale. Après les massacres de septembre (1792), la position de Godwin évolue considérablement et met en scène la perfectibilité. Le différend final marque la distinction entre un courant des Lumières françaises, réformatrices et étatistes, et un courant des Lumières anglaises, aux sources religieuses dissidentes ou réformées, porteuses, elles, de l’idée de perfectibilité. (shrink)