French Political and Intellectual History

French Political and Intellectual History PDF Author: Samuel Bernstein
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
ISBN: 9781412823968
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
In this collection of remarkable essays, initially published in 1955 and now available in paperback for the first time, Samuel Bernstein elucidates the meaning of human striving for improvement with regard to the problems raised by one of the most turbulent periods of history. Written with profound conviction and literary acumen, these essays will give the reader, in the author's words, a sense of a “kinship of ideas and the mutual sympathies of peoples in matters concerning human betterment.” These essays represents the fruits of twenty years of careful research in the political and intellectual history of the Atlantic civilization, particularly as it relates to the leading movements and men of France. Bernstein's expert knowledge of the history of political movements and social policies places him among the ranking authorities in that field. Contents: “Marat, Friend of the People”; “Robespierre and the Problem of War”; “British Jacobinism”; “Jefferson on the French Revolution”; “Babeuf and Babouvism”; “Saint-Simon's Philosophy of History”; “From Social Utopia to Social Science”; “French Democracy and the American Civil War”; “The First International in France, 1964-1871”; “The Paris Commune”; “The American Press Views the Commune”; “The First International and a New Holy Alliance.”

French Political and Intellectual History

French Political and Intellectual History PDF Author: Samuel Bernstein
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
ISBN: 9781412823968
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 228

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this collection of remarkable essays, initially published in 1955 and now available in paperback for the first time, Samuel Bernstein elucidates the meaning of human striving for improvement with regard to the problems raised by one of the most turbulent periods of history. Written with profound conviction and literary acumen, these essays will give the reader, in the author's words, a sense of a “kinship of ideas and the mutual sympathies of peoples in matters concerning human betterment.” These essays represents the fruits of twenty years of careful research in the political and intellectual history of the Atlantic civilization, particularly as it relates to the leading movements and men of France. Bernstein's expert knowledge of the history of political movements and social policies places him among the ranking authorities in that field. Contents: “Marat, Friend of the People”; “Robespierre and the Problem of War”; “British Jacobinism”; “Jefferson on the French Revolution”; “Babeuf and Babouvism”; “Saint-Simon's Philosophy of History”; “From Social Utopia to Social Science”; “French Democracy and the American Civil War”; “The First International in France, 1964-1871”; “The Paris Commune”; “The American Press Views the Commune”; “The First International and a New Holy Alliance.”

Republicanism and the French Revolution

Republicanism and the French Revolution PDF Author: Lecturer in Intellectual History School of English and American Studies Richard Whatmore
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN: 9780199241156
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
Republicanism and the French Revolution reassesses Jean-Baptiste Say's political economy by locating the author's ideas amidst the intellectual upheavals of Old Regime and revolutionary France. Traditionally Say has been portrayed as a rather staid figure, the archetypal liberal and classicalpolitical economist devoted to Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. This study reveals the historic Say to have been altogether different; a passionate and committed republican intellectual and French patriot, he was as opposed to Britain's constitution, commerce, and political culture as he was toBonaparte's First Empire. The relationship between Say's political thought and political economy, evinced in the full range of his writings from 1789 to 1832, is scrutinized for the first time, elucidating the true origins of his republicanism. This derived from a rich seam of political speculation among French and Genevanradicals concerning the possibility of transforming large and corrupt monarchies into modern republics whose political culture was characterized by commerce and virtue. By the 1790s such ideas had come to define the French Revolution itself, at once promising to restore French greatness and replaceBritain as the leading cultural force in Europe. Say looked back to such luminaries as Diderot, Gibbon, and Franklin as members of the modern republican Pantheon and dedicated his life to formulating a political economy that would persuade legislators and ordinary citizens to embrace the republicancreed.

Essays in Political and Intellectual History

Essays in Political and Intellectual History PDF Author: Samuel Bernstein
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


Intellectual Founders of the Republic

Intellectual Founders of the Republic PDF Author: Sudhir Hazareesingh
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 019153014X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
This innovative study of French political culture re-examines the origins of modern republicanism through the lives and political thought of five nineteenth-century intellectuals: Jules Barni, Charles Dupont-White, Emile Littré, Eugène Pelletan, and Etienne Vacherot. By their writings and their political practices at the local, national, international levels these thinkers made major contributions to the founding of the new republican order in France. Drawing on a range of archival and published sources, the book sheds new light on classical republican thinking on such key issues as the interpretation of the 1789 Revolution, the definition of citizenship, the meaning of patriotism, the relationship between central government and local democracy, the value of individual liberty, and the place of education and religion in publica and private life. These five studies also break new ground in the conceptualization of nineteenth-century French intellectual history. The writings of these thinkers demonstrate the ideological pluralism and diversity of moderate French republican thought during this period. Positivism appears as an important and influential doctrine, but its hegemonic aspirations were successfully resisted by the abiding incluences of Saint-Simonism, socialism, doctrinaire liberalism, and neo-Kantianism. It emerges that the ideological potency of republican doctrine lay in its complexity and sophistication, as reflected in its capacity to effect a synthesis among these different approaches. Through its analysis of the writings and political practices of these five thinkers Intellectual Founders of the Republic offers critical insights into the history of political thought as well as modern French republicanism. It underlines both the significance of contextuality in the interpretation of political discourse, and the continuing relevance of classical republicanism in making sense of contemporary moral and political dilemmas.

Revolutionary Ideas

Revolutionary Ideas PDF Author: Jonathan Israel
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400849993
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 883

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Book Description
How the Radical Enlightenment inspired and shaped the French Revolution Historians of the French Revolution used to take for granted what was also obvious to its contemporary observers—that the Revolution was shaped by the radical ideas of the Enlightenment. Yet in recent decades, scholars have argued that the Revolution was brought about by social forces, politics, economics, or culture—almost anything but abstract notions like liberty or equality. In Revolutionary Ideas, one of the world's leading historians of the Enlightenment restores the Revolution’s intellectual history to its rightful central role. Drawing widely on primary sources, Jonathan Israel shows how the Revolution was set in motion by radical eighteenth-century doctrines, how these ideas divided revolutionary leaders into vehemently opposed ideological blocs, and how these clashes drove the turning points of the Revolution. In this compelling account, the French Revolution stands once again as a culmination of the emancipatory and democratic ideals of the Enlightenment. That it ended in the Terror represented a betrayal of those ideas—not their fulfillment.

The Anthropological Turn

The Anthropological Turn PDF Author: Jacob Collins
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812297024
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
A close look at post-1968 French thinkers Régis Debray, Emmanuel Todd, Marcel Gauchet, and Alain de Benoist In The Anthropological Turn, Jacob Collins traces the development of what he calls a tradition of "political anthropology" in France over the course of the 1970s. After the social revolution of the 1960s brought new attention to identities and groups that had previously been marginal in French society, the country entered a period of stagnation: the economy slowed, the political system deadlocked, and the ideologies of communism and Catholicism lost their appeal. In this time of political, cultural, and economic indeterminacy, political anthropology, as Collins defines it, offered social theorists grand narratives that could give greater definition to "the social" by anchoring its laws and histories in the deep and sometimes archaic past. Political anthropologists sought to answer the most basic of questions: what is politics and what constitutes a political community? Collins focuses on four influential, yet typically overlooked, French thinkers—Régis Debray, Emmanuel Todd, Marcel Gauchet, and Alain de Benoist —who, from Left to far Right, represent different political leanings in France. Through a close and comprehensive reading of their work, he explores how key issues of religion, identity, citizenship, and the state have been conceptualized and debated across a wide spectrum of opinion in contemporary France. Collins argues that the stakes have not changed since the 1970s and rival conceptions of the republic continue to vie for dominance. Political and cultural issues of the moment—the burkini, for example—become magnified and take on the character of an anthropological threat. In this respect, he shows how the anthropological turn, as it figures in the work of Debray, Todd, Gauchet, and Benoist, is a useful lens for viewing the political and social controversies that have shaped French history for the last forty years.

An Intellectual History of Liberalism

An Intellectual History of Liberalism PDF Author: Pierre Manent
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691207194
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 146

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Book Description
Highlighting the social tensions that confront the liberal tradition, Pierre Manent draws a portrait of what we, citizens of modern liberal democracies, have become. For Manent, a discussion of liberalism encompasses the foundations of modern society, its secularism, its individualism, and its conception of rights. The frequent incapacity of the morally neutral, democratic state to further social causes, he argues, derives from the liberal stance that political life does not serve a higher purpose. Through quick-moving, highly synthetic essays, he explores the development of liberal thinking in terms of a single theme: the decline of theological politics. The author traces the liberal stance to Machiavelli, who, in seeking to divorce everyday life from the pervasive influence of the Catholic church, separated politics from all notions of a cosmological order. What followed, as Manent demonstrates in his analyses of Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau, Guizot, and Constant, was the evolving concept of an individual with no goals outside the confines of the self and a state with no purpose but to prevent individuals from dominating one another. Weighing both the positive and negative effects of such a political arrangement, Manent raises important questions about the fundamental political issues of the day, among them the possibility of individual rights being reconciled with the necessary demands of political organization, and the desirability of a government system neutral about religion but not about public morals.

Political Thought in the French Wars of Religion

Political Thought in the French Wars of Religion PDF Author: Sophie Nicholls
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108840787
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
Fresh analysis of the political thought of the French Holy League, active during the religious wars, within its intellectual context.

The French Republic

The French Republic PDF Author: Edward G. Berenson
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 080146112X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 389

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Book Description
In this invaluable reference work, the world’s foremost authorities on France’s political, social, cultural, and intellectual history explore the history and meaning of the French Republic and the challenges it has faced. Founded in 1792, the French Republic has been defined and redefined by a succession of regimes and institutions, a multiplicity of symbols, and a plurality of meanings, ideas, and values. Although constantly in flux, the Republic has nonetheless produced a set of core ideals and practices fundamental to modern France's political culture and democratic life. Based on the influential Dictionnaire critique de la république, published in France in 2002, The French Republic provides an encyclopedic survey of French republicanism since the Enlightenment. Divided into three sections—Time and History, Principles and Values, and Dilemmas and Debates—The French Republic begins by examining each of France’s five Republics and its two authoritarian interludes, the Second Empire and Vichy. It then offers thematic essays on such topics as Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity; laicity; citizenship; the press; immigration; decolonization; anti-Semitism; gender; the family; cultural policy; and the Muslim headscarf debates. Each essay includes a brief guide to further reading. This volume features updated translations of some of the most important essays from the French edition, as well as twenty-two newly commissioned English-language essays, for a total of forty entries. Taken together, they provide a state-of-the art appraisal of French republicanism and its role in shaping contemporary France’s public and private life.

Intellectual Founders of the Republic

Intellectual Founders of the Republic PDF Author: Sudhir Hazareesingh
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199247943
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
This innovative study of French political culture re-examines the origins of modern republicanism through the lives and political thought of five nineteenth-century intellectuals: Jules Barni, Charles Dupont-White, Emile Littré, Eugène Pelletan, and Etienne Vacherot. By their writings and their political practices at the local, national, international levels these thinkers made major contributions to the founding of the new republican order in France. Drawing on arange of archival and published sources, the book sheds new light on classical republican thinking on such key issues as the interpretation of the 1789 Revolution, the definition of citizenship, the meaning of patriotism, the relationship between central government and local democracy, the value of individual liberty,and the place of education and religion in publica and private life. These five studies also break new ground in the conceptualization of nineteenth-century French intellectual history. The writings of these thinkers demonstrate the ideological pluralism and diversity of moderate French republican thought during this period. Positivism appears as an important and influential doctrine, but its hegemonic aspirations were successfully resisted by the abiding incluences of Saint-Simonism,socialism, doctrinaire liberalism, and neo-Kantianism. It emerges that the ideological potency of republican doctrine lay in its complexity and sophistication, as reflected in its capacity to effect a synthesis among these different approaches. Through its analysis of the writings and political practices ofthese five thinkers Intellectual Founders of the Republic offers critical insights into the history of political thought as well as modern French republicanism. It underlines both the significance of contextuality in the interpretation of political discourse, and the continuing relevance of classical republicanism in making sense of contemporary moral and political dilemmas.