Interpreting the French RevolutionCambridge University Press, 24 sept 1981 - 204 páginas The French Revolution is an historical event unlike any other. It is more than just a topic of intellectual interest: it has become part of a moral and political heritage. But after two centuries, this central event in French history has usually been thought of in much the same terms as it was by its contemporaries. There have been many accounts of the French Revolution, and though their opinions differ, they have often been commemorative or anniversary interpretations of the original event. The dividing line of revolutionary historiography, in intellectual terms, is therefore not between the right and the left, but between commemorative and conceptual history, as exemplified respectively in the works of Michelet and Tocquevifle. In this book, François Furet analyses how an event like the French Revolution can be conceptualised, and identifies the radically new changes the Revolution produced as well as the continuity it provided, albeit under the appearance of change. This question has become a riddle for the European left, answered neither by Marx nor by the theorists of our own century. In his analysis of the tragic relevance of the Revolution, Furet both refers to contemporary experience and discusses various elements in the work of Alexis de Tocclueville and that of Augustin Cochin, which has never been systematically applied by historians of the Revolution. Furet's book is based on the complementary ideas of these two writers in an attempt to cut through the apparent and misleading clarity of various contradictory views of the Revolution, and to help decipher some of the enigmatic problems of revolutionary ideology. It will be of value to historians of modern Europe and their students; to political, social and economic historians; to sociologists; and to students of political thought. |
Índice
The French Revolution is over | 1 |
Three approaches to the history of the French Revolution | 81 |
De Tocqueville and the problem of the French Revolution | 132 |
Augustin Cochin the theory of Jacobinism | 164 |
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Términos y frases comunes
9 Thermidor action administrative Albert Soboul analysis Ancien Régime aristocratic Augustin Cochin Aulard become bourgeois bourgeois revolution bourgeoisie Brissot Cahiers called centralisation chapter characterised civil society classes concept conceptualisation conflict consensus crisis cultural defined democratic direct democracy discourse dominant economic egalitarian eighteenth century élites embodied Enlightenment equality fact factors feudal France French history French nobility French Revolution French society Georges Lefebvre groups Guizot historian historiography idea individual institutions intellectual interests interpretation Jacobin Jacobin Club king L'Ancien legitimacy liberty Louis XIV Louis XVI Marx Marxist Mathiez Mazauric means Michelet monarchy nation nobility nobles opinion organisation origins Paris parlements patriots peasant period phenomenon philosophical societies plot political principle problem pure democracy Republic republican Révolution française revolutionary consciousness revolutionary ideology révolutionnaire Robespierre rôle Rousseau sans-culottes seigneurial social Sociétés de Pensée society of orders sociology Terror texts Third Estate Tocqueville Tocqueville's traditional values