🕯️
ENLIGHTENMENT AND
REVOLUTION IN FRANCE BY
KEITH MICHAEL BAKER
OLD PROBLEMS NEW APPROACHES
According to Albert Soboul -
the Enlightenment expressed the interests of the rising bourgeoisie; the
French Revolution brought it to power. In eighteenth-century France, Soboul
maintained, "the feudal economy had been overthrown by the development
of capitalism; the traditional social equilibrium had been broken by the rise
of the bourgeoisie; the philosophy of the Enlightenment, based on reason,
boldly attacked all the problems.”
the Encyclope'die became "in the hands of the philosophes, a revolutionary
work." Its very appearance, despite well known difficulties, was a victory "in
itself proving the revolutionary impetus of the bourgeois class". The
Encyclopedie, in short, was a crucial link between the Enlightenment that
constituted the bourgeois challenge to the Old Regime and the Revolution
that brought the new class to power:
"it furnished the bourgeoisie, and more generally the entire French nation,
with efficacious weapons in the revolutionary struggle"
ENLIGHTENMENT AND REVOLUTION IN FRANCE BY KEITH MICHAEL BAKER 1
, FRANCOIS FURET
In France the figure to challenge traditional historiography of the French
Revolution is Francois Furet.
Furet sought a renewed approach to interpretation of the revolution free of
reiteration and laziness. It was written in Furet’s book called Pensar la
revolution Francaise.
English language historiography of FR was muddled by a conflation of
political and social categories and failure to detach narrative account
from analytical account.
Furet is most concerned to liberate an analysis of the political from what he
calls "la mainmise de l'histoire sociale". To grasp the French Revolution
conceptually-to think it in the manner his title suggests-involves several
conditions. Any historical conceptualization, Furet argues, requires a
critical distance from the events and an ability to go beyond the
categories of the actors themselves.
But this, he insists, is exactly what French historians have found difficult to
achieve. Modern France, according to its own cultural representations, was
born in 1789. For Frenchmen, any account of the Revolution is also a
discourse about civic identity; any political action is an elaboration of a history
that began over two hundred years ago.
The Marxist approach to the historiography of the French Revolution has
extended our knowledge of eighteenth-century French society, but only at the
cost of rendering incoherent the relationship between its analysis of social
phenomena and the tradition in which its research has been cast.
The Revolution, in other words, has remained a myth of origin, just as its
history has continued to be a discourse on political and social identity: "the
advent of the bourgeoisie has been substituted for the advent of liberty, but
it remains (as before) an advent. This continuity is all the more extraordinary in
that the idea of a radical rupture in the social tissue of a nation is more difficult
to conceive; in this sense, this historiographical shift from the political to the
social underlines the force of the representation of the Revolution-qua-advent
all the more clearly in that it is more incompatible with it"
Renewed historical analysis required a disinvestment in the Revolution as the
“myth of origin”. The first step is a critical reconsideration of the idea of the
Revolution as conceived and experienced by the revolutionary actors
ENLIGHTENMENT AND REVOLUTION IN FRANCE BY KEITH MICHAEL BAKER 2
, themselves, that is, as a radical rupture and the inauguration of a new time. In
Furet's eyes, to break with this representation of the French Revolution was the
great achievement of Tocqueville, from whom he draws the broad matrix of his
own analysis.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Tocqueville inscribed the Revolution within the continuity of a process: the
transformation of civil society as a consequence of the growth of the
administrative state. The effect of Tocqueville's analysis was precisely to
underline the problematic and paradoxical quality of the Revolution
experienced as rupture, as outbreak, as torrent of events.
Thus Tocqueville felt but did not fully explore the paradox his analysis revealed:
the paradox that the Revolution as a process of continuity was advanced by
the Revolution as a mode of radical change. This is the aspect of the French
Revolution-its character as an event rather than its outcome as a process-that
Furet wishes to grasp and subject to critical analysis.
Other countries also made these transitions; but only in France was a radical
type of democratic culture invented. As a series of acts that transformed the
situation making them possible, as the creation and experiential elaboration of
an entirely new mode of political action, the Revolution had a logic of its own.
Revolution was an essentially political phenomenon. It was political not simply
because it represented a struggle for the possession of power, but because it
transformed the symbolic grounding of an entire community and reconstituted
the logic of social relations in the most profound sense.
In short, it represented
the supremely political act of redefining the public order.
💤 Summarization of Above Text
💤 till now in brief
Historian Augustin Cochin
His approach to understanding the French Revolution, particularly the
phenomenon of Jacobinism. Here's a breakdown of the key points:
1. Cochin's Focus on Rupture:
ENLIGHTENMENT AND REVOLUTION IN FRANCE BY KEITH MICHAEL BAKER 3
ENLIGHTENMENT AND
REVOLUTION IN FRANCE BY
KEITH MICHAEL BAKER
OLD PROBLEMS NEW APPROACHES
According to Albert Soboul -
the Enlightenment expressed the interests of the rising bourgeoisie; the
French Revolution brought it to power. In eighteenth-century France, Soboul
maintained, "the feudal economy had been overthrown by the development
of capitalism; the traditional social equilibrium had been broken by the rise
of the bourgeoisie; the philosophy of the Enlightenment, based on reason,
boldly attacked all the problems.”
the Encyclope'die became "in the hands of the philosophes, a revolutionary
work." Its very appearance, despite well known difficulties, was a victory "in
itself proving the revolutionary impetus of the bourgeois class". The
Encyclopedie, in short, was a crucial link between the Enlightenment that
constituted the bourgeois challenge to the Old Regime and the Revolution
that brought the new class to power:
"it furnished the bourgeoisie, and more generally the entire French nation,
with efficacious weapons in the revolutionary struggle"
ENLIGHTENMENT AND REVOLUTION IN FRANCE BY KEITH MICHAEL BAKER 1
, FRANCOIS FURET
In France the figure to challenge traditional historiography of the French
Revolution is Francois Furet.
Furet sought a renewed approach to interpretation of the revolution free of
reiteration and laziness. It was written in Furet’s book called Pensar la
revolution Francaise.
English language historiography of FR was muddled by a conflation of
political and social categories and failure to detach narrative account
from analytical account.
Furet is most concerned to liberate an analysis of the political from what he
calls "la mainmise de l'histoire sociale". To grasp the French Revolution
conceptually-to think it in the manner his title suggests-involves several
conditions. Any historical conceptualization, Furet argues, requires a
critical distance from the events and an ability to go beyond the
categories of the actors themselves.
But this, he insists, is exactly what French historians have found difficult to
achieve. Modern France, according to its own cultural representations, was
born in 1789. For Frenchmen, any account of the Revolution is also a
discourse about civic identity; any political action is an elaboration of a history
that began over two hundred years ago.
The Marxist approach to the historiography of the French Revolution has
extended our knowledge of eighteenth-century French society, but only at the
cost of rendering incoherent the relationship between its analysis of social
phenomena and the tradition in which its research has been cast.
The Revolution, in other words, has remained a myth of origin, just as its
history has continued to be a discourse on political and social identity: "the
advent of the bourgeoisie has been substituted for the advent of liberty, but
it remains (as before) an advent. This continuity is all the more extraordinary in
that the idea of a radical rupture in the social tissue of a nation is more difficult
to conceive; in this sense, this historiographical shift from the political to the
social underlines the force of the representation of the Revolution-qua-advent
all the more clearly in that it is more incompatible with it"
Renewed historical analysis required a disinvestment in the Revolution as the
“myth of origin”. The first step is a critical reconsideration of the idea of the
Revolution as conceived and experienced by the revolutionary actors
ENLIGHTENMENT AND REVOLUTION IN FRANCE BY KEITH MICHAEL BAKER 2
, themselves, that is, as a radical rupture and the inauguration of a new time. In
Furet's eyes, to break with this representation of the French Revolution was the
great achievement of Tocqueville, from whom he draws the broad matrix of his
own analysis.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Tocqueville inscribed the Revolution within the continuity of a process: the
transformation of civil society as a consequence of the growth of the
administrative state. The effect of Tocqueville's analysis was precisely to
underline the problematic and paradoxical quality of the Revolution
experienced as rupture, as outbreak, as torrent of events.
Thus Tocqueville felt but did not fully explore the paradox his analysis revealed:
the paradox that the Revolution as a process of continuity was advanced by
the Revolution as a mode of radical change. This is the aspect of the French
Revolution-its character as an event rather than its outcome as a process-that
Furet wishes to grasp and subject to critical analysis.
Other countries also made these transitions; but only in France was a radical
type of democratic culture invented. As a series of acts that transformed the
situation making them possible, as the creation and experiential elaboration of
an entirely new mode of political action, the Revolution had a logic of its own.
Revolution was an essentially political phenomenon. It was political not simply
because it represented a struggle for the possession of power, but because it
transformed the symbolic grounding of an entire community and reconstituted
the logic of social relations in the most profound sense.
In short, it represented
the supremely political act of redefining the public order.
💤 Summarization of Above Text
💤 till now in brief
Historian Augustin Cochin
His approach to understanding the French Revolution, particularly the
phenomenon of Jacobinism. Here's a breakdown of the key points:
1. Cochin's Focus on Rupture:
ENLIGHTENMENT AND REVOLUTION IN FRANCE BY KEITH MICHAEL BAKER 3
