Interpreting the French Revolution
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
|
"Just as Aulard and Taine debated the Republic when writing about the French Revolution, so Mathiez and Gaxotte discussed the origins of communism."--Interpreting the French Revolution (1978) by François Furet "There are two ways of totally misunderstanding Robespierre as a historical figure: one is to detest the man, the other is to make too much of him. It is absurd, of course, to see the lawyer from Arras as a monstrous usurper, the recluse as a demagogue, the moderate as a bloodthirsty tyrant, the democrat as a dictator. On the other hand, what is explained about his destiny once it is proved that he really was the Incorruptible? The misconception common to both schools arises from the fact that they attribute to the psychological traits of the man the historical role into which he was thrust by events and the language he borrowed from them. Robespierre is an immortal figure not because he reigned supreme over the Revolution for a few months, but because he was the mouthpiece of its purest and most tragic discourse."--Interpreting the French Revolution (1978) by François Furet |
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
Interpreting the French Revolution (1978, Penser la Révolution française) is a book by François Furet.
The text was a breakthrough book that led many intellectuals to reevaluate Communism and the French Revolution as inherently totalitarian and anti-democratic.
Looking at modern French communism Furet stressed the close resemblance between the 1960s and 1790s, with both favoring the inflexible and rote ideological discourse in party cells where decisions were made unanimously in a manipulated direct democracy.
Furet further suggested that popularity of the far left to many French intellectuals was itself a result of their commitment to the ideals of the French Revolution. Furet set about to imagine the Revolution less as the result of social and class conflict and more a conflict over the meaning and application of egalitarian and democratic ideas.
He saw revolutionary France as located ideologically between two revolutions: the first an egalitarian one that began in 1789, and the second the authoritarian coup that brought about Napoleon's empire in 1799. The egalitarian origins of the Revolution were not undone by the Empire and were resurrected in the July Revolution of 1830, the 1848 Revolution, and the Commune of Paris in 1871.
