Shaping the Modern Discourse on Liberty: French Intellectual Debates from Revolution to Dreyfus

The Invention of Modern State Terrorism during the French Revolution

This essay discusses three aspects of the Terror (September 1793–July 1794): (1) The Institutions of the Terror: The Committee of General Security, the Committee of Public Safety, and the Revolutionary Tribunal; (2) the Theory of Terror: The unity and indivisibility of the people, the category of enemy of the people, and the concept of Revolution as a state of war against aristocratic/foreign c...

Liberty and Feminism the Basic Intellectual Framework

What is the relationship between the status of women and the cause of liberty in modern times? The very tone of the question may suggest the anachronistic nature of this article. After all, the major battles over the status of women in the United States were fought long ago. They were, as it is sometimes difficult to remember, battles over civil capacity (for example, during the nineteenth cent...

Individuals, Institutions, and Innovation in the Debates of the French Revolution

The French Revolution brought principles of “liberty, equality, and brotherhood” to bear on the day-to-day challenges of governing what was then the largest country in Europe. Its experiments provided a model for future revolutions and democracies across the globe, but this first modern revolution had no model to follow. Using reconstructed transcripts of debates held in the Revolution’s first ...

The Debate on the French Revolution (review)

The French Revolution

The process of centralization from the 16 century strengthened absolutism in France and by the early 18 century the French monarchy under Louis XIV became the model of centralized absolutism based on feudal social structures. Since the 17 century, tensions were mounting between centralizing and decentralizing pressures. The French Revolution brought about a complete destruction of the feudal or...