From Principle to Contingency: Recent Histories of French Political Thought (original) (raw)
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A Virtue for Courageous Minds: Moderation in French Political Thought, 1748-1830
2012
Political moderation is the touchstone of democracy, which could not function without compromise and bargaining, yet it is one of the most understudied concepts in political theory. How can we explain this striking paradox? Why do we often underestimate the virtue of moderation? Seeking to answer these questions, A Virtue for Courageous Minds examines moderation in modern French political thought and sheds light on the French Revolution and its legacy. Aurelian Craiutu begins with classical thinkers who extolled the virtues of a moderate approach to politics, such as Aristotle and Cicero. He then shows how Montesquieu inaugurated the modern rebirth of this tradition by laying the intellectual foundations for moderate government. Craiutu looks at important figures such as Jacques Necker, Madame de Staël, and Benjamin Constant, not only in the context of revolutionary France but throughout Europe. He traces how moderation evolves from an individual moral virtue into a set of institutional arrangements calculated to protect individual liberty, and he explores the deep affinity between political moderation and constitutional complexity. Craiutu demonstrates how moderation navigates between political extremes, and he challenges the common notion that moderation is an essentially conservative virtue, stressing instead its eclectic nature. Drawing on a broad range of writings in political theory, the history of political thought, philosophy, and law, A Virtue for Courageous Minds reveals how the virtue of political moderation can address the profound complexities of the world today.
History of European Ideas, 2015
..... With its historical approach and its focus on the self-claimed moderate centre of France's First Republic, First Empire and Restoration, A Virtue for Courageous Minds offers a rare opportunity for contemplating on the breadth and depth of the political centre that was born into the modernity at the foundational turning point of European history at the end of the long eighteenth century (or, in a sense, the beginning of the long nineteenth century). Despite the curious discordance between its main body and its front and rear, the book will inspire scholars to enter a field that has insufficiently treated the many aspects of moderation to date.
French liberalism, an overlooked tradition?
Cambridge University Press eBooks, 2012
There is an enduring assumption that the French have never been, and never will be, liberal. As with all clichés, this one contains a grain of truth, but it also overlooks a school of thought that has been a significant presence in French intellectual and political culture for nearly three centuries: French political liberalism. This new collection of essays, authored by a distinguished group of scholars from diverse fields, explores this rich and largely untapped tradition in French political thought. The past decade has witnessed a revival of interest in authors like Montesquieu, Constant, and Tocqueville, both in the United States and Europe. New translations have appeared and intellectual historians have significantly advanced our understanding of the political conflicts through which many 'French liberal' ideas were originally developed. Normative philosophers have also begun to employ these arguments in contemporary debates. Yet whether there exists a distinct and internally consistent paradigm underlying this tradition of thought is rarely discussed. Moreover, many influential and interesting members of the tradition, including a large number of political economists, have by and large remained out of sight. One of the core aims of this book is to provide a picture of French liberalism that is at once more comprehensive and more nuanced. Despite the rich variety of thinkers that can be brought together under the heading of 'French liberalism', they do have one common ancestor in Montesquieu. The Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu's massive, almost encyclopaedic effort to rethink the normative foundations of law in a more empirical manner, set the tone for generations to come. His sharp insights into the relationship between freedom and its social and political preconditions became a major source of inspiration for those who, after the trauma of the French Revolution, tried to strike a balance between revolutionary ideals and a more conservative concern for political order. It is at this juncture that we meet the most prominent examples of the French liberal tradition, such as François Guizot, Mme de Staël,
Liberalism under Siege: The Political Thought of the French Doctrinaires
2003
Liberalism under Siege: The Political Thought of the French Doctrinaries is a compelling examination of the French Doctrinaries, a largely neglected group of liberal thinkers in post-revolutionary France who were proponents of a nuanced sociological and historical approach to political theory. The first systematic interpretation of the French Doctrinaries' political writings to appear in English, Liberalism under Siege combines textual analysis and historical interpretation to explore the Doctrinaires' ideas on the French Revolution, democracy, political power, sovereignty of reason, publicity, capacity, and representative government. Aurelian Craiutu's detailed work is not only an argument for the reappraisal of the Bourbon Restoration as a golden age of political thought; it is also a passionate and persuasive addition to contemporary debates about the diversity of liberalism.