Hardbound. This third volume in a much praised series on The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political Culture examines the way in which the Revolution has been portrayed in European thought and its impact upon the development of political philosophy in the nineteenth century. Opening with the influence of Burke and other contemporaries of the Revolution and the ensuing debate over the question "Why the Terror?", this volume explores such diverse themes as the legacy of the Revolution on the political and social evolution of Germany, England, Italy and Russia; the crisis it brought about in the Catholic Church; and the difficulties encountered in determining the end of the Revolution. By showing that the upheaval in European politics and philosophy caused by the French Revolution continued to shape nations, peoples and thought, the texts brought together in this volume permit a better understanding of the event's extraordinary comple

The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political Culture : The Transformation of Political Culture 1789-1848

Furet, François

History

Pergamon Pr

François Furet needs little introduction. Widely considered one of the leading historians of the French Revolution, he was a maverick for his time, shining a critical light on the entrenched Marxist interpretations that prevailed during the mid-twentieth century. Shortly after his death in 1997, the New York Review of Books called him “one of the most influential men in contemporary France.” Lies, Passions, and Illusions is a fitting capstone to this celebrated author’s oeuvre: a late-career conversation with philosopher Paul Ricoeur on the twentieth century writ large, a century of violence and turmoil, of unprecedented wealth and progress, in which history advanced, for better or worse, in quantum leaps.             This conversation would be, sadly, Furet’s last―he died while Ricoeur was completing his edits. Ricoeur did not want to publish his half without Furet’s approval, so what remains is Furet’s alone, an astonishingly cohesive meditation on the political passions of the twentieth century. With strokes at once broad and incisive, he examines the many different trajectories that nations of the West have followed over the past hundred years. It is a dialogue with history as it happened but also as a form of thought. It is a dialogue with his critics, with himself, and with those major thinkers―from Tocqueville to Hannah Arendt―whose ideas have shaped our understanding of the tragic dramas and upheavals of the modern era. It is a testament to the crucial role of the historian, a reflection on how history is made and lived, and how the imagination is a catalyst for political change. Whether new to Furet or deeply familiar with his work, readers will find thought-provoking assessments on every page, a deeply moving look back at one of the most tumultuous periods of history and how we might learn and look forward from it.     

Lies, Passions, and Illusions: The Democratic Imagination in the Twentieth Century

Europe

University of Chicago Press

Those concerned with the practice of history as a discipline and as an intellectual activity will be intrigued by the view of history that François Furet offers in this collection of essays. After twenty-five years as a professional historian at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes and in the ranks of the Annales school, Furet sets out to reexamine the methodological and intellectual cleavages that exist today among historians.Furet views history as a field bounded at each end by two ideal types. One end is concerned with the history of periods and with the empiricism of "facts" rather than received ideas. At the other end is problem-oriented history, which substitutes for the supposed coherence of a "period" the analytical examination of a question. Furet's own work leans toward the second, more conceptually oriented kind of historiography. The essays in this volume, most of them never before published in English, illustrate the breadth of his approach. Furet's discussion ranges through Tocqueville's conceptual system to present-day America, from the origins of history in France to the Jewish experience in the late twentieth century. Among Furet's recurrent themes is the contention that the historian constructs the object or field of his research rather than receiving it from the past.

In the Workshop of History

Historical Study & Educational Resources

Throughout his life Karl Marx commented on the French Revolution, but never was able to realize his project of a systematic work on this immense event. This book assembles for the first time all that Marx wrote on this subject. François Furet provides an extended discussion of Marx's thinking on the revolution, and Lucien Calvié situates each of the selections, drawn from existing translations as well as previously untranslated material, in its larger historical context. With his early critique of Hegel, Marx started moving toward his fundamental thesis: that the state is a product of civil society and that the French Revolution was the triumph of bourgeois society. Furet's interpretation follows the evolution of this idea and examines the dilemmas it created for Marx as he considered all the faces the new state assumed over the course of the Revolution: the Jacobin Terror following the constitutional monarchy, Bonaparte's dictatorship following the parliamentary republic. The problem of reconciling his theory with the reality of the Revolution's various manifestations is one of the major difficulties Marx contended with throughout his work. The hesitation, the remorse, and the contradictions of the resulting analyses offer a glimpse of a great thinker struggling with the constraints of his own system. Marx never did elaborate a theory of an autonomous state, but he never stopped wrestling with the challenge to his doctrine posed by late eighteenth-century France, whose changing conditions and successive regimes prompted some of his most intriguing and, until now, unexplored thought.

Marx and the French Revolution

François Furet was acknowledged as the twentieth century's preeminent historian of the French Revolution. But years before his death, he turned his attention to the consequences and aftermath of another critical revolution—the Communist revolution. The result, Le passé d'une illusion, is a penetrating history of the ideological passions that have fueled and characterized the modern era. "This may well be the most illuminating study ever devoted to the question of appeal exerted not only by Communism but also by the Nazi and other fascist varieties of totalitarianism in this century."—Hilton Kramer, New Criterion "A subtle, nuanced but gripping study of the most pervasive and destructive illusion in the 20th century." —Kirkus Reviews, starred review "The Passing of an Illusion . . . is both a profound work of intellectual history that takes its place alongside other great studies of the leftist heresy . . . and a relentless diagnosis of the self-subversive risks that are inherent in democratic regimes. "—Roger Kaplan, Washington Times " A remarkable book. . . . Stimulating and challenging. . . . A man widely read in several languages, Furet clearly knew his way around 20th-century Europe, even unto the dark alleys that figure on no existing map. "—Mark Falcoff, Commentary "A history of ideas, this work is not for the faint of heart, yet those who challenge it will discover a signal contribution to the literature of Communism."—Booklist "Imperious and stunningly confident, grand in conception and expansive in manner, packed with fascinating detail and often incisive judgements."—John Dunn, Times Higher Education Supplement "The Passing of an Illusion is brilliant, and one would be hard pressed to find better writing of history than the first chapter, which traces the roots of modern political thinking back to the nineteenth century."—J. Arch Getty, Atlantic Monthly "A brilliant and important book. . . . The publication of the American edition makes accessible to the general reader the most thought-provoking historical assessment of communism in Europe to appear since its collapse."—Jeffrey Herf, Wall Street Journal François Furet (1927-1997), educator and author, was a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor and was elected, in 1997, to become one of the "Forty Immortals" of the Académie Française, the highest intellectual honor in France. His many books include Interpreting the French Revolution, Marx and the French Revolution, and Revolutionary France. Deborah Furet, his widow, collaborated with him on many projects.

The Passing of an Illusion : The Idea of Communism in the Twentieth Century

Business & Money

Economics

François Furet was acknowledged as the twentieth century's preeminent historian of the French Revolution. But years before his death, he turned his attention to the consequences and aftermath of another critical revolution—the Communist revolution. The result, Le passé d'une illusion, is a penetrating history of the ideological passions that have fueled and characterized the modern era. "This may well be the most illuminating study ever devoted to the question of appeal exerted not only by Communism but also by the Nazi and other fascist varieties of totalitarianism in this century."—Hilton Kramer, New Criterion "A subtle, nuanced but gripping study of the most pervasive and destructive illusion in the 20th century." —Kirkus Reviews, starred review "The Passing of an Illusion . . . is both a profound work of intellectual history that takes its place alongside other great studies of the leftist heresy . . . and a relentless diagnosis of the self-subversive risks that are inherent in democratic regimes. "—Roger Kaplan, Washington Times " A remarkable book. . . . Stimulating and challenging. . . . A man widely read in several languages, Furet clearly knew his way around 20th-century Europe, even unto the dark alleys that figure on no existing map. "—Mark Falcoff, Commentary "A history of ideas, this work is not for the faint of heart, yet those who challenge it will discover a signal contribution to the literature of Communism."—Booklist "Imperious and stunningly confident, grand in conception and expansive in manner, packed with fascinating detail and often incisive judgements."—John Dunn, Times Higher Education Supplement "The Passing of an Illusion is brilliant, and one would be hard pressed to find better writing of history than the first chapter, which traces the roots of modern political thinking back to the nineteenth century."—J. Arch Getty, Atlantic Monthly "A brilliant and important book. . . . The publication of the American edition makes accessible to the general reader the most thought-provoking historical assessment of communism in Europe to appear since its collapse."—Jeffrey Herf, Wall Street Journal François Furet (1927-1997), educator and author, was a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor and was elected, in 1997, to become one of the "Forty Immortals" of the Académie Française, the highest intellectual honor in France. His many books include Interpreting the French Revolution, Marx and the French Revolution, and Revolutionary France. Deborah Furet, his widow, collaborated with him on many projects.

The Passing of an Illusion: The Idea of Communism in the Twentieth Century

World

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.

Interpreting the French Revolution

Cambridge University Press

Traces more than a century of turbulence and change in France, from the final years of Louis XVI, through the years of the Napoleonic Empire, to the establishment of the Third Republic in 1871

Revolutionary France 1770-1880 (History of France)

Blackwell Pub.

Revolutionary France  is a vivid narrative history. It is also a radical reinterpretation of the period, and testimony to the power both of ideas and of personality in movements of the past.

Revolutionary France 1770 - 1880

Wiley/Blackwell

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Furet, François. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Furet, François

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Furet, François. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political Culture : The Transformation of Political Culture 1789-1848

Lies, Passions, and Illusions: The Democratic Imagination in the Twentieth Century

In the Workshop of History

Marx and the French Revolution

The Passing of an Illusion : The Idea of Communism in the Twentieth Century

The Passing of an Illusion: The Idea of Communism in the Twentieth Century

Interpreting the French Revolution

Interpreting the French Revolution

Revolutionary France 1770-1880 (History of France)

Revolutionary France 1770 - 1880