Global Conceptual Legacies

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Bell
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Great Frequency ◽  
War And Peace ◽  
Revolutionary Change ◽  
Sovereign Authority ◽  
The French Revolution

Two hundred and twenty-five years after 1789, the French Revolution is no longer invoked with great frequency in world politics. Few contemporary moments take its events as a script to follow. Nonetheless, many of its conceptual legacies remain strong. This article traces these legacies in six broad conceptual fields: nationalism, republicanism, human rights, war and peace, political ideology and ‘revolution’ itself. In each case, it makes clear that the concepts have not been transmitted down to the present unchanged. For instance, the linkage between human rights and citizenship in a particular polity, which the revolutionaries affirmed in their Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, has given way to a widely shared idea that rights act as a limit on sovereign authority. The article closes by observing that the Revolution’s most powerful legacy may be the concept of ‘revolutionary’ change itself, and its status as a synecdoche for ‘modernity’ in general.

Silent War and Bitter Peace: The Revolution of 1918 in Austria

2003 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
pp. 1-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
John W. Boyer
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Testing Ground ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

My Subject Today is the Austrian Revolution of 1918 and its aftermath, a staple subject in the general history of the empire and the republic, but one that has not seen vigorous historiographical discussion for a number of years. In a recent review of new historiography on the French Revolution, Jeremy Popkin has argued that recent neoliberal and even neo-Jacobin scholarship about that momentous event has confirmed the position of the revolution in the “genealogy of modern liberalism and democracy.” The endless fascination engendered by the French Revolution is owing to its protean nature, one that assayed the possibilities of reconciling liberty and equality and one that still inspires those who would search for a “usable liberal past.”1 After all, it was not only a watershed of liberal ideas, if not always liberal institutions and civic practices, but it was also a testing ground for the possibility of giving practical meaning to new categories of human rights.

scholarly journals Buonarroti's Ideas on Communism and Dictatorship

1957 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 266-287 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arthur Lehning
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Rural Economy ◽  
Equal Distribution ◽  
Collective Rights ◽  
Common Interests ◽  
The University ◽  
The French Revolution

At the University of Pisa, where he studied law, Buonarroti had been acquainted with the i8th century social philosophers especially Helvetius, Mably, Rousseau and Morelly, who had moulded his social and political ideology. When the French Revolution broke out he was among the most courageous protagonists to defend its ideas: “J'attendais depuis longtemps le signal, il fut donné”. In October 1789 he left his native Tuscany, “ivre de l'amour de la liberté, épris de la courageuse entreprise des Français, indigné centre la tyrannic, et las de l'inquisition et des persécutions du despotisme”, as he said later in his defence at Vendôme. In Corsica he published an Italian paper in defence of the French Revolution, the Giornale Patriottico, and in November 1790 he obtained a post in the administration of the island as head of the “Bureau des domaines nationaux et du clergé”. In this capacity he had to deal with the administration and sale of landed property. The rural economy of the island was based on a nearly equal distribution of very small holdings, there were hardly any labourers, and there existed a strong tradition of common interests and collective rights. In his Survey of Corsica Buonarroti wrote: “La communalité des biens semble garantir partout au pauvre le sentiment de son indépendance: partout les communes des campagnes réclament des biens que la tyrannic génoise et française ravit au peuple pour récompenser les crimes de ses favoris. Les grands propriétaires sont en très petit nombre: l'homme sans terre est rare, comme celui sans courage”.

A propos du bicentenaire de la Révolution Française

Babel ◽  
1990 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 223-228
Author(s):  
Győrgy Radó
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
International Level ◽  
Revolution Francaise ◽  
The French Revolution

To the Bicentenary of the French Revolution The Bicentenary of the events of the French Revolution, 1789 is considered as a national jubilee of France, but the Declaration of Human Rights, the basis of the French Constitution merits commemoration on international level. From Hungary three poets-translators, who are enthusiasts of the French Revolution, are presented: Ferenc Verseghy, translator of La Marseillaise, Jânos Batsânyi, translator of Napoleon's appeal to the Hungarians, and Sândor Petôfi.

DEPUTIES, VOTERS, AND FACTIONS IN FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY POLITICAL CULTURE

1999 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 277-283
Author(s):  
ISSER WOLOCH
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Revolutionary Change ◽  
National Assembly ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
The Third ◽  
Princeton University ◽  
French Experience ◽  
The French Revolution

Becoming a revolutionary: the deputies of the French National Assembly and the emergence of a revolutionary culture, 1789–1790. By Timothy Tackett. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996. Pp. xvi+355. ISBN 0-69-104384-1. $29.95.Elections in the French Revolution. By Malcolm Crook. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Pp. xiii+221. ISBN 0-521-45191-4. $35.00.The notion of a revolutionary change in collective psychology has long been present in certain master narratives of the French Revolution. Georges Lefebvre deployed this concept in his analysis of the psychodynamics that propelled revolutionary crowds. He also introduced the notion more casually in discussing the ‘patriot’ elites who experienced a psychological upheaval when the parlement of Paris ruled in September 1788 that the forthcoming Estates General should be organized as in 1614, meaning that the third estate would be submerged under the weight of the two privileged orders. While William Doyle's revisionist synthesis has plausibly argued that the parlement's intention was less nefarious (it wished to prevent the king from using new ground rules to pack the Estates with pliant deputies), it does not change the fact that public opinion would never be the same after that consciousness-raising event. More broadly, R. R. Palmer, in trying to convey the uniquely revolutionary thrust of the French experience in 1789 – having already contextualized it in relation to other European and American upheavals – wrestled with that issue in a section that he called ‘The formation of a revolutionary psychology’.

Thomas Jefferson and the French Revolution

1988 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-25
Author(s):  
Merrill D. Peterson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
The United States ◽  
Thomas Jefferson ◽  
University Of Virginia ◽  
War And Peace ◽  
History Of ◽  
The University ◽  
The Voice ◽  
The French Revolution

The meeting of this conference at the University of Virginia inevitably calls to mind the first public occasion in the history of the institution 163 years ago. General Lafayette, on his year-long triumphal tour of the United States, came to Charlottesville for a tearful reunion with his old friend, Thomas Jefferson. They had met in the perilous days of 1781 when Jefferson was governor of Virginia and Lafayette marched a small army into the state to repel the British invaders. Jefferson was grateful to the spirited young general, whose zeal for the American cause seemed scarcely less than his own. Three years later, in France, they became friends, and, in 1789, their friendship personified the historical nexus between the American and the French Revolution. Thereafter, they corresponded intermittently but did not meet again until 1824. Lafayette, though he had long since ceased to be a hero in France, remained a hero in America -- in itself a poignant commentary on the contrasting fates of the two great democratic revolutions. The University fathered by Jefferson was still unfinished in 1824. The Rotunda, commanding the Lawn, was still under scaffolding, and the massive Corinthian capitals imported from Carrara had yet to be raised atop the columns of the portico. But over 400 people crowded into the Dome Room for the great public dinner in honor of the “nations’s guest.” There were many toasts, of course; and Jefferson, who was 81 and in poor health, made a little address, through the voice of another, extolling Lafayette’s services in war and peace and closing with a prayer for “the eternal duration” of the nation’s freedom.

A Declaração Universal dos Direitos do Homem (Luzes e Sombras da sua Recepção em Portugal, em 1948)

1998 ◽  
Vol 6 (12) ◽  
pp. 7-35
Author(s):  
Norberto Ferreira da Cunha ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Universal Declaration ◽  
The Government ◽  
The French Revolution

Salazar had always been opposed to the Human Rights such as the French Revolution, in 1789, realized them. On the contrary, Opposition has always revindicated them requiring their replacement and denunciating their constant violation by the regimen. We would expected the regimen should take avantage of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) approval to denunciate, once more, the horrors of that Revolution, the abstract ballast of the Human Rights comitted in it and the recent disorders of our I Republica; we would expect Opposition to make the most of this opportunity in order to denunciate the violence of the regimen forces and the abolishment of freedom. Neither the Government nor the Opposition assumed their positions. Because of political-strategical reasons: Government didn’t want to affront the U.S.A. and England which promised to support the regimen and the “Empire”; Opposition because of its compromises towards the unitary policy of MUD (Movimento de Unidade Democrática) and the disillusion that the Allies support to the Estado Novo caused. Both, reduced to silence whats divided them essentially - The Human Rights - in order to preserve the secondary.

Terror and the Leviathan

2016 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 461-471 ◽  
Author(s):  
Y.M. Barilan
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Strong Sense ◽  
International Humanitarian Law ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
Laws Of War ◽  
History Of ◽  
The French Revolution

The article surveys the history of “terror” vis a vis the development of international humanitarian and human rights law. During the French Revolution, the word “terror” was coined to describe a deviation from the laws of war. Justified by a mixture of ideology and necessity. People who resort to terrorism either suspends or rejects the laws of war (jus in bellum) in the name of an alternative and heightened sense of truth. However, the terrorists’ strong sense of probity and mission is also an opening for re-establishing communication, arbitration and mitigation of cruelty and destruction. This paper represents International Humanitarian Law (IHL) as an “abstract Leviathan”, submission to which is the contemporary norm of pacification. From the perspective of radical terrorism, it is tyrannical. From other perspectives, it is open to criticism and change. Most importantly, it is on the side of rational arbitration rather than arbitrary ordeal. Even radical terrorism, which refuses to recognize the legitimacy of the abstract Leviathan, seeks to communicate its radical messages rather than to seek victory my means of physical annihilation of its opponents.

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