Two great revolutions set the stage for late modern ethics: the French Revolution and the philosophical revolution of Kant. This chapter studies the events and conflicts of ideas in the French Revolution and its aftermath in France. It gives a narrative account of the Revolution from 1789 to 1804. Three broad ethical stances are distinguished: the feudal-Catholic ethic of the monarch and his allies, the impartial individualism of the Enlightenment, and the Rousseauian radical-democracy of the Jacobins. Under the violent political conflicts between these views lies a resilient philosophical conflict: between impartial individualism and a generic stance which this study identifies as ‘eudaimonistic holism’. The feudal-Catholic ethic and radical-democracy are two very different forms of it. Hegelian ethics will turn out to be a third.
