Par ailleurs, l’ombre portée de la Révolution continue à peser sur la vie politique de la France du XXIe siècle dans deux dimensions fondamentales. Tout d’abord, la prime à la radicalité, la puissance du mythe du soulèvement populaire, la fascination pour la violence, la foi dans le recours à un homme providentiel. Ensuite, l’incapacité à penser le

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The men who rush into undertakings of vast change usually feel they are in possession of some irresistible power. The generation that made the French Revolution had an extravagant conception of the omnipotence of man’s reason and the boundless range of his intelligence. Never, says de Tocqueville, had humanity been prouder of itself nor had it ever

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For the modern world, questions about the nature of humanity would be viewed on par with the struggle among the Lilliputians about the correct way to cut open an egg. Hobbes, the first truly modern philosopher, boasted of how he deserted and ran away from fighting in a religious war; a cowardly life had become preferable to a heroic but meaningless... See more