How the Radical Enlightenment inspired and shaped the French Revolution Historians of the French Revolution used to take for granted what was also obvious to its contemporary observers—that the Revolution was shaped by the radical ideas of the Enlightenment. Yet in recent decades, scholars have argued that the Revolution was brought about by social forces, politics, economics, or culture—almost anything but abstract notions like liberty or equality. In Revolutionary Ideas, one of the world's leading historians of the Enlightenment restores the Revolution’s intellectual history to its rightful central role. Drawing widely on primary sources, Jonathan Israel shows how the Revolution was set in motion by radical eighteenth-century doctrines, how these ideas divided revolutionary leaders into vehemently opposed ideological blocs, and how these clashes drove the turning points of the Revolution. In this compelling account, the French Revolution stands once again as a culmination of the emancipatory and democratic ideals of the Enlightenment. That it ended in the Terror represented a betrayal of those ideas—not their fulfillment.

Presents sixty-eight texts, written by fifteen authors known collectively as the Ideologues, an influential group in late 18th and early 19th century French thought. This collection of texts offers the reader access to examples of their work, and is complemented by the Introduction which offers a focused commentary."

Reknowned historian Roger Chartier attempts in this book to analyze the causes of the French revolution not simply by investigating its "cultural origins" but by pinpointing the conditions that "made is possible because conceivable." Chartier has set himself two important tasks. First, he synthesizes the half-century of scholarship that has created a sociology of culture for Revolutionary France, from education reform through widely circulated printed literature to popular expectations of government and society. Chartier's second contribution is to reexamine the conventional wisdom that there is a necessary link between the profound cultural transformation of the eighteenth century (generally characterized as the Enlightenment) and the abrupt Revolutionary rupture of 1789. "The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution" is a major work by one of the leading scholars in the field and is likely to set the intellectual agenda for future work on the subject. -- From product description.

Throughout, Chartier keeps his focus on historians who have stressed the relations between the products of discourse and social practices.

A wide-ranging collection of essays exploring the question 'How did the French Revolution become thinkable?'.

This volume reassesses Say's political economy by locating the author's ideas amidst the intellectual upheavels of the Ancien Régime and revolutionary France.