New Hearts and Minds: Inventing Republican Culture

French Revolutionaries transformed not only political institutions. They also tried to instill a new kind of morality, or civic virtue. Throughout the early modern period, 'republicanism' had civic virtue at its centre. In his Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu formulated the idea memorably, arguing that republic's required virtue to maintain themselves. (Aristocracies required honour and despotisms fear.) Revolutionaries took this notion to heart. They believed that the new regime could only endure through a moral regeneration of society. But whereas Montesquieu believed that checks-and-balances could work to keep institutions in check in a republic, Rousseau put much more stress on virtue and sentiment. Civic virtue came from listening to one's heart, which contained a natural kind of genuiness and truth.

During the late Cold War, second-wave revisionists saw in French Revolutionary moral regeneration the illiberal origins of modern totalitarianism. Regeneration brought about state surveillance and scrutiny of the individual's 'true' intentions. The moral engineering it required limited people's freedom of conscience and expression. The fact that regeneration campaigns coincided with political terror has led many to conclude that regeneration caused the terror. But was this really the case? Can a political order survive through constitutional checks-and-balances alone? Is civic virtue needed to keep a society hanging together? And was revolutionary regeneration a cause of political violence or the response to political violence caused by other factors, such as unresolved parameters for freedom and equality?

 

Core primary readings

* Condorcet, 'The Future Progress of the Human MindLink opens in a new window' Look at Table of Contents and Tenth Epoch (online)

* A New Calendar, in Baker, ORFR, 362-367.

NB: When the above title (ORFR) is assigned for reading, please consult one of the five copies in the Library: Call number CB245.U64 (3rd floor). Please take photos of the pages and leave the book for others. There are only 5 copies! Thank you!

* L. Mason & T. Rizzo, FRDC, Chapter 10 (pp. 244-263)

Core secondary readings

• M. Ozouf, 'Public Spirit' in Furet/Ozouf (eds.), Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution (1989) (course extracts)
• C. Walton, ‘Policing the Moral Limits’ in Policing Public Opinion in the French Revolution (2009), ch. 8Link opens in a new window.

Questions

1. Was Condorcet naive in believing human progress?

2. Do you see in the speeches of Robespierre and Saint-Just a formula for terror and authoritarianism? Are there any other possible readings of these texts?

3. How would you summarise Ozouf's view of revolutionary regeneration and do you agree with it?

4. Why did revolutionaries think that 'public spirit' (a kind of civic virtue) was a prerequisite to enjoying freedom of expression? Do you agree or do you see their arguments as tendentious?

 

Further reading

• L. Hunt, Politics, Culture and Class in the French Revolution (1985)
• M. Ozouf, Festivals and the French Revolution (1991)
• M. Ozouf, ‘Revolutionary Calendar’, in Furet/Ozouf (eds), Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution (1989), 538-547.
• M. Lyons, ‘The 9 Thermidor: motives and effects’, European Studies Review, (1975)
• D.P. Jordan, The Revolutionary Career of Maximilien Robespierre (1985)
• L. Mason, Singing the French Revolution: Popular Culture and Politics 1787 - 1799 (1996)
• K. Astbury, Narrative Responses to the Trauma of the French Revoluiton (2012)
• C. Walton, 'Charles IX and the French Revolution: Law, Vengeance, and the Revolutionary Uses of History', European Review of History 4:2 (1997)
• Susan Maslan, Revolutionary Acts: Theater, Democracy and the French Revolution (2005)
• P. Friedland, Political Actors: Representative Bodies and Theatricality in the Age of the French Revolution (2002)
• R. Schechter, ‘Gothic Thermidor: the bals des victimes, the fantastic and the production of historical knowledge in post-Terror France’, Representations, 61 (1998)
• M. Shaw, Time and the French Revolution: a history of the French Republican Calendar, 1789-Year XIV (2011)
• I. Woloch, The New Regime (1994), ch 6-7, on education.
• Emmet Kennedy, A Cultural History of the French Revolution (1989)