Description
Book SynopsisThe French Revolution introduced ideological terror to the world. This book offers a comprehensive explanation of the gruesome Terror, its causes and its consequences for the modern world.
Trade ReviewHistory is served well in Eli Sagan's Citizens and Cannibals. Sagan provides worthy insights into the revolutionary and evolutionary processes unleashed when nations take the wrong path to democracy. If you enjoy reading history, you will want to read this book. * Bookviews.Com *
More successfully than anyone thus far, Eli Sagan has brought us close to a real understanding of the causes of the French Revolutionary Terror, and thereby, to a comprehension of the greatest scourge of the twentieth century: ideological terror. Anyone intrigued by the paradoxes and contradictions of the modern world must read this book. -- Robert Bellah, Professor of Sociology, Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley; coauthor of Habits of the Heart
Robespierre—and later Lenin—were men of virtue, but the regimes they created spawned terror. Why? Eli Sagan's book is a comprehensive effort to provide an answer. -- Daniel Bell
Eli Sagan is that great rarity—the truly independent scholar. He belongs to no school. He follows no fashion. Instead, he crafts complex, tough-minded works on huge subjects. He doesn't shy away from big questions. In this moving plea for the creation of citizens freed from the destructive burdens of resentment and paranoia, he strikes a blow for moral freedom. -- Jean Bethke Elshtain, The Laura Spelman Rockeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics, University of Chicago; author of Just War Against Terror
Citizens and Cannibals, by Eli Sagan, is fascinating and thought-provoking. It is a very important contribution to the study of the French Revolution and the origins of Ideological Terror. -- Michael Kennedy, author of
The Jacobin Clubs in the French Revolution, 1793-1795
I find the book fascinating, provocative, and enormously stimulating. Sagan's observations in this and in his earlier book, The Honey and the Hemlock, are often original and insightful and of great value in assisting the historian in understanding certain aspects of Revolutionary behavior. I have learned much from him. -- Timothy Tackett, University of California, Irvine
Important and timely. . . book. * Library Journal *
Recommended for serious students of the French Revolution. * Publishers Weekly *
Citizens and Cannibals siezes our imagination, not with sociological theories and psychoanalytic attempts to divine the wellsptring of human iniquity, but with compelling descriptions of pernicious edicts, fanatical leaders, and innocents massacred on altars of Ideological Truth. -- Michael Burns * The American Scholar *
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 Introduction: The Intent of the Book Part 2 The Great Struggle for Modernity Chapter 3 The Triumph of Liberalism: Values, Mores, Mentalites Chapter 4 The Triumph of Liberalism: Institutions Chapter 5 One Revolution or Three? Chapter 6 The Promise of Democratic Citizenship Chapter 7 The Betrayal of the Promise of Democracy Chapter 8 The Mirage of Democratic Citizenship Chapter 9 The Bourgeois Life and Capitalism Chapter 10 The Terrifying Paradox of Individualism Chapter 11 Secular Society, Nationalism, and the Secular Sacred Chapter 12 To Rationalize Society—To Order the World Part 13 The Possible Outcomes of the Struggle for Modernity Chapter 14 Anarchy and the Fear of Anarchy Chapter 15 Riot, Gangsterism, Conservative Dictatorship Chapter 16 Civilian Control of the Military: The Militia and a Citizen Army Part 17 Modernity Psychosis: The Great Terror Chapter 18 Paranoid Panic; Human Sacrifice as Paranoid Revenge; Scapegoats Chapter 19 Enemies Without—Traitors Within; Paranoid Purging and Self-Destruction Chapter 20 The Great Promise and the Great Anxiety of Modernity Chapter 21 The Splitting of the Psyche; The Splitting of the World; The Projection of Uncontaminated Virtue and Absolute Evil Chapter 22 The Flight to Perfection: Utopianism as a Defence against Modernity-Anxiety Chapter 23 Regression to the Borderline Condition: On the Psychology of Ideological Terror Chapter 24 Terror Chapter 25 Robespierre, Virtuous; Robespierre, Paranoid; Robespierre, Narcissist; Robespierre, Dictator; Robespierre, Genius of Moral Critique; Robespierre, Terrorist Part 26 Social Evolution Chapter 27 Why and Where Has God Been Pushing Us? Chapter 28 The Politics of the Impossible: Skipping a Developmental Stage Chapter 29 Notes, Bibliography Chapter 30 Index
