Description
Book SynopsisWhat Is a Nation? and Other Political Writings is the first English-language anthology of Ernest Renan’s political thought. It offers a wide selection of Renan’s writings, most previously untranslated. It restores Renan to his place as one of France’s major liberal thinkers and gives vital critical context to his views on nationalism.
Trade ReviewThis wonderfully translated and edited collection offers a welcome opportunity to reassess the political writings of Ernest Renan. M.F.N. Giglioli’s judicious selection of essays allows readers to explore how this influential nineteenth-century liberal understood the major challenges of his day: empire, religion, education, and liberty. A principled mind in an era of revolutionaries and demagogues, Renan inspires reflection on the place of intellectual and political engagement in turbulent times. -- J.P. Daughton, Stanford University
This welcome volume makes the political thought of a major figure in the liberal tradition accessible to English readers for the first time. Setting Renan's famous lecture 'What Is a Nation?' alongside a series of previously untranslated essays on diverse subjects from Islamic science to the future of Europe to the nature of historical causation, the volume shows Renan grappling with the many legacies of the French Revolution for the modern world. Giglioli's translations are lucid, reliable, and a pleasure to read. His informative and judicious introduction traces the considerable impact of Renan's controversial ideas—about race, religion, civilization, and reform—on thinkers from left to right in subsequent generations. -- Jennifer Pitts, University of Chicago
Renan was one of the most significant liberal thinkers in nineteenth-century France. His occasional essays and lectures constituted major interventions in, and helped set the tone of, public debate.
What Is a Nation? and Other Political Writings makes a fundamental contribution in bringing to the English reader a variety of Renan’s texts which are either unavailable or dispersed, supported by an excellent introduction and supplemented by highly useful explanatory notes. -- Robert D. Priest, Royal Holloway, University of London
Highly recommended. * Choice *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Series Editor’s Foreword
Introduction
Chronology
1. On Clerical Liberalism (
Du libéralisme clérical, 1848)
2. Mr. de Sacy and the Liberal Tradition (
M. de Sacy et l’école libérale, 1858)
3. The Philosophy of Contemporary History (
Philosophie de l’histoire contemporaine, 1859)
4. The Role of the Family and the State in Education (La part de la famille et de l’État dans l’Éducation, 1869)
5. Constitutional Monarchy in France (
La Monarchie constitutionnelle en France, 1869)
6. The War between France and Germany (
La Guerre entre la France et l’Allemagne, 1870)
7. Two Letters to Mr. Strauss (
Lettre & Nouvelle lettre à M. Strauss, 1870-1871)
8. Intellectual and Moral Reform of France (
La Réforme intellectuelle et morale de la France, 1871)
9. What Is a Nation? (
Qu’est-ce qu’une nation?, 1882)
10. Islam and Science (
L’Islamisme et la science, 1883)
11. Original Unity and Gradual Separation of Judaism and Christianity (
Identité originelle et séparation graduelle du judaïsme et du christianisme, 1883)
Notes
Index
