Abstract
This chapter discusses how the French Revolution has been interpreted within political philosophy when it comes to the discussion of the issue of rights. After presenting the contributions of authors such as Habermas, Rawls, Baxi, Douzinas, Moyn, among others, the chapter traces the roots of their reading back to a common source: François Furet’s interpretation of the French Revolution and its misconceptions. From that point on, the chapter discusses the relation between Law and Revolution within such framework and points to an alternative historiographical tradition that could better help us develop the Revolution’s radically democratic discourses—the idea of a philosophy of modern natural law. It is through these lenses that the rest of the book is constructed.
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Notes
- 1.
Pierre Rosanvallon, La Démocratie Inachevée: Histoire de la Souveraineté du Peuple en France (Paris: Gallimard, 2000), 37. Unless otherwise noted, all translations from non-English texts are mine.
- 2.
Paula Bartolini Spieler, “Direitos Humanos como Discurso Emancipatório? O Caso das ONGs que Atuam no Brasil,” PhD diss. (Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, 2014). Paula Spieler, “Direitos humanos como discurso emancipatório? O caso das ONGs que atuam no Brasil,” Doctoral diss. (UERJ, 2014).
- 3.
Chapter 3 of his 1971 Theorie und Praxis, with an abridged version published in English in 1974, discusses Hegel’s interpretation of the French Revolution and, only indirectly, also the Revolution. Since its focus is not on the Revolution itself, I did not include it in the list. Even so, the critique that follows could be equally applied to this text, if our focus is his reading of the French Revolution and not Hegel’s position.
- 4.
Koselleck’s case is especially interesting. In his text Critique and Crisis, the one Habermas analyses, Koselleck mentions Cochin and exclusively German historians, such as Adalbert Wahl. Cochin is one of Furet’s main “discoveries,” as we will see later on. Regarding Wahl, his book on the French Revolution is only available in German: Geschichte des europäischen Staatensystems im Zeitalter der französischen Revolution und der Freiheitskriege (1992)—which can be translated as “History of the European State System during the Era of the French Revolution and the Liberation Wars.” However, a footnote in Lefebvre’s book gives us an indication of which historiographical interpretation is adopted by Wahl, and presumably also by Koselleck and, finally, by Habermas: “Heinrich von Sybel, in Geschichte der Revolutionszeit (5 vols., Düsseldorf, 1853–1879), and Albert Sorel, in L’Europe et la Révolution française (8 vols., Paris, 1885–1904), agree that the Girondins alone were responsible for the war. (…) Their thesis has been summarized without nuance by Adalbert Wahl in Geschichte des europäischen Staatensystems im Zeitalter der französischen Revolution und der Freiheitskriege (1789–1815) (Munich and Berlin, 1912), and has been repeated with no new arguments by H. A. Goetz-Bernstein in La diplomatie de la Gironde, Jacques-Pierre Brissot (Paris, 1912).” (Georges Lefebvre, The French Revolution (London: Routledge, 2005), 217, note 1).
- 5.
Jürgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990), 17.
- 6.
Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996), 83.
- 7.
Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, 493.
- 8.
Jürgen Habermas, The inclusion of the other: studies in political theory (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998), 212.
- 9.
Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, 465.
- 10.
On the issue of morals and morality, it is important to note that Habermas uses the expression “morality” in connection with the theoretical development starting in the nineteenth century with Kant’s moral theory. This principles-based aprioristic interpretation cannot be directly transposed to the French Revolutionary world of the end of the eighteenth century. When the revolutionaries talk about morality, they are not concerned with the same thing as Habermas or contemporary moral philosophers. Therefore, when using the term “moral” or “morality” in this book, I am using it in the revolutionary sense of these words. Morals and morality in this book do not refer to the Kantian construct or contemporary philosophic parlance. This translation problem will also arise in the concluding chapters, when I discuss the notions of “republic” and “citizenship.”
- 11.
Jürgen Habermas, “The Concept of Human Dignity and the Realistic Utopia of Human Rights,” Metaphilosophy 41, n. 4 (2010).
- 12.
Here understood within Habermas’ conception of liberalism and its relation to his idea of a modern project, and not as the French revolutionary idea of liberalism.
- 13.
Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, 471.
- 14.
John Rawls, Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press), 330, note 2.
- 15.
John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), iv.
- 16.
James Griffin, On Human Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 1.
- 17.
Fábio Konder Comparato, Afirmação Histórica dos Direitos Humanos (São Paulo: Saraiva, 2005), 64.
- 18.
Comparato, Afirmação Histórica, 64.
- 19.
Comparato, Afirmação Histórica, 75.
- 20.
Arno Mayer, The Furies: Violence and Terror in the French and Russian Revolutions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000). I will not discuss Mayer’s book in further detail. For a detailed discussion within the United States historiography on the French Revolution, cf. French Historical Studies 24, n. 4 (2001).
- 21.
Meister does not use the terms “modern” or “contemporary,” but I have chosen to use them in order to better differentiate and show his proximity with Upendra Baxi’s hypothesis, presented below.
- 22.
Robert Meister, After Evil: A Politics of Human Rights (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 5.
- 23.
Meister, After Evil, 80.
- 24.
His conception of the modern discourse, at least from what can be inferred from his references, seems to be based on Leo Strauss’ work on natural law and, to a minor degree, an Article by Stephan Marks on the connection between the 1789 and 1948 declarations. Delving into Strauss’ extensive book is, however, beyond the focus of this book. For a discussion on the relation between his work on natural law and natural law during the French Revolution, see Florence Gauthier, “Éléments d’une histoire du droit naturel: à propos de Léo Strauss, Michel Villey et et Brian Tierney,” published April 14, 2011, https://revolution-francaise.net/2011/04/14/432-elements-histoire-droit-naturel-leo-strauss-michel-villey-brian-tierney, where she claims that Strauss’ hypothesis would not be faithful to the modern philosophy of natural law.
- 25.
Upendra Baxi. “Two Notions of Human Rights,” in The Future of Human Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 43.
- 26.
Baxi. “Two Notions,” 42.
- 27.
Baxi. “Two Notions,” 47, emphasis in original.
- 28.
Stephen Marks, “From the ‘Single Confused Page’ to the “Decalogue for Five Billion Persons”: The Roots of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the French Revolution.” Human Rights Quarterly 20, n. 3 (ago./1998): 464.
- 29.
Marks. “From the ‘Single Confused Page’,” 466.
- 30.
The only direct mention appears in a footnote on the racism, sexism, and classism of representatives of modern philosophical tradition: “Other European philosophers can also be found fractured by a twofold engagement with right. While Kant showed ‘enthusiasm’ for the French Revolution, he kept silent about the Terror unleashed by Robespierre. Hegel, on his part, denounced the Terror but understood colonialism and colonial genocide as the materialization of the display and advance of the Spirit” (José-Manuel Barreto, introduction to Human Rights from a Third World Perspective: Critique, History and International Law, ed. José-Manuel Barreto (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013), 18, note 37). This passage seems to indicate that colonialism was part of the revolutionary endeavor, as Baxi suggested, and identifies the alleged Terror with Robespierre without giving any historical or historiographical basis for such claims.
- 31.
The first author, a law and history professor at Harvard University and one of the main representatives of historical revisionism in human rights (and this has no negative connotations, as it may seem at first sight, at least to some readers). The second author, a law professor at the Birkbeck Institute and an exponent of the British Critical Legal Studies tradition and was an elected member of Greece’s Parliament in 2015.
- 32.
I have chosen Samuel Moyn and Costas Douzinas because they represent two very distinct ways of thinking about human rights. This disparity helps avoid the trap of confining my research to a single political-theoretical framework. I must point out, however, that the French Revolution does not have a prominent place in contemporary discussion in the theory or philosophy of human rights. Moyn and Douzinas are two of few examples of authors outside the revolutionary historiography itself that articulate a little bit further this relation.
- 33.
Samuel Moyn, The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History (Cambridge, Massachusetts, London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2012), 1.
- 34.
Moyn, The Last Utopia, 173.
- 35.
Moyn, The Last Utopia, 15–16.
- 36.
Moyn, The Last Utopia, 25.
- 37.
I shall point out, however, that the role the revolutionary discourse played in the fight against slavery is highlighted by one of Moyn’s book reviewers, Robin Blackburn. Blackburn explains the complex character of this relationship and criticizes Moyn for seeing it in a grossly simplified manner—especially when discussing the debate on national interest and emancipation (Robin Blackburn, review of The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History, by Samuel Moyn, New Left Review, 69 (mai./jun. 2011): 130–131.). The reviewer shows how the relation between seventeenth-century thought, the rights declared during the French Revolution, and the struggle against slavery—by whites and by black slaves directly—is much more complex than Moyn leads us to believe.
- 38.
For a brief presentation of the topic, see Marc Belissa, “Le ‘Droit des Gens’ dans le Débat Constitutionnel,” in L’An I et l’Apprentissage de la Démocratie, ed. Roger Bourderon (Saint-Denis: Éditions PSD, 1995).
- 39.
Costas Douzinas, The End of Human Rights (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2000), 380.
- 40.
Costas Douzinas, Human Rights and Empire: The Political Philosophy of Cosmopolitanism (Milton Park, New York: Routledge-Cavendish, 2007), 7. See also Kirsten Stellars’ history of the international human rights movement after the second half of the twentieth century. The author summarizes the relation between human rights and war campaigns as such: “And as President Bush Sr and Clinton have more recently demonstrated, it can provide a sugar coating for potentially unpalatable foreign interventions. As these examples show, human rights campaigns are almost always triggered by domestic impulses within the most powerful nations, rather than by repression in countries elsewhere. And, by the same token, governments judge these campaigns by their success on the home front” (Kirsten Stellars, The Rise and Rise of Human Rights (London: Sutton Publishing Limited, 2002), xiii).
- 41.
“Human rights have both institutional and subjective aspects. As institutional entities, they belong to constitutions, laws, court judgments, international organisations, treaties and conventions. But the prime function of rights is to construct the individual person as a subject (of law). Rights are tools and strategies for defining the meaning and powers of humanity” (Douzinas, Human Rights and Empire, 7).
- 42.
Douzinas, Human Rights and Empire, 7, 10.
- 43.
Douzinas talks generically about “declarations” but refers almost exclusively to the 1789 final text, and he seems to include the American Bill of Rights in the same analysis. Therefore, when discussing Douzinas’ stance, I use the term “Declaration” to refer solely to the 1789 version, even if his reasoning may be extrapolated to the other documents—something he does explicitly in some points of his text.
- 44.
Douzinas, Human Rights and Empire, 98.
- 45.
Douzinas, Human Rights and Empire, 251, emphasis in original.
- 46.
Claude Nicolet, L’Idée Républicaine en France: Essai d’Histoire Critique (Paris: Gallimard, 1982), 18. The choice of “homeland” is not without its problems. For a discussion of the meaning of the French patrie, see Albert Soboul, Dictionnnaire de la Révolution Française (Paris: PUF, 1989), 822.
- 47.
The historian gave a speech in a panel called L’État-Nation: une histoire récente during the 2015 edition of the meeting. See Marc Belissa, “Marc Belissa aux 4e Rencontres d’histoire critique—Nation(s)/ mondialisation(s) (nov. 2015),” YouTube, February 12, 2016, video, 17: 13. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ4E5JDn_dw.
- 48.
Maximilien de Robespierre, Œuvres de Robespierre (Paris: A. Vermorel, F. Cournol, 1867), 297. His discourse receives the title Sur les principes de morale politique qui doivent guider la Convention nationale dans l’administration intérieure de la République (On the principles of political morality that shall guide the internal administration of the Republic by the National Convention).
- 49.
All French Constitutions are available, including the scanned original texts, at the French Constitutional Council website at https://www.conseil-constitutionnel.fr/la-constitution/les-constitutions-de-la-france.
- 50.
Douzinas, Human Rights and Empire, 98, note 9; Moyn, The Last Utopia, 314.
- 51.
Marcel Gauchet is not a specialist in the French Revolution, but in political history in a broader sense. His intellectual history shows his proximity with Furet, as well as a similar political trajectory (both have cut ties with the so-called Marxist “vulgate”). Keith Baker is a specialist in Condorcet and has written extensively about the French Revolution. As an example of his proximity with Furet, we can mention a work edited by Gary Kates presenting a panorama of revolutionary historiography that put Furet and Baker under the same title: “The revisionist orthodoxy.” Gary Kates, ed., The French Revolution: Recent Debates and New Controversie (London: Routledge, 1998). For an often-quoted and important contribution by Baker, see Keith Baker, “Transformations of Classical Republicanism in Eighteenth-Century France,” The Journal of Modern History 73, n. 1 (March 2001): 32–52.
- 52.
Germaine de Staël, Considerations on the Principal Events of the French Revolution (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2008), 111.
- 53.
Staël, Considerations, 198.
- 54.
Claude Mazauric, L’Histoire de la Révolution française et la pensée marxiste (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2009), 127.
- 55.
Alice Gérard, A Revolução Francesa: mitos e interpretações (São Paulo: Perspectiva, 1999), 33.
- 56.
With regard to the reception of this work, especially in France, cf. Julien Louvrier, “Penser la controverse: la réception du livre de François Furet et Denis Richet, La Révolution Française,” Annales Historiques de la Révolution Française 351 (January–March 2008).
- 57.
Michel Vovelle, “L’historiographie de la Révolution Française à la veille du bicentenaire,” Estudos Avançados 1, n. 1 (December 1987).
- 58.
Initially a conference held at University College, London, on May 6, 1954, the text was published the following year and later incorporated into Aspects of the French Revolution. Alfred Cobban, Aspects of the French Revolution (New York: Jonathan Cape, 1968).
- 59.
Some years later, Cobban published a summarized reworking of his fundamental hypothesis: Alfred Cobban, The Social Interpretation of the French Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964).
- 60.
In Louvrier’s summary: “Furet et Richet redonnent à l’interprétation libérale de l’histoire révolutionnaire un nouveau souffle. Mais plus encore s’exprime ici la remise en cause de la vision jusqu’alors dominante dans l’historiographie: la lecture d’inspiration marxiste d’une révolution une et indivisible, point de passage obligé de la transition historique du féodalisme au capitalisme, rendue nécessaire par le développement des forces productives entravées par les contraintes de la société d’Ancien Régime. François Furet et Denis Richet refusent cette « révolution bourgeoise à soutien populaire » et favorisent la thèse d’une révolution déjà largement aboutie dans l’esprit des élites, sinon dans les faits, avant même la réunion des États généraux à Versailles au printemps 1789” (Louvrier, “Penser la controverse,” 159).
- 61.
Jacques-Charles Bailleul, Examen critique de l’ouvrage posthume de Mme la baronne de Stäel, ayant pour titre. Considérations sur les principaux événements de la Révolution française (Paris: Ant. Bailleul, 1818). Bailleul was a representative at the Convention during the 1793 debates, but his was a minor role. See the May 22, 1793, session (AP, t. LXVI, 190ff).
- 62.
The adjective “conservative” does not carry a negative connotation. It serves to indicate that, for these thinkers, it is necessary to preserve some aspects of the French society, which was under the risk—according to their interpretation—of disappearing or being corrupted by the revolutionary movement. They are, in a general sense, critics to the French Revolution.
- 63.
Mazauric, L’Histoire de la Révolution française, 127–128.
- 64.
For a more thorough work on how Burke came to the ideas presented in his Reflections, see William Palmer, “Edmund Burke and the French Revolution: Notes on the Genesis of the Reflections,” Colby Quarterly 20, n. 4 (December 1984).
- 65.
Burke in Palmer, “Edmund Burke and the French Revolution,” 184.
- 66.
Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (London, New York: Temple Press Letchworth J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1910), 57.
- 67.
Gérard, A Revolução Francesa, 20.
- 68.
François Furet, Penser la Révolution française (Paris: Gallimard, 1978), 33.
- 69.
Alexis de Tocqueville, O Antigo Regime e a Revolução (São Paulo: WWF Martins Fontes, 2009), 130.
- 70.
Auguste Cochin, La Révolution et la Libre Pensée (Paris: Pion-Nourrit et Cie, 1924), 130.
- 71.
Furet, Penser la Révolution française, 281–282.
- 72.
Furet, Penser la Révolution française, 129.
- 73.
Vovelle, “L’historiographie de la Révolution Française,” 66.
- 74.
It is hard to name this current. While a more direct approach would be to follow the ideas presented so far and use the term “radical liberal,” some of its proponents are clearly not under the liberal umbrella, especially the Marxist-inspired historians. The term “liberal-democratic” might also not be adequate since it would imply that the other approaches had no concern for the democratic question—something their proponents would surely deny. For lack of a better term, I chose the expression “radical popular historiography,” thus avoiding the term “Jacobin historiography” used by the first two currents to classify any historians not fitting to those two prior trends. This is important, since some historians, such as Guérin, explicitly deny the Jacobin heritage while highlighting two concerns of this historiographical trend: recognizing the positive and productive role played by popular movements; and the attempt to strengthen the liberating radicality of the revolutionary movement. For example, to illustrate the contrast between the first two trends and this last one, the reader can compare Keith Baker’s “Transformations of Classical Republicanism” with Yannick Bosc’s “La Constitution de l’An III: un républicanisme classique?,” last modified September 6, 2008, http://revolution-francaise.net/2008/09/06/258-constitution-an-iii-republicanisme-classique.
- 75.
Marcel Gauchet, La Révolution des Droits de l’Homme (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1989), vi.
- 76.
Gauchet, La Révolution des Droits de l’Homme, ix.
- 77.
Gauchet, La Révolution des Droits de l’Homme, 10.
- 78.
Gauchet, La Révolution des Droits de l’Homme, xiii–xv.
- 79.
Lucien Jaume, Les Déclarations des Droits de l’Homme (Paris: GM Flammarion, 1989).
- 80.
Rosanvallon, La Démocratie Inachevée, 71; AP, t. LXIII, 589.
- 81.
Gauchet, La Révolution des Droits de l’Homme, xx.
- 82.
Gauchet, La Révolution des Droits de l’Homme, 24.
- 83.
Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès, Qu’est-ce que le tiers état? (n.p., 1789) 128, https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k47521t.
- 84.
Gauchet, La Révolution des Droits de l’Homme, 40.
- 85.
The literature on this topic is immense. As a mere example, on the popular societies in Paris, see Raymonde Monnier, “Les Sociétés Populaires dans le Département de Paris sous la Révolution,” Annales Historiques de la Révolution Française 278 (1989). For a discussion of the political engagement of the peasantry, see Florence Gauthier, La Voie Paysanne dans la Révolution Française (Paris: F. Maspero, 1977).
- 86.
Jean-Clément Martin, Nouvelle Histoire de la Révolution française (Paris: Perrin, 2012), 174–175.
- 87.
AP, t. VIII, 340–341.
- 88.
Jacques Thoret, Projet de Déclaration des Droits de l’Homme (N.p.: Versaiiles, 1789), 4.
- 89.
AP, t. VIII, 322.
- 90.
Furet’s “first phase” book on revolutionary history had been published in 1965 and his drifting hypothesis was presented a year before Lefort’s text.
- 91.
Claude Lefort, “Direitos do homem e política,” in A Invenção Democrática: Os Limites do Totalitarismo (São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1987), 45.
- 92.
Lefort, “Direitos do Homem e Política,” 57.
- 93.
See Guy Lemarchand, “Troubles populaires au XVIIIe siècle et conscience de classe: une préface à la Révolution française,” Annales historiques de la Révolution française 279 (January–March 1990).
- 94.
On the 1789 rural uprising, see Georges Lefebvre, La Grande peur de 1789 (Paris: Armand Colin, 1932).
- 95.
Florence Gauthier, “Très brève histoire de la Révolution française, révolution des droits de l’homme et du citoyen,” last modified December 2, 2005, access February 9, 2016, http://revolution-francaise.net/2005/12/02/10-tres-breve-histoire-de-la-revolution-francaise-revolution-des-droits-de-l-homme-et-du-citoyen.
- 96.
Gauthier, Triomphe et Mort de la Révolution des Droits, 79.
- 97.
De Dabuisson in Lefebvre, La Grande Peur, 51.
- 98.
On this specific piece of legislation, it is worth quoting Robespierre’s speech during the February 22, 1790, session: “Les nations n’ont qu’un moment pour devenir libres, c’est celui où tous les anciens pouvoir sont suspendus ne proclamons pas une nouvelle loi martiale contre un peuple qui défend ses droits, qui recouvre sa liberté” (AM, III: 438). In other words, the possible paths for the revolutionary movement were many and varied. We cannot reduce the Revolution’s political philosophy to the final text of its Declarations, its Constitution, and its hundreds of laws.
- 99.
Gauchet, La Révolution des Droits de l’Homme, 148.
- 100.
Jaume, Les Déclarations des Droits de l’Homme, 52.
- 101.
Cf. Lefebvre, La Grande Peur.
- 102.
Dan Edelstein, The Terror of Natural Right: Republicanism, the Cult of Nature, & the French Revolution (Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press, 2009).
- 103.
Edelstein’s hypothesis is preceded by a long discussion on French republicanism and the relation between the state of nature and the Golden Age, as portrayed by authors such as Montaigne, Fénelon, and Montesquieu. It is not my place to delve into this discussion. As a side-note, I point out that Edelstein’s argument is based on the alleged Jacobin attempt to reproduce an old model of republicanism, and the author quotes Robespierre’s mentions of ancient Rome and Greece. Gauthier, however, makes it clear that this position can be traced back to Furet, who had denounced the alleged anachronism of Robespierre as he tried to simply transpose classical antiquity to eighteenth-century France. However, Robespierre did not make such an attempt. Rome is not something to be imitated. The Incorruptible highlights the opposition between the theory of modern natural law and Antiquity. Slavery disgraced Antiquity as poverty disgraced his contemporary France, so came the need for a popular political economy. Furthermore, the old division between citizens and non-citizens was completely contrary to modern natural law, as well as the old wars of conquest based on the love for the homeland (Gauthier, Triomphe et Mort, 181–182).
- 104.
Edelstein, The Terror of Natural Right, 74.
- 105.
Edelstein, The Terror of Natural Right, 102–104.
- 106.
See Florence Gauthier, “Political Economy in the Eighteenth Century: Popular or Despotic? The Physiocrats Against the Right to Existence,” Economic Thought 4, n. 1 (2015).
- 107.
See Florence Gauthier, “De Mably à Robespierre: un programme économique égalitaire 1775–1793,” Annales Historiques de la Révolution Française 261, n. 1 (1985).
- 108.
See David McNally, “‘Guard Dogs of the Monarch’: Legal Despotism and the Natural Order,” in Political Economy and the Rise of Capitalism: A Reinterpretation (Berkeley; Los Angeles; Londres: University of California Press, 1988). One of Quesnay’s texts in which we can see a clear defense of despotism, affirming that a despotic government can be a simple realization of natural rights is François Quesnay, “Despotisme de la Chine,” in Œuvres économiques et philosophiques de F. Quesnay, ed. Joseph Baer (Frankfurt: Joseph Baer et cie. Libraires-Éditeurs; Paris: Jules Perelman et cie, 1888), 563–660.
- 109.
The problem of the alleged Terror is beyond the scope of this work. For a good introduction to this topic, see Michel Alpaugh, Non-violence and the French Revolution: Political Demonstrations in Paris, 1787–1795 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).
- 110.
See Yannick Bosc, “Introduction,” in Le terreur des droits de l’homme: le républicanisme de Thomas Paine et moment thermidorien (Paris: Kimé, 2016).
- 111.
Jean-Pierre Gross, Fair Shares for All: Jacobin Egalitarianism in Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 8.
- 112.
Gross, Fair Shares for All, 3–5. Regarding the passage from the right to subsistence to the right to existence, see Cynthia Bouthon, “Les mouvements de subsistance et le problème de l’économie morale sous l’ancien régime et la Révolution française,” Annales Historiques de la Révolution Française 319 (January–March 2000).
- 113.
Gross, Fair Shares for All, 42–44.
- 114.
Gauthier, Triomphe et Mort, 29.
- 115.
Gauthier, Triomphe et Mort, 43.
- 116.
Gauthier, Triomphe et Mort, 43.
- 117.
Gauthier, Triomphe et Mort, 32.
- 118.
For example, on the relationship Furet established between virtue and Terror: “La fête de l’Être suprême et la Grande Terreur sont investies de la même finalité: assurer le règne de la vertu” (Furet, Penser la Révolution Française, 115).
- 119.
Gauthier mentions Mably’s text Du Commerce de Grains. Gabriel Bonnot de Mably, “Du commerce de grains,” in Collection complète des Œuvres de l’abbé de Mably, t. 13 (Paris: Ch. Desbriere, 1794–1795), 242–298.
- 120.
Gabriel Bonnot de Mably, “Concerning the Dangers to which the American Confederation stands exposed; the Circumstances which will give rise to Troubles and Divisions; and the Necessity of augmenting the Power of the Continental Congress,” in Remarks concerning the Government and Laws of the United States of America: in Four Letters addressed to Mr. Adams (Dublin: Moncrieffe, 1785), 183–262.
- 121.
Mably, “Concerning the Dangers,” 258–259.
- 122.
Gauthier, Triomphe et Mort, 88.
- 123.
Maximilien de Robespierre, “Sur la constitution (Convention, séance du 10 mai 1793),” in Œuvres de Robespierre, 276–293.
- 124.
Robespierre, “Sur la constitution,” 292.
- 125.
Edelstein, The Terror of Natural Right, 29, 54, and 110.
- 126.
Florence Gauthier, “Les Lumières et le Droit Naturel,” Revista HMiC 1 (2003): 112.
- 127.
Gauthier, Triomphe et Mort, 108.
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2.1.1 Historical Documents
2.1.1.1 Parliamentary Notes, Newspapers and Legal Texts
Archives parlementaires de 1787 à 1869 (First series). Paris: Paul Dupont, 1867–2021. [cited as ‘AP’, followed by tome number, page, and the document’s date, when available]
Ancién moniteur (Réimpression de l’), Seule Histoire Authentique et Inaltérée de la Révolution Française depuis la Réunion des États-Généraux jusqu’au Consulat (Mai 1789–Novembre 1799), 31 t. Paris: Henri Plon Imprimeur-Éditeur, 1862–1863. [cited as ‘AM’, followed by tome number, page, and the document’s date, when available]
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Baker, E. (2022). Thinking the French Revolution (and Law). In: Human Rights and Humanity’s Rights During Year Three of the French Revolution. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99508-9_2
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