![]() ![]() It is remarkable and significant."-Rachel Hammersley, Times Literary Supplement Israel's categorization of the various revolutionary factions offers fascinating new insights, and his knack for uncovering interesting but neglected individuals and texts is second to none. "dvances an erudite and persuasive argument. That it ended in the Terror represented a betrayal of those ideas-not their fulfillment. In this compelling account, the French Revolution stands once again as a culmination of the emancipatory and democratic ideals of the Enlightenment. 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 Revolutionary Ideas, one of the world’s leading historians of the Enlightenment restores the Revolution’s intellectual history to its rightful central role. 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. ![]() 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. ![]()
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