Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- Bibliographical Note
- Chronology
- TOCQUEVILLE: THE ANCIEN RÉGIME AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
- Foreword
- Book I
- Book II
- Book III
- III.1 How, Toward the Middle of the Eighteenth Century, Men of Letters Became the Country's Leading Politicians, and the Effects That Followed from This
- III.2 How Irreligion Was Able to Become a General and Dominant Passion in Eighteenth-Century France, and How It Influenced the Character of the Revolution
- III.3 How the French Wanted Reforms Before They Wanted Liberties
- III.4 That the Reign of Louis XVI Was the Most Prosperous Era of the Old Monarchy, and How That Very Prosperity Hastened the Revolution
- III.5 How Attempts to Relieve the People Stirred Them to Revolt
- III.6 On Some Practices That Helped the Government Complete the People's Revolutionary Education
- III.7 How a Great Administrative Revolution Preceded the Political Revolution, and on the Consequences It Had
- III.8 How the Revolution Emerged Naturally from the Foregoing
- Appendix: On the Pays d'états, and in Particular Languedoc
- Notes
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE TEXTS IN THE HISTORY OF POLITICAL THOUGHT
III.1 - How, Toward the Middle of the Eighteenth Century, Men of Letters Became the Country's Leading Politicians, and the Effects That Followed from This
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- Bibliographical Note
- Chronology
- TOCQUEVILLE: THE ANCIEN RÉGIME AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
- Foreword
- Book I
- Book II
- Book III
- III.1 How, Toward the Middle of the Eighteenth Century, Men of Letters Became the Country's Leading Politicians, and the Effects That Followed from This
- III.2 How Irreligion Was Able to Become a General and Dominant Passion in Eighteenth-Century France, and How It Influenced the Character of the Revolution
- III.3 How the French Wanted Reforms Before They Wanted Liberties
- III.4 That the Reign of Louis XVI Was the Most Prosperous Era of the Old Monarchy, and How That Very Prosperity Hastened the Revolution
- III.5 How Attempts to Relieve the People Stirred Them to Revolt
- III.6 On Some Practices That Helped the Government Complete the People's Revolutionary Education
- III.7 How a Great Administrative Revolution Preceded the Political Revolution, and on the Consequences It Had
- III.8 How the Revolution Emerged Naturally from the Foregoing
- Appendix: On the Pays d'états, and in Particular Languedoc
- Notes
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE TEXTS IN THE HISTORY OF POLITICAL THOUGHT
Summary
I will now set aside the persistent and general facts that prepared the way for the great revolution that it is my purpose to describe and turn to the particular and more recent facts that determined its place, birth, and character.
Of all the nations of Europe, France had long been the most literary. Yet men of letters had never before exhibited a spirit of the sort that emerged around the middle of the eighteenth century, nor had they previously occupied the place in society that they assumed at that time. Nothing like this had ever been seen in France or, I believe, anywhere else.
In France, men of letters did not regularly participate in affairs, as they did in England. Indeed, they had never been so far removed from the world of affairs. They were not invested with authority of any kind and fulfilled no public function in a society already replete with functionaries.
Yet unlike most of their German counterparts, they did not avoid politics entirely or confine themselves to pure philosophy or belles lettres. They took a persistent interest in subjects related to government. In truth, this was their defining occupation. They could be heard, whenever one wished, expounding the origins of society and primitive social forms, the fundamental rights of citizens and prerogatives of authority, the natural and artificial relations among men, the mistakenness or legitimacy of custom, and the essential principles of law.
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- Tocqueville: The Ancien Régime and the French Revolution , pp. 127 - 135Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011