Terror of Natural Right
Regular price
€55.99
18th century
A01=Dan Edelstein
Author_Dan Edelstein
Category=JPA
Category=NHD
Category=NHTV
citizenship
democratic representation
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
france
freedom
french revolution
governing
government
historical
history
humanity
jacobins
laws
liberal democracy
massacres
nation state
natural right
political ideology
politics
public executions
radical change
reign of terror
republic
republican theory
republicanism
revolutionaries
rights
social changes
treason accusations
violence
Product details
- ISBN 9780226184388
- Weight: 737g
- Dimensions: 17 x 24mm
- Publication Date: 01 Oct 2009
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
Natural right - the idea that there is a collection of laws and rights based not on custom or belief but that are 'natural' in origin - is typically associated with liberal politics and freedom. "In The Terror of Natural Right", Dan Edelstein argues that the revolutionaries of eighteenth-century France used the natural right concept of the 'enemy of the human race' - an individual who has transgressed the laws of nature and must be executed without judicial formalities - to authorize three-quarters of the deaths during the Terror. Edelstein further contends that the Jacobins shared a political philosophy that he calls 'natural republicanism,' which assumed that the natural state of society was a republic and that natural right provided its only acceptable laws. Ultimately, he proves that what we call the Terror was in fact only one facet of the republican theory that prevailed from Louis's trial until the fall of Robespierre. A highly original work of historical analysis, political theory, literary criticism, and intellectual history, "The Terror of Natural Right" challenges prevailing assumptions about the Terror to offer a new perspective on the Revolutionary period.
Dan Edelstein is associate professor of French at Stanford University.
