Les origines intellectuelles de la Révolution française

Les origines intellectuelles de la Révolution française

Brun examines the French Revolution as an attempt by humanity to become the author of its own salvation. Moving from Descartes and the Enlightenment to Diderot, Rousseau and the general will, he traces the transformation of truth into political authority and of the citizen into material for a new society. Through Babel, Cain, Prometheus and Faust, he questions the promise of collective redemption and the violence it can justify.

1. 0:00 — History within the human condition
2. 2:49 — Revolution as self-salvation
3. 3:57 — Two illusions about history
4. 6:44 — The Beginning and our beginnings
5. 9:29 — Bringing truth down to earth
6. 10:38 — Descartes, evidence and the need for grace
7. 14:31 — Eternal truths, Locke and experience
8. 17:17 — Malebranche and natural religion
9. 19:34 — Enlightenment and the cult of Reason
10. 22:25 — Montaigne, Montesquieu and the Babel of truth
11. 25:15 — The general will and political infallibility
12. 29:43 — Divinising society, socialising God
13. 32:29 — Making gods: revolution and the guillotine
14. 35:14 — From lèse-majesté to lèse-société
15. 36:53 — Collective salvation and the human person
16. 39:37 — Bringing the heavenly city to earth
17. 43:31 — Cain, the first city and fraternity
18. 48:05 — Rousseau’s contradictions
19. 49:44 — Prometheus, Faust and man as raw material
20. 52:33 — A new calendar and a new Genesis
21. 55:26 — Environment, education and the therapeutic state
22. 58:10 — Progress and the terrorism of truth
23. 1:00:25 — The Minotaur and competing general wills
24. 1:01:31 — Revolution and the loss of the centre
25. 1:03:09 — Man as anti-creator
26. 1:04:17 — Necessary action and the limits of worldly salvation

Jean Brun — 1 recording in the archive.

Related reading: Les Origines intellectuelles de la Révolution française by Daniel Mornet.

The title proposed to me, The Intellectual Origins of the French Revolution, could just as well be replaced by a closely related one: The Spiritual Origins of the French Revolution. We very often say that man is in history, as though history were the environment in which he is immersed, chronologically, geographically and sociologically, rather as a fish is in a bowl. I would like to suggest the opposite perspective: it is not man who is in history, but history that is in man. What we call history is, fundamentally, the more or less gradual unfolding of this inward history, which constitutes man's humanity, the human condition itself. The Bible sheds a particularly profound light on this history within man. You may think what you like about the Bible, except that it does not exist. The point is not to start authoritatively from the Bible in order to impose a kind of spiritual tyranny on an audience. Nor is it to arrive at the Bible through a series of rational deductions. It is to experience this: whenever we find ourselves at a dead end, torn apart, at the central crossroads where we face dilemmas—I do not say alternatives—the Bible illuminates our situation with a unique and irreplaceable light. It illuminates us ab imo, from the depths of the abyss. There we find the light that enables us to understand. The French Revolution, like all other revolutions, seems to me an attempt by man to become the author of his own transfiguration, his own redemption, his own salvation. Since he cannot accomplish this, he makes scapegoats of others. Hence this outpouring of exasperation, this continually increasing violence: consequences and counterparts of a failure man dares not acknowledge, his inability to be his own saviour. I do not intend to seek the origins of the French Revolution in the preceding century. We shall certainly discuss the Encyclopaedists, but that work has already been done by many people, and done well by specialists much more competent than I am. First, I want to point out that history and philosophies of history often fall victim to two illusions. The first is the illusion of hindsight: we are told, you see, when Louis XV ascends the throne, you can already sense that the storming of the Bastille—which never actually happened, incidentally— is not far off. Predicting the past is very easy. The other illusion is…