Ebook: Democracy Past and Future: Selected Essays

Democracy Past and Future is the first English-language collection of Pierre Rosanvallon's most important essays on the historical origins, contemporary difficulties, and future prospects of democratic life. One of Europe's leading political thinkers, Rosanvallon proposes in these essays new readings of the history, aims, and possibilities of democratic theory and practice, and provides unique theoretical understandings of key moments in democracy's trajectory, from the French Revolution and the struggles for universal suffrage to European unification and the crises of the present. In so doing.;Contents; Acknowledgments and Permissions; INTRODUCTION: Antitotalitarianism and After, Samuel Moyn; Part I. The Study of Politicsin History; CHAPTER 1. Inaugural Lecture, Collège de France; CHAPTER 2. Toward a Philosophical History of the Political; Part II. The Voluntarist Drive to Unity; CHAPTER 3. Revolutionary Democracy; CHAPTER 4. The Republic of Universal Suffrage; Part III: The Allure of Rationalism; CHAPTER 5. François Guizot and the Sovereignty of Reason; CHAPTER 6. Political Rationalism and Democracy in France; Part IV: Civil Society.