Virtue and Terror

by Maximilien Robespierre, Slavoj Žižek (Introduction), John Howe (Translator)

Robespierre's defense of the French Revolution remains one of the most powerful and unnerving justifications for political violence ever written, and has extraordinary resonance in a world obsessed with terrorism and appalled by the language of its proponents. Yet today, the French Revolution is celebrated as the event which gave birth to a nation built on the principles of enlightenment. So how should a contemporary audience approach Robespierre's vindication of revolutionary terror? Zizek takes a helter-skelter route through these contradictions, marshaling all the breadth of analogy for which he is famous.

Genres: History, Politics, Philosophy, French Revolution, Nonfiction, France, Political Science

208 pages, Paperback

First published May 7, 1794

About the author

Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre was a French lawyer, politician, and one of the best-known and most influential figures of the French Revolution.
As a member of the Estates-General, the Constituent Assembly and the Jacobin Club, he advocated against the death penalty and for the abolition of slavery, while supporting equality of rights, universal suffrage and the establishment of a republic. He opposed war with Austria and the possibility of a coup by La Fayette. As a member of the Committee of Public Safety, he was instrumental in the period of the Revolution commonly known as the Reign of Terror, which ended a few months after his arrest and execution in July 1794.

He was a capable articulator of the beliefs of the left-wing bourgeoisie. He was described as being physically unimposing and immaculate in attire and personal manners.[citation needed] His supporters called him "The Incorruptible", while his adversaries called him dictateur sanguinaire (bloodthirsty dictator).

Reviews

[Jonathan Roos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Robespierre did nothing wrong.

[William West · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating anthology of speeches by the most controversial leader of the French Revolution.

Zizek's introduction, while only 30 pages long, is one of the most impressive pieces I've read by him. The short format forces the author to actually stay on point, something that does not come easily to him.

Zizek posits the Terror that Robespierre became, somewhat unfairly, the face of as a prime example of what Walter Benjamin would have called "divine violence," sometimes translated as "sovereign violence." In unleashing the Terror, the Jacobins (and here a flaw in Zizek's reasoning should I think be pointed out- the Jacobins did not "invent" the Terror- it was the invention of the masses of the French oppressed who took brutal and situationalistic action against their oppressors- the Jacobins had to react to and "sculpt" such terror- they had to decide whether, in the most dramatic of circumstances, to side with the oppressed or the former oppressor) took upon themselves the rarest of tasks- that of the emancipatory sovereign. Detaching themselves utterly from the Lacanian "Big Other" they took upon themselves decisions that could not be morally evaluated by anyone- even themselves- as they were decisions that did not serve their own self-interest, but that of the "people"- the unknowable mass. To act in the name of the unnameable is to say that WHATEVER OUTCOME is permissible, even if this results in the annihilation of the sovereign itself. This is, for Zizek, authentically divine (revolutionary) violence.

One of the things that most strikes me when studying the French Revolution is to think of how established powers- like France (or the United States)- today frame revolutionary movements- be they socialist-in-intention (like Vietnam) or merely independent capitalist (like Iran)- as if the villainy the established powers claim to find in such movements is rooted in the ideology of the revolution. You would think that if the French Revolution- which established one of the first modern capitalist states and established such "still controversial" advances as universal male suffrage and the abolition of slavery- could take to such excesses (if we are to believe a "historian" such as Carlyle) as using its enemies skin for textiles, the modern capitalist states would have the historical memory to understand that most revolutions have their bloody excesses. But that, I suppose, is to ask for honesty from governance.

Reading his speeches, I was dumbfounded as to why Robespierre has been rumored to be an awkward speaker. His eloquence struck me as sublime, as did his courage. The last speech he ever gave was a defense of his life, not a defense for his life, as it is sometimes misinterpreted as being. He said that he lives for the people, and will die for them if they become corrupt. He believes, perhaps to a pathological degree, in his own virtue. But he also knows he's happy to die in a world where living means embracing the corrupt.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have had a fascination with and, well, intellectual crush on Maximilien Isidore de Robespierre since I was 16 or so. During A-level French I read a book about the French Revolution and ended up handing in an apologia for him as my coursework. My interest in this unusual and compelling figure hasn't waned over the years. Thus I was delighted to be given these selections from his speeches for Christmas.

It's worth noting that Slavoj Žižek's introduction was a lot tougher to read than the speeches themselves. Žižek says some very intriguing things about the nature of democracy and the application of Robespierre's philosophies to the unfolding environmental disaster of the 21st century. Unfortunately, he expresses himself in a very dense prose style, thick with philosophical terms that I found challenging. (If you've studied philosophy and historiography I'm sure it'd be no problem.) I do love books that teach me new words, but it's easy to get bogged down when trying to absorb elements of Kant and Lacan second hand. I keep a list of new words and their meanings, and from the 39 pages of introduction in this book I gained such tidbits as 'noumenal' and 'paralogism'. I'm still puzzling out 'surnumerary' and 'master-signifier', which the internet failed to explain adequately.

Once this rampart has been scaled, the speeches themselves are a great reward. As an orator, Robespierre loved rhetorical questions and apparently often asked his audience, "What I am saying?" He referred constantly to the homeland (la patrie), the people (le peuple), and virtue (la vertu). The pieces in this book are presented in chronological order, which to my eyes demonstrates a fascinating progression. Robespierre's central idealism appears intact even in the speech he gave the day before his Thermidor arrest, however it has become wrapped in what sounds like paranoia. Of course, it is impossible to determine to what extent the threats he describes really existed, especially as he couches them in broad, philosophical rather than prosaic terms.

In my view, the most striking piece isn't his oft-quoted defence of terror, but his draft 'Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen' in chapter 9. This appears amazingly ahead of its time, being to a certain extent stronger and more progressive than the current Human Rights Act (based on the UN Convention of Human Rights). Echoing his 'On Subsistence' in chapter 7, it frames the first and most fundamental Right to Life as a right to enough food to live, not merely the right not to be killed. In fact, his Declaration is both exquisitely utopian and somewhat pragmatic. Rather than equality of property, which he considers infeasible, Robespierre advocates progressive taxation and the provision by government of minimum subsistence. On the utopian side, I was taken by this lovely piece of phrasing:

'Liberty is the power that man has to exercise all his faculties at will. Justice is its rule, the rights of others are its borders, nature is its principle and law its safeguard.'

At the same time, this progressive thinker and idealist is also held largely responsible for the Terror, in which thousands perished and France was gripped by fear and persecution mania. I think what really fascinates me is how one such person, by all accounts sickly, diminutive, and 'incorruptible', could wield such power, albeit for a short time, and justify using it so horribly. These speeches perhaps bring the answer a little closer, by displaying a determined adherence to absolutes in opposition; tyranny vs. revolution, traitor vs. patriot, virtue & truth vs. total corruption. Robespierre remains a mystery, though, and this book has whetted my appetite for more of his writing, in the original language if I can dredge up that A-level French. I also want to read more about the state religion he tried to implement, a kind of nationalist agnostic humanism centred around the 'Supreme Being' (l'Être suprême).

Finally, chapter 8's speech on why Louis Capet (formerly the XVIth) should be executed without trial convinced me. Somewhat alarmed by this, I am now reading Eric Hobsbawm's 'The Age of Revolution' to put Robespierre back in his wider perspective. The fifth star is withheld as I would have liked the book to contain more of Robespierre's writing and the introduction to have had a glossary.

[Esteban del Mal]

This didn't work for me at this particular time for a few reasons.

1.) The cover art. It's of a blood stained guillotine surrounded by a bunch of stars as if they are so much confetti. I guess the stars are meant to signify liberty, or maybe "virtue" in the Robespierrean sense of the word, but it's off-putting. However, I can certainly overlook a silly cover, even if it seeks to establish a tone.

2.) The blurb on the first page, which reads, "This essential new series features classic texts by key figures that took center stage during a period of insurrection. Each book is introduced by a major contemporary radical writer who shows how these incendiary words still have the power to inspire, to provoke and maybe ignite new revolutions..." Notice the menacing ellipsis. What am I, in Poli Sci 101? What a smear of demagogic feces across the page that is.

3.) The introductory essay by Zizek. It's unnecessarily dense and preachy, like all things left these days and perhaps every other day. Which is maybe why the left found expression in blood-stained guillotines once upon a time.

These criticisms are reactionary and bourgeois, I suppose, but I do hope to revisit this book at some point. My hope is to appraise the writings of Robespierre once I can scrub the graffiti of marketers from them.

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Robespierre gets a bad rep. Is he self-righteous? Almost painfully so. But his record is pretty well absolved: he was against colonialism, racism, and was against trying to "export" the revolution. Those wars, just as he predicted, led to the rise of a military aristocracy that ultimately led to Napoleon and the millions dead from his wars of vanity.

I'm not saying the terror didn't claim the lives of innocents. But his paranoia was not unjustified, nor were his claims about defending liberty unfounded. I don't think he was a tyrant, which is unfortunately his legacy. How absurd that he be the tyrant when never holding an absolute position of authority, and when flanked in time by Louis XVI and Napoleon. Good reminder that history is mostly written by the reactionary.

[Richard R]

This edition of Robespierre's writings is divided into two sections. The first is entirely characteristic of the enlightenment: advocacy of abolishing slavery, advancing the rights of Jewish minorities and arguing against engaging in warfare. Tyranny and despotism are routinely inveighed against. The second, for most of which Robespierre sat on the Committee of Public Safety, is entirely different. Robespierre opposes any idea of Louis being tried rather than simply executing and defends himself against accusations of despotism. The argument is a simple one: "Citizens, did you want a revolution without a revolution?... When a nation has been forced to resort to the right of insurrection, it returns to the state of nature."

[Brad · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just gotta say: there was little I disagreed with in this book.

[Maria · Rating 5 out of 5]

me ha gustado mucho pero no consigo hilar dos pensamientos con sentido. os dejo una cita y a dormir :

“Una sensibilidad que gime casi exclusivamente por los enemigos de la libertad resulta sospechosa. Dejad de agitar bajo mis ojos la túnica ensangrentada del tirano, o creeré que queréis volver a poner grilletes a Roma.”


…me estoy leyendo ahora al Walter y me cuenta algo sobre cómo la justificación de la revolución francesa era la ley natural y nose que…tiene razón pero ignoraré tanta inteligencia. ya vino un filósofo a arruinarlo todo :(

[Liu · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Peoples do not judge in the same way as courts of law; they do not hand down sentences, they throw thunderbolts.”

Despite being the leader of history’s great bourgeois revolution, Robespierre has been completely rejected by our contemporary society. The typical characterization of Robespierre, indeed the characterization I myself was given in high school, is of an initially morally pure passionate revolutionary who eventually fell victim to his own greed for power and became the very dictatorial figure he originally opposed.

But reading these speeches, one will recognize that Robespierre always remained, to use his own words, “a slave to liberty,” a man who was never any less than his given title: “the Incorruptible.” Unlike the bourgeois ideologues of both his time and of today, Robespierre never shirked away from taking radical egalitarianism to its ends, i.e. to its true realization. For Robespierre, egalitarianism didn’t stop when the needs of the bourgeois elite were fulfilled, but was a project that truly had to be universalized - and Robespierre never hesitated in doing what it took to complete this project unlike his peers who wanted “a revolution without revolution.”

Something Robespierre must be unequivocally commended on is his remarkable prescience as to how the new republican state could become a perversion of the very Enlightenment ideals it was initially founded on. As Marx wrote 50 years after the French Revolution in Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie: “the Ancien Régime is the hidden defect of the modern state.” Throughout his speeches Robespierre constantly warns about the new government becoming precisely this, the same oppression of the aristocratic regime in the form of an egalitarian democratic government. Unfortunately, Robespierre failed - and given the work of political analysts like Cohen, Rogers, and Winters, the oligarchy of the Ancien Régime has been internalized and remains today.

Much more could be said on the speeches contained in this slim volume, but I’ll end it here. Robespierre’s speeches are exciting and impassioned while also containing brilliant political insights that every leftist needs to keep in mind today.

An additional note on Zizek’s introductory essay: The essay is brilliant and among the best work I’ve read from him. He (uncharacteristically) actually stays on topic for the entire 30 pages of the essay and shows the kind of incredible work he’s capable of when actually having an amount of focus on a single topic. Zizek argues that the Terror is a concrete example of what Walter Benjamin called “divine violence” in his “Critique of Violence” and that times like the Terror and figures like Robespierre shows that the work of Marxist continental philosophers do not merely deal with abstract concepts, but have real empirical manifestations that we can and should point to. The short essay has a plethora of fascinating insights that I could even begin to summarize here, but know that you will not be wasting your time. The one thing I would maybe suggest is reading it after the Robespierre texts so that Zizek does not influence your own reading too much.

[Joseph]

Robespierre: Virtue and Terror.

For Christmas, N's parents gave me a copy of 'Pride and Prejudice'. I've been reading it alongside 'Robespierre: Virtue and Terror', a book (that I asked for) that my mother gave me for Christmas. In her introduction to 'Pride and Prejudice', Vivien Jones describes the novel as "post- rather than simply anti-revolutionary", being completed in its initial form around the time Napoleon Bonaparte rose to prominence by putting down the royalist insurrection of 13 Vendémiaire. Reading the two books together, what particularly struck me, rather than Austen's (in)direct responses (through omission, assimilation) to the French Revolution, was the similarity of the problems that Austen and Robespierre are responding to, most of all in the need, for Robespierre in his speeches, for the society Austen depicts in 'Pride and Prejudice', to reconfigure religion for the Enlightenment era. Despite this shared symptom, each responds in directly opposite (though directly comparable) ways: in 'Pride and Prejudice' we are presented with a religionless clergy and in Robespierre's speeches to the National Convention we are offered a clergiless religion.
In his December 1793 proposed response of the National Convention to the manifesto of the hostile allied European monarchies, Robespierre begins to use some of the ideas that will form the basis of the Cult of the Supreme Being that he founded (in opposition to the atheistic Cult of Reason) a few months later:

They call us irreligious: they proclaim that we have declared war on Divinity itself. How edifying is the pity of tyrants, and how agreeable to heaven must be the virtues that glitter in courts, and the benefits they spread over the earth! What are they talking about? Do they know any, other than pride, debauchery and all the vices? They say they are images of the Divinity… is that to make people hate it? They say their authority is its work. No: God created tigers, but kings are the masterpieces of human corruption. When they call on heaven, it is to usurp the earth; when they speak to us of divinity, it is to put themselves in its place; they send on to it the poor man's prayers and the groans of the unfortunate; but they are themselves the gods of the rich, of oppressors and murderers of the people. Honouring the Divinity and punishing kings are the same thing [p.93].

Seeing atheism as a debauched aristocratic frivolity, but necessarily an enemy of the Roman Catholic church, with its riches and worldly-political power, Robespierre attempts to lay out a religious vocabulary (if not a religion) as he needs it, one that is as non-Christian as it is non-atheist. The result, the Cult of the Supreme Being, is monotheist to the point of atheism. In the above extract, Robespierre uses the name 'God', with all the paternal personification tied into it, only once, in relation to creation, preferring (in relation to virtue and vice) the depersonified, centreless 'the Divinity', as a (proto-)post-secular vehicle by which to refer to the Godhead.
Austen of course intends for us to read Mr Collins, the obsequious clergyman cousin in 'Pride and Prejudice', as a buffoon, not a man to be taken seriously, but his is the only (nominally) Christian vision that is offered. In one sense, Mr Collins seems to have similarly found that a quasi-secular religion is the only tenable position at the end of the 18th Century. He makes no explicit reference to God or Christ throughout the novel, and only mentions Christianity once, when arguing that, as a Christian, Mr Bennet should forgive his daughter Lydia for eloping with Wickham, but that he should never again admit her into his home (a situation in which he does not see, but we cannot help but see, a parallel with the parable of the prodigal son). But then, in another sense, Mr Collins's embarrassing, craven subservience is sycophantic to the point of worship; his response to the era's incipient challenges to Christianity are in absolute and direct opposition to Robespierre's revolutionary non-Christian monotheism: Mr Collins prostrates himself before a polytheistic pantheon of aristocrat-gods, of, in Robespierre's words, "the gods of the rich".

-

My previous post on J.G. Ballard's 'Crash' being the first thing I'd written for a while, P sent a few encouraging lines in response, and pressed further on my positioning of the machine as post-human and oppositional to 'Nature':

I would say though that your reading is based on an assumption that goes primitive man - modern man - machine man […] In my research I've been looking at how […] the language of automatons, in fact the idea of 'automatism', is rooted in the idea of the primitive, brute […] it's only more recently that the idea of the organic/primitive/essential has been positioned in contrast to machines/automatons/robots.

I was reminded of this as I read 'Extracts from "Report on the Political Situation in the Republic"', where Robespierre refers to the deposed monarch as "the crowned automaton Louis XVI" [p.83]. Reading 'the automaton' as rudimentary, brutish, golemish, rather than advanced, we are presented with a king without volition, a person who is no longer a person, their self and free-will completely consumed by the function they perform. This reminded me of BBC's recent true-crime drama 'The Serpent', the part where the diplomat Paul rebukes Herman Knippenberg for his plan to compile a report on the serial murderer, spitting with disdain that he is a "functionary". Here Herman is shown to be a machine carrying out his job to the letter, or rather, to the ones and zeros of binary code, which in turn reminded me of Wall-E, compacting rubbish long after humanity has abandoned the Earth. A machine (Wall-E) can only ever do this, often organic intelligence (Louis XVI, Herman Knippenberg) can only do this - could artificial intelligence only do this? Could it become godlike or only a very, very complex machine? Is God a crowned automaton, or is the fundamental distinction that all intelligences are, and God is not?
-
Pride and Prejudice. Jane Austen. Ed. Vivien Jones. Penguin, London. 2014.
Robespierre: Virtue and Terror. Ed. Jean Ducange. Trans. John Howe. Verso, London. 2017.
The Serpent. Dir. Hank Herbots and Tom Shankland. BBC. 2021.
WALL-E. Dir. Andrew Stanton. Pixar. 2008.

[Alistar Flofsky · Rating 4 out of 5]



Robespierre was one of the most prominent figures of the French Revolution. He is mostly known for being the father of Terror оr for betraying Danton. But quite a few knows that he promoted good things, even for the modern left standards, such as: the limitation of property rights and their subordination to the right of existence, the exemption from taxation of those citizens whose incomes did not exceed what is necessary for their subsistence or the progressive tax.

The further he was approaching the real power, the more poetic his speech would become. His defence of terror was, if not quite correct, than at least beautiful and reminds me a lot of Trotsky in Terror and Communism.

Also, if you choose the Verso version of this book, you will have the nice opportunity to read one of the most coherent introductions ever written by Zizek. I strongly recommend this book to all my comrades and friends.

[Hélder Verdade Fontes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Uma boa compilação de discursos proferidos por Robespierre em diversos momentos da revolução francesa, incluindo o conhecido discurso da véspera do 9 de Termidor (no dia em que a Montanha, os jacobinos e o próprio Robespierre caem).
É extremamente interessante o observar do pensamento político, económico e social de Robespierre e como a implementação dos seus ideais também evoluiu.
A introdução de Zizek é, por vezes, confusa, sendo que com mais alguma concisão ficaria ainda mais interessante.

[Paolo · Rating 4 out of 5]

The 18th century version of that book OJ wrote where he was like, “I didn’t kill my wife, but if I did this is how I would do it, and also that bitch deserved it.”

[Greg Kothesakis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great introduction by Zizek, I loved how he made connections from Robespierres fanaticism to the paltry politics of the contemporary left. Maybe the left needs more revolutionary terror to achieve its goals, or at least conviction.

Robespierres writings were astounding in their prescience. A lot of what he argued against the monarchy could hold true today against corporatist democracy. Not to draw too hard a comparison, these phenomena are clearly distinct, but Robespierres populism and steadfastness to his ideology are astounding, and must have been truly revolutionary at the time.

The difference between his pre-ascendancy writings, which are more hopeful and liberationary, and his Committee writings, which are more Machiavellian and fearful, is stark. To view this transition is to view the transformation of a revolutionary intellectual into a stretched-thin administrator of a country on fire; it seems like Robespierre balances the many needs of republican france with his own conviction that the revolution should live on.

Does Robespierres failure provide a cautionary tale against true revolution? Can revolution maintain itself against the seemingly-inevitable slide to aristocracy and moderantism? Did Robespierres government fly in the face of revolutionary ideas or was it the true embodiment of them? These are the questions I come away from this text with, and I’m sure I’ll be thinking about his writings for a time. Indisputable, however, is the fact that we all live in the world catalyzed by Robespierres actions and ideas.

[T. T. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Robespierre wanted to abolish slavery. He wanted give Jews the same rights as others. He wanted to abolish the requirement of payment to vote. He wanted to limit property rights and to punish monopolists. The Jacobins wanted to make it possible for women to self-organize and for the elderly to have a place to spend the rest of their lives in peace and dignity. Meanwhile they were fighting against internal and external enemies; a league of monarchs as well.

Imagine you were a slave back in the day. Imagine you were a Jew. Imagine you were poor and starving and the rich and the monopolists were keeping the food from public so that the prices would increase. Imagine you were a woman. Imagine you were old and alone. The Jacobins fought for these people's rights. Their enemies were terrorizing enough (it is not hard to guess that) so that they had to resort to violence as well. Imagine how would you feel about them if you were one of the downtrodden.

Now you tell me if Robespierre was evil.

[Fatima · Rating 2 out of 5]

A nice collection of Robespierre's works, but political science is not my favorite genre. The French revolution was quite cruel I must agree, and Robespierre was no angel himself. I say he failed at his attempts of bringing liberty, equality, and fraternity to the French nation.

[Nathaniel Clarke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really interesting book when reading Robespierre's speeches but honestly Slavoj Zizek's foreword was confusing and not the reason I read the book. Highly recommended if you are interested in the French Revolution and or politics

[Incisive Truth · Rating 5 out of 5]

A little dash of MR is needed today.

[Crt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Robespierre sin filtros. Controversia destilada. Muy interesante. Da que pensar.

[Ryan Haas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quote this book to your rich relations, your landlord, and especially your boss; they'll love it!

[Tiffany K · Rating 4 out of 5]

Robespierre screaming about the necessity of revolution and the hypocrisy of the French constitution -- particularly as it addresses "free people" who are anything but.

[Jairo · Rating 5 out of 5]

"If virtue be the spring of a popular government in times of peace, the spring of that government during a revolution is virtue combined with terror: virtue, without which terror is destructive; terror, without which virtue is impotent. Terror is only justice prompt, severe and inflexible; it is then an emanation of virtue; it is less a distinct principle than a natural consequence of the general principle of democracy, applied to the most pressing wants of the country."

"It has been said that terror is the spring of despotic government. Does yours then resemble despotism? Yes, as the steel that glistens in the hands of the heroes of liberty resembles the sword with which the satellites of tyranny are armed. Let the despot govern by terror his debased subjects; he is right as a despot: conquer by terror the enemies of liberty and you will be right as founders of the republic. The government in a revolution is the despotism of liberty against tyranny. Is force only intended to protect crime? Is not the lightning of heaven made to blast vice exalted?"

"The law of self-preservation, with every being whether physical or moral, is the first law of nature. Crime butchers innocence to secure a throne, and innocence struggles with all its might against the attempts of crime. If tyranny reigned one single day not a patriot would survive it. How long yet will the madness of despots be called justice, and the justice of the people barbarity or rebellion? - How tenderly oppressors and how severely the oppressed are treated! Nothing more natural: whoever does not abhor crime cannot love virtue. Yet one or the other must be crushed. Let mercy be shown the royalists exclaim some men. Pardon the villains! No: be merciful to innocence, pardon the unfortunate, show compassion for human weakness."

"To punish the oppressors of humanity is clemency; to forgive them is cruelty. The severity of tyrants has barbarity for its principle; that of a republican government is founded on beneficence. Therefore let him beware who should dare to influence the people by that terror which is made only for their enemies! Let him beware, who, regarding the inevitable errors of civism in the same light, with the premeditated crimes of perfidiousness, or the attempts of conspirators, suffers the dangerous intriguer to escape and pursues the peaceable citizen! Death to the villain who dares abuse the sacred name of liberty or the powerful arms intended for her defence, to carry mourning or death to the patriotic heart. ..."

[Richard Thompson · Rating 3 out of 5]

You can't deconstruct the revolution, though Slavoj Zizek tries to do so in his introduction. He's an ass. That's not what revolution is about and it's not a useful way to analyze where Robespierre and his Committee on Public Safety went wrong. The French Revolution was about changing everything. Out with the old in with the new. The new broom sweeps clean. And the people who wanted to take the revolution to its logical conclusion faced incredible hostility from both inside the country and abroad. They really did have to fight for survival, and they really did have to struggle to keep from being dragged back into a world where the old ideas would again hold sway. It was a struggle that they ultimately lost to Napoleon and then to the Restoration, but the ideas were so powerful that never lost their grip in France or in the rest of the world.

One of the interesting things about reading these excerpts of Robespierre's speeches is how political they were. They are filled with cant and positioning and emotional appeals. The core ideas are there but you need to dig down to find them. My ultimate problem with the whole thing was that Robespierre took himself too seriously. As soon as you start thinking that your own ideas are the embodiment of virtue and that those who oppose them are evil enemies deserving of terror, you are lost. Government is a practical art and when it is run as an ideology, it fails.

[Marcus · Rating 3 out of 5]

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst
 are full of passionate intensity.”

That poetic quote felt very apt for the manic, bloodbath of the Jacobins. One after the other “j’accuse” is the order of the day as they organise witch hunts and take their turn in the cathartic public spectacle of the guillotine. Unsurprisingly the same fate came to Robespierre who here is full of passionate intensity in his discovery of the objective and absolute truth. Bloody revolutions tend to follow such fixed ideas and certainty. Often plunging the population from a state of ordered tyranny to insecurity, anarchy and fear. See also: Bolshevism.

It’s hard to find much virtue in amongst the terror. France of course continues to be plagued by terror from The Bataclan to Charlie Hebdo, the unrest and rioting etc. Elsewhere revolutions such as the Arab spring or deposing Saddam Hussein/Gaddafi often just leave warring power vacuums and anarchy rather than an increased quality of life for citizens. A case of being careful what you wish for.

Zizek supplies a lengthy introduction, at times opaque, there were still some decent bits to be gleaned from his scattershot approach. Not least the idea of anti-humanism and the “diabolical human”. How can we not loathe ourselves?

[José · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite a fun and fascinating way to learn about the history of the French Revolution - through the public and political interventions of one of its main players. But perhaps a better historical contextualisation would've made the speeches resonate a bit more; in any case the passion, consistency and fervor with which Robespierre spoke is truly admirable - rarely do modern politicians, navigating through increasingly complex social and political landscapes, afford themselves the luxuries of consistency. The introduction from Zizek was really good and probably the best part of the book, I would recommend this the most since it really exposes how revolution is often reconfigured as being something uniquely good and virtuous when it often is a bloody and terror-filled affair.

[AmamiyaYuuko · Rating 4 out of 5]

Žižek's introduction to Robespierre articulates a distinctly Žižekian politics more clearly than any of his recent political columns—and precisely for this reason, the hollowness at its core becomes all the more apparent. Through his characteristically vague endorsement of Benjamin's notion of divine violence, Žižek effectively resurrects the specter of populism. Small wonder, then, that it proves so difficult to distinguish his conception of revolution from Nazism—a point explicitly argued in Heidegger, Žižek and Revolution.
That said, it's still better than most of Žižek's recent political writing.

[Matthew Law · Rating 2 out of 5]

Zizek’s introduction was intriguing and among his better works but it did not engage much with Robespierre and the writings that followed. A little self-centred if you ask me.

I enjoyed the latter works and they show Robespierre as an accomplished rhetor. I admit that I am not the most well versed on his life nor the revolution and so the lack of context made reading this a bit odd. It read as a litany of rhetorical flourishes against enemies whom I can only imagine were formidable at the time but which seemingly come out of nowhere for the uninformed (like myself).

[Abril Herrera · Rating 4 out of 5]

Robespierre tan controversial como Zizek radical; la violencia en dicotomía con la virtud y el extremo donde ambas se encuentran y coexisten: la revolución. El enemigo a vencer no era Luis XVI o los miembros internacionales de su clan, pero la idea de monarquía; hoy en día el enemigo a vencer no es Elon Musk, sino lo que su estatus de trillonario representa: desigualdad, abuso, poder, acumulación y una suerte de "biopolítica" dónde el aspiracionismo se convierte en su mejor arma. Interesante y tristemente vigente.

[Diego Asterio · Rating 4 out of 5]

“El problema se plantea pues así: ¿cómo regular/instituciona-lizar el violento impulso democrático-igualitario, cómo evitar que se vea sofocado en la democracia por el segundo sentido del término (procedimiento regulado)? Si no hay forma de hacerlo, entonces la «auténtica» democracia seguirá siendo un efímero arrebato utópico, que al día siguiente, como es proverbial, tiene que ser normalizado”

Pasaje de
Robespierre, virtud y terror (Slavoj Zizek)
Slavoj Zizek

[Plano Nacional de Leitura 2027]

Obra de ensaio que aborda alguns dos temas centrais da revolução francesa. em particular o tema da dimensão emancipadora da violência.

ISBN: 978-989-99721-5-5

CDU:
821.133.1-5
323.27(44)"1789"

Livro recomendado PNL2027 - 2019 2.º Sem. - Cultura e Sociedade - Vida Prática - maiores 18 anos