French Literature Reviews - 2026
Stéphanie Roza, Lumières de la gauche
History, Politics and Society
The recent divorce of a section of the left from the rationalist, universalist, and progressive legacy of the Enlightenment can give the impression that emancipation in the modern sense has little to do with what it meant in the 18th century, or is even in outright opposition to it.
This book sets out to re-examine a historical bond that is sometimes called into question today: the cases of Babeuf, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Toussaint Louverture serve as a reminder that the founding principles of any prospect for social transformation find their roots in the French Revolution.
The major debates of the 19th- and 20th-century left, from the Russian Revolution to the independence struggles of colonized peoples, from Marx to Sartre and from Kropotkin to C. L. R. James, confirm the identity link between the greatest figures of the left and the liberating message of the Age of Enlightenment.
Contents
Introduction
Chapter I.
To the Left of the Declaration of the Rights of Man
The Levellers
Pre-revolutionary Reflections
Babouvist Enlightenment in Revolution
Enlightenment Feminism Assailing Conservatism: Wollstonecraft vs. Burke
The Burkean Offensive
Mary Wollstonecraft's Response
The Birth of Universalist Feminism
The Black Jacobins
From the Revolt of the Third Estate to the Slave Revolt
Toussaint
Defending the Rights of Black Men
Chapter II.
The Proletarian Enlightenment (1799–1848)
The Enlightenment without the Revolution? The Examples of Saint-Simon and Fourier
Saint-Simon and the Illuminist Legacy
Charles Fourier, an Anti-Enlightenment Figure?
Socialisms and Socialists
Pauline Roland's Letter
Louis Blanc, Robespierre, and the French Revolution
Unruly Offshoots of Republicanism: French Communists in the Early 19th Century
Étienne Cabet's Robespierrism
Communism and Materialism
Chapter III.
Sons of the Aufklärung (1815–1848)
Germany Facing the Enlightenment and the French Revolution from 1789 to 1815
The German Left in the 1830s–1840s
A Jacobin Named Ludwig Börne
The Young Hegelians' Return to the Enlightenment
The Divergent Paths of the "19th-Century Enlightenment": Bruno Bauer
Marx and Engels Confronting the 18th-Century French Heritage: Framing the Problem
Against Hegel… and Robespierre: The Substantiality of the Social versus the Illusion of the Political
Against Bauer: Revolutionary Practice vs. Critical Theory
Marx's Oscillations and Engels's Rectification
Chapter IV.
Anarchism and the Enlightenment
"The Enfant Terrible of Socialism"
Anticlericalism and Anti-Rousseauism
1789, the Dawn of a New Era
Extending '89 or Breaking with It?
Bakunin: National Revolution and Social Revolution
From the Rejection of the Illuminist Heritage to Young Hegelianism
Revolution and Pan-Slavism
Bakunin's Anarchism and the Illuminist Heritage
Kropotkin: "This 18th-Century Philosophy […] Which […] Is Today Called Anarchist Communism"
Scientific Enlightenment
Historical Progress and Human Nature
The Great Revolution
Chapter V.
The Enlightenment under Debate in the Organized Labour Movement (1864–1914)
Paradoxes of Left-Wing Nietzscheanism
German Left-Wing Anti-Nietzscheans and the Enlightenment Heritage
Left-Wing Nietzscheans in Germany: The Example of Gustav Landauer
Socialist Disputes Surrounding a Revolutionary Heritage
German Social Democracy Facing the French Revolution
German Social Democracy and the Enlightenment
French Socialist Republicanism Confronting Marxism
Nietzsche in the Land of the French Revolution
Charles Andler or the Democratization of Nietzscheanism
Georges Sorel: From Marxism to a Hatred of Democracy
Édouard Berth: Nietzsche against the "Mischief of Intellectuals"
Chapter VI.
Reason Put to the Test by the Catastrophes of the 20th Century
Rationalism and Irrationalism in Georg Lukács
From History and Class Consciousness to The Destruction of Reason
The Destruction of Reason and Its Enemies
Irrationalism and Romanticism
Jean-Paul Sartre: From Existentialism to Dialectical Rationalism
Existentialism, from Being and Nothingness to the 1945 Lecture
"The Insuperable Philosophy of Our Time"
Marxism, Universalism, and Anti-Imperialism in C. L. R. James
James's Trotskyism
The Role of the Masses in History
Epilogue: The Rupture of 1944
A "Black Diamond Written at Midnight in the Century"
The Pitfalls of Exaggeration
From the Rejection of Instrumental Reason to the Rejection of Modernity
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An article on this book can be read on laviedesidees.fr:
The relationship between contemporary political movements and the intellectual heritage of the eighteenth century has long been a subject of critical discussion within political philosophy and historical scholarship. By examining figures from the era of the French Revolution onward, this study considers how foundational concepts of universalism, rationalism, and social emancipation have informed various traditions of political radicalism. Readers interested in the history of ideas, the evolution of socialist thought, and the intellectual origins of modern political movements may find this work particularly relevant.
The text traces how thinkers and activists across different periods, including the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, engaged with Enlightenment principles while confronting new social and political realities. Through discussions of figures associated with early socialism, anarchism, and anti-colonial struggle, the volume outlines recurring debates concerning the relationship between revolutionary practice, philosophical reason, and the broader project of human emancipation in modern history.
"The Left: Return to the Sources", by Marie Deschamps (online October 19).