French Liberalism from Montesquieu to the Present Day

Raf Geenens is a postdoctoral researcher at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, where he also lectures on ethics and the history of natural law. His research, as a member of the Leuven-based research group RIPPLE, concerns contemporary models of democracy as well as the history of continental political philosophy. He is the co-editor of Reading Tocqueville: From Oracle to Actor (2007) and Does Truth Matter? Democracy and Public Space (2009) and is preparing a monograph on contemporary French philosopher Claude Lefort. Helena Rosenblatt is Professor of History at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where she teaches European Intellectual History. A specialist in French political thought, with a strong interest in religion, she is the author of Rousseau and Geneva: From the First Discourse to the Social Contract (1997) and Liberal Values: Benjamin Constant and the Politics of Religion (2008) and edited The Cambridge Companion to Constant (2009) and Rousseau's Second Discourse (2010). Her current research project is a history of liberalism. In 2010 Professor Rosenblatt won the Benjamin Constant prize offered by the Institut Benjamin Constant in Lausanne, Switzerland.

• 1. French liberalism, an overlooked tradition? Raf Geenens and Helena Rosenblatt; Part I. In Search of a Lost Liberalism: 2. Two liberal traditions Larry Siedentop; 3. The unity, diversity and paradoxes of French liberalism Lucien Jaume; Part II. The French-Liberal Conception of Liberty: Loyal to its Republican Roots: 4. Was Montesquieu liberal? The spirit of the laws in the history of liberalism Céline Spector; 5. The importance of Republican liberty in French liberalism Andrew Jainchill; 6. Rethinking liberalism and terror Stephen Holmes; Part III. The Formative Era: Liberal Dealings with Key Issues in Nineteenth-Century France: 7. On the need for a Protestant reformation: Constant, Sismondi, Guizot and Laboulaye Helena Rosenblatt; 8. 'Anti-Benthamism': utilitarianism and the French liberal tradition Cheryl Welch; 9. Tocqueville: liberalism and imperialism Alan Kahan; Part IV. Economic Liberalism a la française: 10. War, trade and empire: the dilemmas of French liberal political economy, 1780–1816 Richard Whatmore; 11. Competition and knowledge: French political economy as a science of government Philippe Steiner; 12. Is there a French neoliberalism? Serge Audier; Part V. At the Dawn of Mass Democracy: Reassessing the Role of Collective Institutions: 13. The 'sociological turn' in French liberal thought William Logue; 14. The 'illiberalism' of French liberalism: the individual and the state in the thought of Blanc, Dupont White and Durkheim Jean-Fabien Spitz; Part VI. The Twentieth Century and Beyond: 15. Raymond Aron and the tradition of political moderation in France Aurelian Craiutu; 16. The politics of individual rights: Marcel Gauchet and Claude Lefort Samuel Moyn.

'The excellent job done by the collection's translator, Michael Breslin, should also be applauded.' European Review of History