In Search of the Liberal Moment

Stephen W. Sawyer is an Associate Professor and Chair of the History Department at the American University of Paris, France. Iain Stewart is a Lecturer in modern European history at University College London, UK, and is currently writing a monograph on Raymond Aron's place in the history of liberal thought in France and internationally.

• Introduction. 'New Perspectives on France's 'Liberal Moment'; Stephen W. Sawyer and Iain Stewart, 1. 'Taking Anti-totalitarianism Seriously: the Emergence of the Aronian Circle in the 1970s'; Gwendal Châton2. 'Plettenburg not Paris: Julian Freund, the New Right and France's Liberal Moment'; Daniel Steinmatz-Jenkins3. 'Rethinking the French Liberal Moment: Some Thoughts on the Heterogeneous Origins of Lefort and Gauchet's Social Philosophy'; Noah Rosenblum4. 'On the Supposed Illiberalism of Republican Political Culture in France'; Jean-Fabien Spitz5. 'The Best Help I Could Find to Help Understand our Present': François Furet's Anti-revolutionary Reading of Tocqueville's Democracy in America'; Michael Scott Christofferson6. 'Capitalism and its Critics: Anti-liberalism in Contemporary French Politics'; Emile Chabal7. 'Foucault and the French Liberal Revival'; Michael Behrent8. 'The French Reception of American Neoliberalism in the late 1970s'; Serge AudierEpilogue. 'Neoliberalism and the Crisis of Democratic Theory'; Stephen W. Sawyer

“The title of this collection of essays is appropriate, since in the past several generations ‘liberalism’ has tended to be elusive and to have a largely negative connotation in France. … For graduate students and specialists. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students and faculty.” (W. Safran, Choice, Vol. 54 (5), January, 2017)