Chantal Delsol is professor of philosophy at the University of Marne-la-Vallée and an elected member of the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques (Institut de France). She is the author of numerous books, including La Fin de la Chrétienté (The end of Christianity).Andrew Kelley is professor of philosophy and chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Bradley University. He writes on twentieth-century French philosophy and has translated books from French and German philosophers.Daniel J. Mahoney is a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute and professor emeritus at Assumption University.

• ForewordTranslator's NoteIntroduction. French Malaise1. Identity, History2. Republic vs. Democracy3. Jacobinism and Bonapartism4. A Distant and Maternal Government5. Status and Positions6. The Anthropology of Defiance: Envy, Equality, and Mistrust7. Paris and the Provinces8. Intellectuals9. The Right and the Left10. The People and the Elite11. French Secularism12. The Present State of Religion13. The Sense of Identity and Immigration14. Belonging to EuropeConclusionBibliographyIndex

"Chantal Delsol's incisive book takes up a perennial theme in French political and social thought, but does so in a fresh way, philosophically informed and yet brimming over with interesting observations and sharp insights."—Wilfred M. McClay, author of The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America"This compact book informs, provokes, and gives rise to the kind of deliberation that our civilization very much needs." —Daniel J. Mahoney, author of The Persistence of the Ideological Lie"Chantal Delsol probes the paradoxes of today's France, sighing alike at its beauty and its dysfunctions, its achievements and its discontents. Only a patriot could have written this book, for only one who loves her country could desire to know it so thoroughly. American readers will profit from Delsol's reflections—and from her example." —John M. Owen IV, author of The Ecology of Nations