What Is a Nation? and Other Political Writings (eBook)

What Is a Nation? and Other Political Writings is the first English-language anthology of Ernest Renan's political thought. It offers a wide selection of Renan's writings, most previously untranslated. It restores Renan to his place as one of France's major liberal thinkers and gives vital critical context to his views on nationalism.

RenanErnest: Joseph Ernest Renan (1823-1892) was a French expert of Middle Eastern ancient languages and civilizations, philosopher, and writer. He is best known for his influential historical works on early Christianity and his political theories, especially concerning nationalism and national identity.GiglioliM. F. N.: Matteo Fabio Nels Giglioli (PhD, Politics, Princeton) is a Research Fellow in the Department of Political and Social Science at the University of Bologna. He is the author of Legitimacy and Revolution in a Society of Masses: Max Weber, Antonio Gramsci, and the Fin-de-Siècle Debate on Social Order (Routledge, 2013).HowardDick: Dick Howard (PhD, Philosophy, Texas) is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at SUNY Stony Brook. He is the author of Between Politics and Antipolitics: Thinking About Politics After 9/11 (Palgrave, 2016), The Primacy of the Political: A History of Political Thought from the Greeks to the American and French Revolutions (Columbia, 2010), and The Specter of Democracy (Columbia, 2006), among other titles. He is also a columnist for Le Monde on the American political scene. I chose him as a reader for his expertise in political theory and philosophy.Ernest Renan (1823-1892) was a French scholar of the Ancient Near East and early Christianity, best known for The Life of Jesus (1862), an international best seller, and his views on national identity.M. F. N. Giglioli is a research fellow in the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the University of Bologna. He is the author of Legitimacy and Revolution in a Society of Masses: Max Weber, Antonio Gramsci, and the Fin-de-Siècle Debate on Social Order (2013).

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Ernest Renan was one of the leading lights of the Parisian intellectual scene in the second half of the nineteenth century. A philologist, historian, and biblical scholar, he was a prominent voice of French liberalism and secularism. Today most familiar in the English-speaking world for his 1882 lecture "e;What Is a Nation?"e; and its definition of a nation as an "e;everyday plebiscite,"e; Renan was a major figure in the debates surrounding the Franco-Prussian War, the Paris Commune, and the birth of the Third Republic and had a profound influence on thinkers across the political spectrum who grappled with the problem of authority and social organization in the new world wrought by the forces of modernization.What Is a Nation? and Other Political Writings is the first English-language anthology of Renan's political thought. Offering a broad selection of Renan's writings from several periods of his public life, most previously untranslated, it restores Renan to his place as one of France's major liberal thinkers and gives vital critical context to his views on nationalism. The anthology illuminates the characteristics that distinguished nineteenth-century French liberalism from its English and American counterparts as well as the more controversial parts of Renan's legacy, including his analysis of colonial expansion, his views on Islam and Judaism, and the role of race in his thought. The volume contains a critical introduction to Renan's life and work as well as detailed annotations that assist in recovering the wealth and complexity of his thought.