The State and the Rule of Law

Blandine Kriegel

Published by Princeton University Press 1996

The State and the Rule of Law

Blandine Kriegel
Translated by: Marc A. LePain and Jeffrey C. Cohen

In the series New French Thought Series

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400821761

Overview
Contents

About this book

Blandine Kriegel, at one time a collaborator with Michel Foucault, is one of France's foremost political theorists. This translation of her celebrated work L'Etat et les esclaves makes available for English-speaking readers her impassioned defense of the state. Published in France in 1979 and republished in 1989, this work challenged not only the anti-statism of the 1960s but also generations of romanticism in politics that, in Kriegel's view, inadvertently threatened the cause of liberty by refusing to distinguish between the despotic and the lawful state.

In a work that addresses the urgent concerns of Europe and the contemporary world as a whole, Kriegel examines the background of modern liberal democracy in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and argues cogently for the future of constitutional social-democracy. She maintains, among other positions, that European liberal democracies would have been impossible without the political basis provided by the lawful state first developed by monarchies. She also shows that early modern centralized states became liberal insofar as they developed a centralized legal system, rather than a centralized administration. In developing these ideas, she presents a picture of the state as a major force for human liberty.

Author / Editor information

Blandine Kriegel teaches philosophy at the University of Lyons, and is the author of the four-volume Les historiens et la monarchie, among other works. She is the editor of the new journal Philosophie politique.

Reviews

"The State and the Rule of Law is interesting in a great many different ways: as one of the seminal essays in the revival of French liberalism after so many years of utopianism on the left and authoritarianism on the right, as a reminder to Anglo-American liberals of the debt they owe to French historians and legal theorists, as a useful critique of the romantic hatred of the state, and as a wonderfully stylish and imaginative essay in polemical intellectual history."—Alan Ryan

An exciting and impassioned book in which the author proudly states her case.---Maurice Duverger, Le Monde

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Foreword Donald R. Kelley Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	vii
Introduction. The Paradoxes of Anti-statism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Part One: The State and the Rule of Law
Chapter I. Problems for a History of the State Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	9
Chapter II. Sovereign Power Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	15
Chapter III. Human Rights Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	33
Chapter IV. Law and Morality Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	51
Chapter V. Toward a History of the French State Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	64
Chapter VI. Inflections Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	91
Part Two: The State and Despotism
Chapter VII. Romanticism and Totalitarianism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	97
Chapter VIII. Anti-statism and Nationalism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	106
Chapter IX. Anti-juridism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	112
Chapter X. The Secularization of Faith Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	123
Chapter XI. Marx’s Romanticism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	135
Chapter XII. The State under the Rule of Despotism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	144
Conclusion. The State and the Slaves Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	149
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	153
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	171

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