François Furet
Encyclopedia
François Furet was a French historian, and president of the Saint-Simon Foundation
Saint-Simon Foundation
The Saint-Simon Foundation was a French think tank created in 1982 by the historian François Furet. It gathered intellectuals and businessmen until its dissolving in 1999. It was a member of the The Hague Club international network of think-tanks...

.

Biography

Born in Paris on 27 March 1927, into a wealthy family, François Furet was a brilliant student who graduated from the Sorbonne with the highest honors and soon decided on a life of research, teaching and writing. He received his education at the Lycée Janson de Sailly
Lycée Janson de Sailly
Lycée Janson de Sailly is a lycée located in the XVIe arrondissement of Paris, France. It is generally considered as one of the most prestigious lycées in Paris...

 and at the faculty of art and law of Paris. Later he was awarded an "agrégation
Agrégation
In France, the agrégation is a civil service competitive examination for some positions in the public education system. The laureates are known as agrégés...

". In 1949, Furet entered the French Communist Party
French Communist Party
The French Communist Party is a political party in France which advocates the principles of communism.Although its electoral support has declined in recent decades, the PCF retains a large membership, behind only that of the Union for a Popular Movement , and considerable influence in French...

, like many other noted historians of his generation: Michelle Perrot, Michel Vovelle and Jacques Le Goff
Jacques Le Goff
Jacques Le Goff is a prolific French historian specializing in the Middle Ages, particularly the 12th and 13th centuries....

. In 1956, he left the party. After beginning his studies at the University of Letters and Law in his native Paris, Furet was forced to leave school in 1950 due to a case of tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...

. After recovering, he sat for the agrégation and passed the highly-competitive exams with a focus in History in 1954. After a stint teaching in high schools, he began work on the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...

 at the National Center of Scientific Research (CNRS) in France, supporting himself with a job at the Nouvel Observateur between 1956-66. In 1966, he began work at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales
École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales
The École des hautes études en sciences sociales is a leading French institution for research and higher education, a Grand Établissement. Its mission is research and research training in the social sciences, including the relationship these latter maintain with the natural and life sciences...

 (EHESS) in Paris, where he would later be president (from 1977 to 1985). Furet served as Director of Studies at the EHESS in Paris and as a professor in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...

. In March 1997, he was elected to the Académie Française
Académie française
L'Académie française , also called the French Academy, is the pre-eminent French learned body on matters pertaining to the French language. The Académie was officially established in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister to King Louis XIII. Suppressed in 1793 during the French Revolution,...

. He died in July 1997 in a Toulouse
Toulouse
Toulouse is a city in the Haute-Garonne department in southwestern FranceIt lies on the banks of the River Garonne, 590 km away from Paris and half-way between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea...

 hospital while being treated for head injuries he incurred in an accident on a tennis court. He was survived by his wife Deborah, daughter Charlotte, and son Antoine from a previous marriage. There is now a François Furet school in the suburbs of Paris, as well as a François Furet prize given out every year.

Furet's major interest was the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...

. Furet's early work was a social history of the 18th century bourgeoisie but, after 1961, his focus shifted to the Revolution. While initially a Marxist and supporter of the Annales School
Annales School
The Annales School is a group of historians associated with a style of historiography developed by French historians in the 20th century. It is named after its scholarly journal Annales d'histoire économique et sociale, which remains the main source of scholarship, along with many books and...

, he later separated himself from Les Annales and undertook a critical re-evaluation of the way the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...

 is interpreted by Marxist historians. He became the leader of the "revisionist" school of historians who challenged the Marxist account of the French Revolution as a form of class struggle. Unlike most French historians of his generation, Furet was open to ideas of English language historians, especially Alfred Cobban
Alfred Cobban
Alfred Cobban was a Professor of French History at University College, London, who along with prominent French historian Francois Furet held a 'Revisionist' view of the French Revolution.-Biography:...

. Likewise, Furet frequently lectured at American universities, from 1985 onwards, taught at the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...

. In his first work on the Revolution, 1966's La Révolution, Furet argued that the early years of the Revolution had a benign character but, after 1792, the Revolution had "skidded" off into the blood lust and cruelty of the Reign of Terror
Reign of Terror
The Reign of Terror , also known simply as The Terror , was a period of violence that occurred after the onset of the French Revolution, incited by conflict between rival political factions, the Girondins and the Jacobins, and marked by mass executions of "enemies of...

. The course of the Revolution going "off course" was the outbreak of war in 1792, which Furet controversially argued was intrinsic to the Revolution itself, rather than being an unrelated event as most French historians had argued until then.

The other major theme of Furet's writings was its focus on the political history of the Revolution, and its relative lack of interest in the Revolution's social and economic history. Other than a study of Lire et écrire (1977), a study co-edited with Jacques Ozouf concerning the growth of literacy in 18th century France, Furet's writings on the Revolution tended to focus on its historiography. In a 1970 article in Annales, Furet attacked "the revolutionary catechism" of Marxist historians. Furet was especially critical of the "Marxist line" of Albert Soboul
Albert Soboul
Albert Marius Soboul was a French historian of the French Revolution and of Napoleon. A professor at the Sorbonne, he was Chair of the History of the French Revolution and author of numerous influential works of history and historical interpretation.-Early life and education:Albert Marius Soboul...

, which Furet maintained was actually more Jacobin than Marxist. Furet argued that Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...

 was not especially interested in the Revolution and that most of the views credited to him were really the recycling of Jacobinism.

Furet, following Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt was a German American political theorist. She has often been described as a philosopher, although she refused that label on the grounds that philosophy is concerned with "man in the singular." She described herself instead as a political theorist because her work centers on the fact...

 and others, considered Communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...

 and Fascism
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...

 to be "totalitarian twins
Totalitarian twins
The term "Totalitarian Twins" was used by François Furet to link Stalinism and Fascism.-Fascism and totalitarianism:Gary M. Grobman wrote:* Totalitarian regimes, in contrast to a dictatorship, establish complete political, social, and cultural control over their subjects, and are usually headed by...

," as both had their origins in socialism and anti-liberal sentiments.

From 1995 until his death, Furet’s views about totalitarianism
Totalitarianism
Totalitarianism is a political system where the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible...

 led to a debate via a series of letters with the German philosopher Ernst Nolte
Ernst Nolte
Ernst Nolte is a German historian and philosopher. Nolte’s major interest is the comparative studies of Fascism and Communism. He is Professor Emeritus of Modern History at the Free University of Berlin, where he taught from 1973 to 1991. He was previously a Professor at the University of Marburg...

. The debate had been started by a footnote in Furet's Le passé d'une illusion criticizing Nolte's views over the relationship between Fascism and Communism, leading Nolte to write a letter of protest. Furet defended his view about “totalitarian twins” sharing the same origins while Nolte argued that fascism was a response to Communism.

French Revolution

Furet was the leading figure in the rejection of the “classic” or “Marxist” interpretation. Desan (2000) concluded he "seemed to emerge the victor from the bicentennial, both in the media and in historiographic debates."

Furet, a disillusioned ex-Communist, published his classic, La Révolution Française in 1965-66. It marked his transition from revolutionary leftist politics to liberal Left-center position, and reflected his ties to the social-science-oriented Annales School
Annales School
The Annales School is a group of historians associated with a style of historiography developed by French historians in the 20th century. It is named after its scholarly journal Annales d'histoire économique et sociale, which remains the main source of scholarship, along with many books and...

.

Furet then moved to the right, re-examining the Revolution from the perspective of 20th century totalitarianism (as exemplified by Hitler and Stalin). His Penser la Révolution Française (1978; translated as Interpreting the French Revolution 1981) was a breakthrough book that led many intellectuals to reevaluate Communism and the Revolution as inherently totalitarian and anti-democratic. Looking at modern French Communism he stressed the close resemblance between the 1960s and 1790s, with both favoring the inflexible and rote ideological discourse in party cells where decisions were made unanimously in a manipulated direct democracy. Furet further suggested that popularity of the Far Left to many French intellectuals was itself a result of their commitment to the ideals of the French Revolution. Furet set about to imagine the Revolution less as the result of social and class conflict and more a conflict over the meaning and application of egalitarian and democratic ideas. He saw Revolutionary France as located ideologically between two revolutions: the first an egalitarian one that began in 1789, and the second the authoritarian coup that brought about Napoleon
Napoleon I of France
Napoleon Bonaparte was a French military and political leader during the latter stages of the French Revolution.As Napoleon I, he was Emperor of the French from 1804 to 1815...

's empire in 1799. The egalitarian origins of the Revolution were not undone by the Empire and were resurrected in the July Revolution of 1830
July Revolution
The French Revolution of 1830, also known as the July Revolution or in French, saw the overthrow of King Charles X of France, the French Bourbon monarch, and the ascent of his cousin Louis-Philippe, Duke of Orléans, who himself, after 18 precarious years on the throne, would in turn be overthrown...

, the 1848 Revolution, and the Commune of Paris in 1871.

Working much if the year at the University of Chicago after 1979, Furet also rejected the Annales School
Annales School
The Annales School is a group of historians associated with a style of historiography developed by French historians in the 20th century. It is named after its scholarly journal Annales d'histoire économique et sociale, which remains the main source of scholarship, along with many books and...

, with its emphasis on very long-term structural factors, and emphasized intellectual history. Influenced by Alexis de Tocqueville and Augustin Cochin, Furet argues that Frenchmen must stop seeing the revolution as the key to all aspects of modern French history. His works include Interpreting the French Revolution (1981), a historiographical overview of what has preceded him and A Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution (1989).

Because of his influence in history and historiography, Furet was granted some of the field's most prestigious awards, among them:
  • Tocqueville Award, 1990
  • The European Award for Social Sciences, 1996
  • The Hannah Arendt Award for Political Thought, 1996
  • An honorary diploma (Honoris Causa) from Harvard University

Methodology

Furet's concerns were not only historical but also historiographical. He attempted particularly to address distinctions between history as grand narrative
Metanarrative
A metanarrative , in critical theory and particularly postmodernism, is an abstract idea that is thought to be a comprehensive explanation of historical experience or knowledge. According to John Stephens, it "is a global or totalizing cultural narrative schema which orders and explains knowledge...

and history as a set of problems that must be dealt with in a purely chronological manner.
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