Virtue and Terror (Revolutions): Maximilien Robespierre

by Maximilien Robespierre (Author), Maximilien Robespierre (Author), Slavoj Zizek (Introduction)

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Paperback
2007
$18.35

Robespierre's defense of the French Revolution remains one of the most powerful and unnerving justifications for political violence ever written, and has extraordinary resonance in a world obsessed with terrorism and appalled by the language of its proponents. Yet today, the French Revolution is celebrated as the event which gave birth to a nation built on the principles of enlightenment...So how should a contemporary audience approach Robespierre's vindication of revolutionary terror? Zizek takes a helter-skelter route through these contradictions, marshalling all the breadth of analogy for which he is famous.

Synopsis

Robespierre's defense of the French Revolution remains one of the most powerful and unnerving justifications for political violence ever written, and has extraordinary resonance in a world obsessed with terrorism and appalled by the language of its proponents. Yet today, the French Revolution is celebrated as the event which gave birth to a nation built on the principles of enlightenment...So how should a contemporary audience approach Robespierre's vindication of revolutionary terror? Zizek takes a helter-skelter route through these contradictions, marshalling all the breadth of analogy for which he is famous.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 208
Publisher: Verso Books
Published: 29 Jan 2007
ISBN 10: 184467584X
ISBN 13: 9781844675845

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If the spring of popular government in time of peace is virtue, the springs of popular government in revolution are at once virtue and terror: virtue, without which terror is fatal: terror, without which virtue is powerless. - Robespierre

Author Bio

Slavoj Zizek is a Slovenian sociologist, philosopher and cultural critic. He is a professor at the European Graduate School, International Director of Birkbeck College, University of London, and a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. He is also visiting professor at the United States universities (Columbia, Princeton, New School for Social Research, New York, and the University of Michigan).