In Search of the Liberal Moment

Stephen W. Sawyer is an Associate Professor and Chair of the History Department at the American University of Paris, France. Iain Stewart is a Lecturer in modern European history at University College London, UK, and is currently writing a monograph on Raymond Aron's place in the history of liberal thought in France and internationally.

“The title of this collection of essays is appropriate, since in the past several generations ‘liberalism’ has tended to be elusive and to have a largely negative connotation in France. … For graduate students and specialists. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students and faculty.” (W. Safran, Choice, Vol. 54 (5), January, 2017)

• Introduction. 'New Perspectives on France's 'Liberal Moment'; Stephen W. Sawyer and Iain Stewart, 1. 'Taking Anti-totalitarianism Seriously: the Emergence of the Aronian Circle in the 1970s'; Gwendal Châton2. 'Plettenburg not Paris: Julian Freund, the New Right and France's Liberal Moment'; Daniel Steinmatz-Jenkins3. 'Rethinking the French Liberal Moment: Some Thoughts on the Heterogeneous Origins of Lefort and Gauchet's Social Philosophy'; Noah Rosenblum4. 'On the Supposed Illiberalism of Republican Political Culture in France'; Jean-Fabien Spitz5. 'The Best Help I Could Find to Help Understand our Present': François Furet's Anti-revolutionary Reading of Tocqueville's Democracy in America'; Michael Scott Christofferson6. 'Capitalism and its Critics: Anti-liberalism in Contemporary French Politics'; Emile Chabal7. 'Foucault and the French Liberal Revival'; Michael Behrent8. 'The French Reception of American Neoliberalism in the late 1970s'; Serge AudierEpilogue. 'Neoliberalism and the Crisis of Democratic Theory'; Stephen W. Sawyer