The history of French liberalism is undergoing a renaissance. For much of the twentieth century, it was viewed with disdain, as insufficiently “engaged,” as too tentative in its demands for social reform, as overly optimistic concerning the progress of reason and science. Scholarship during the past three decades has challenged these views, though it is notable that there is still, to my knowledge, no general history of French liberalism that goes past the consolidation of the Third Republic in the late 1870s. Part of the ongoing reassessment has been the consequence of the decline of revolutionary illusions and of marxisant frameworks of analysis following 1968, reinforced by the more general decline of the left following the end of the Cold War in 1989 and the implosion of the Soviet Union in 1991. Another element contributing to this reassessment has been the emergence of more nuanced definitions of “liberalism,” ones that are not limited to legal (civil liberties), political (constitutionalism), and/or economic (free trade) dimensions. Equally important, scholars are insisting, are conceptions of science, of religion, of the role of the state, of solidarity, of sociability, of moeurs, of identity, of gender, of the self.
One of the intellectuals who is benefitting from the renewed interest in French liberalism is Elie Halévy (1870–1937). Halévy was highly respected in his era, and his scholarship still gets high marks from specialists in different fields. In the Anglo-American world, he is best known for his three-volume history of British utilitarianism and for his multivolume history of nineteenth-century England.Footnote 1 In France, his reputation is related to other activities: his association with the Revue de métaphysique et de morale, a philosophical journal that he founded in 1893 with his friends Xavier Léon and Léon Brunschvicg; his participation in the defense of Alfred Dreyfus; and his lectures on the history of European socialism given every other year between 1902 and 1937 at the Ecole libre des sciences politiques.Footnote 2 He is famous in both contexts for his post-World War I analyses of the growth of radical movements on the left and right, during what he labeled “the era of tyrannies.”Footnote 3
As this indicates, Halévy was intimately involved with a wide range of the philosophical, political, economic, and historical issues of his era. He provides an entry, for example, into the neo-Kantianism that animated the thought of those associated with the Revue de métaphysique et de morale and, more broadly, that informed much of the philosophy produced in France during the 1890s. Halévy's neo-Kantianism, however, was inflected with a dialectical form of Platonism, which he analyzed in his thesis published in 1896, La théorie Platonicienne des sciences.Footnote 4 Moreover, unlike many of his contemporaries who remained closely attached to investigations in philosophy and science, Halévy turned as a young man in his twenties to history, economic theory, and the wider problems of sociopolitical justice. He participated in debates (at sessions of the Société française de philosophie) with the major philosophers and sociologists of his era.Footnote 5 He gave lectures about England (every other year, alternating with his lectures on the history of European socialism), and wrote dense histories of English thought and institutions. The themes that Halévy explored in his histories of England drew from a rich French tradition (that includes Voltaire, Germaine de Staël, Hippolyte Taine, and Emile Boutmy, among others) but were also influenced by his close associates in England, where he spent several months every year (thinkers like Beatrice and Sidney Webb and Graham Wallas).Footnote 6 Halévy's focus on England influenced his views of France and, beyond this, his views of modern politics and the rise of modern tyranny.
Halévy always considered himself a liberal.Footnote 7 However, especially before 1914, he also was sympathetic to some aspects of European socialism, of which he gave a nuanced assessment.Footnote 8 He admired the cooperatist, associationist, and emancipatory dimensions of the European socialist tradition, and he was deeply respectful of the ways that Marx had historicized and modified the theories of the British economists. However, he was critical of the materialism upon which many socialist doctrines were situated, and suspicious of the organizational dimension of some socialist theories and socialist movements (a dimension he traced back to the doctrines of the Saint-Simonians, but also included a critical assessment of the revolutionary ideology of syndicalism and the Section française de l'Internationale ouvrière). Halévy's complex relation to socialism is revealed in his published articles before World War I (where he advocated a redistribution of income), in his voluminous correspondence (where he reflected on socialist thinkers and contemporaries), and in the manuscript versions of his early lectures on the history of socialism.Footnote 9 This dimension of Halévy's thought often has been neglected in favor of a more critical view of socialism that informed his writings after World War I.Footnote 10
These issues were central to how Halévy faced the Republic before World War I. Halévy's early writings on economics, on labor movements, and on socialism reveal a liberalism that refused to be constrained by the traditions of laissez-faire liberalism associated with the Manchester school in England, or with Frédéric Bastiat and his descendants in France. Halévy was attracted to socialist arguments that economic relations were historically conditioned, to socialist claims that wealth distribution was inequitable, and to socialist critiques that economic organization was unjust. To move ahead, Halévy believed, it would be necessary to avoid extremes. He steered a course between, on the one hand, the revolutionary socialism and syndicalism that animated much of the French left and, on the other hand, the conservatism of many French elites. Halévy insisted that modern industrial economies created class divisions that could not be ignored, and that economic and political conflicts could not be overcome with wishful thinking; in short, he argued that class conflict was a natural element of modern economies.
This was no ordinary “liberalism.” It was informed by an engaged reflection on the nature of public institutions; it recommended a careful analysis of how these institutions were related to economic forces. There should be no “sacrifice of individuality to the collectivity,” as he put it in a letter to Célestin Bouglé in 1895.Footnote 11 But there should also be no acceptance of unregulated competition.Footnote 12 It was necessary to think of each society, as had the Saint-Simonians, “as an association, not for the abolition of competition but for its organization.”Footnote 13 But, in Halévy's opinion, this would require not the ascendancy of a Saint-Simonian technocratic elite, but the participation of workers and working-class groups in the reorganization of economic relations and wealth distribution.
Halévy also insisted that one consider carefully how these issues were situated within complex historical traditions. Halévy argued that it was necessary to recognize that different societies, because of their divergent histories and cultural traditions, confronted the problems of liberty, equity, and justice differently. There was no uniform program of action that was universally applicable. As his writings demonstrate, Halévy believed that only historically informed analysis would offer insight into the complexity of economic developments, social changes, intellectual movements, and cultural traditions, and hence only such historical sensitivity could provide the understanding needed for prudent and progressive action. Though primarily a historian and an intellectual, he was deeply concerned about the fragility of democracy. His activities at the time of the Dreyfus affair and his critiques, after the war, of nascent authoritarian movements show him to be an intellectual who defended moral responsibility and political engagement in turbulent times.
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The following four essays explore different aspects of Halévy's thought.Footnote 14 They form a unity because they all focus on the early writings of Halévy; that is, works he wrote before World War I. This was an especially creative and intellectually productive period of his life. They also all revolve around his movement away from the neo-Kantian philosophical orientation of his milieu, and his concomitant movement towards a fuller engagement with history, economics, and political affairs. Joel Revill, in the first of the essays below, focuses on Halévy's involvement with the “Practical Questions” section of the Revue de métaphysique et de morale, and how this was indicative of his move from strict philosophy to analysis of the moral and political issues of the day. My own contribution looks at Halévy's turn to English thought and history, especially his focus on English moeurs and evangelical forms of English Protestantism, and how this analysis was related to a wider French sociopolitical tradition. Ludovic Frobert analyzes Halévy's famous work on British utilitarianism, La formation du radicalisme philosophique, arguing that it reveals Halévy's commitment to a dialectical form of Platonism and to an engagement with republicanism and distributive economics. Cheryl Welch and Gregory Conti, through an examination of the contemporary reception of La formation du radicalisme philosophique in both Britain and France, situate Halévy's thought in the broader contexts of English and French utilitarianism and sociopolitical thought. All explore the relationship of Halévy's oeuvre to contemporary developments and wider intellectual traditions.
Moreover, all imply that traditional scholarship has failed to appreciate the complexity and richness of Halévy's self-proclaimed liberalism. The recent analyses of the various strains of French liberalism during the early nineteenth century have demonstrated that most French liberals, in contrast to their Anglo-American counterparts, did not assume that it was sufficient to establish a regime of absolute rights and constitutionalism. Rights could not be adequately defended if considered in such an abstract manner. Rather, rights needed to be analyzed with sensitivity to different national cultures, and individuals needed to be considered as socially and historically situated. Closely connected with this was an appreciation of the positive role that states could play in protecting individual liberties. While French liberals recognized that states could threaten liberties—memories of overbearing regimes during the Revolution and Empire undergirded this—there was also an understanding that states should defend the general interest and could protect individuals against the selfish actions of powerful groups. Finally, French liberals worked within a tradition that considered civil and political issues comparatively.Footnote 15
Halévy shared these concerns. He was, in many respects, a late nineteenth-century representative of a distinctive French liberal tradition. He defended the legitimacy of the state, arguing that it was one of the guardians of individual rights and of the general interest. He insisted on measuring the strong influence of cultural and historical traditions. He worked within the French liberal framework that assumed that causative forces would be illuminated by a comparative perspective. What distinguished his liberalism from that of some of his well-known predecessors (of, say, Benjamin Constant or Alexis de Tocqueville) was his sensitivity to the socioeconomic issues thrown up by modern industrialization, and to the attendant sociocultural dilemmas that such modernity inevitably brought. He was convinced of the central importance of modern economic changes, but recognized the need to confront the attendant problems with a dialogue that included all participants in this society. He was attentive to how the quest for empire and the growth of militaries had been transformed by industrialization, and worried about how these were exacerbating the quest for national power and grandeur. While he placed his faith in the progress of rational reflection, he also recognized the importance of sentiment and contingency. He was a cosmopolitan, but respectful of national peculiarities and the pull of cultural traditions. It was his sensitivity to these multiple dimensions that distinguished his writings, and it is these same qualities that continue to make them relevant to ongoing debates concerning political and social policy.
