This paper explains the meaning and significance of violence in Georges Sorel’s Reflections on Violence (1908) through an examination of three distinctions that structure the book. First between the proletarian strike and the merely political strike; second between myth and utopia; third between violence and force. The paper looks to Sorel’s ear…[Read more]

Georges Sorel’s ideas about education are key to making sense of his critique of the Third Republic. Cutting across the heated debates over classical as opposed to modern curricula, Sorel drew on a complex account of the nature of scientific knowledge to offer a sustained defense of education within the factory and on the picket line as a source o…[Read more]

Cet artcle défend l’idée que, dans la pensée sociale de Sorel, la production artistique, de même que la catégorie de l’esthétique dans sa philosophie, revêtent beaucoup plus d’importance qu’on ne l’a pensé jusqu’à présent. Giambattista Vico est le principal auteur sur lequel s’appuie Sorel pour introduire l’esthétique dans l’analyse de la réali…[Read more]

This paper traces readings of Georges Sorel (1847-1922) from Carl Schmitt to Saul Bellow. The image of Sorel that came out of Weimar-era sociological debate around Schmitt and Karl Mannheim was simplified and hardened by émigré scholars in the war years, put to good use in the anti-totalitarian combat of the 1950s, and finally shattered when a…[Read more]

This article reconstructs and analyzes a debate on “the crisis of liberalism” that took place in a prominent philosophy journal, the Revue de me´taphysique et de morale, in 1902–3. The debate was actuated by combiste anticlerical measures and the apparently liberal demand made by Catholics for freedom of instruction. Participants—all hostile…[Read more]

Georges Sorel’s use of the term diremption to describe his method has long been found obscure. This paper shows that the term was associated with Hegel, and that interpreting it in this light can help us make sense of Sorel’s method. Sorel, this is to say, in his revision of Marxism and his social theory more generally, was engaging spe…[Read more]