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  • “Elie Halévy retrouvé”World War I and the crisis of democratic thought from the Dreyfus affair to the age of tyrannies
  • Vincent Duclert* (bio)

Elie Halévy provided a profound and lasting critique of a Europe in crisis. In the 1930s, his interpretation was rooted in his reading of the world calamities of 1914-1918, which he delivered for the famous Rhodes Memorial Lectures at Oxford University in 1929.1 Studying the origins of his thought in the face of the war offers a privileged perspective on one of Halévy’s most important works, The Era of Tyrannies and, in particular, the role of democracy within his work more broadly. Most importantly, at the center of his approach was an attempt to confront this new political and ideological reality, beyond idealism or a religious faith in democracy’s superiority. [End Page 167]

The following article is part of a broader attempt to reconsider Elie Halévy’s intellectual trajectory and especially the role of the democratic intellectual in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which he embodied. It does so by suggesting three important elements of Halévy’s thought.2 First, I attempt to measure the place of the war as well as his study of authoritarianism in the narrow passage from nineteenth-century liberal thought to the anti-totalitarian thought of the twentieth century. I highlight the importance of Halévy’s founding role as a historian and philosopher: a title that Elie Halévy himself used to define his work at the French Philosophical Society’s conference called Era of Tyrannies on November 28, 1936. This self-appellation was even more significant considering its legacy among his descendents who continued to cultivate an interest in French liberalism and democracy, especially those how wrote in the wake of Raymond Aron like François Furet, Marcel Gauchet, and Pierre Rosanvallon among others.

Second, I suggest that this was not the only legacy that Halévy would impart upon French intellectuals of the second half of the twentieth century. Mobilizing the parliamentarian regime against totalitarianism required an act of lucidity. Intellectual criticism armed philosophical and historical against this unknown radical state power bred by the post-world war crisis. As a result, Halevy’s understanding of the war was crucial for his critique of totalitarianism—it should be noted that it was not, in fact “a theory of totalitarianism” because he based his interpretation on a study of totalitarian practices more than its theoretical underpinnings. From this perspective, Halévy’s work was equally important for influencing the thought of Raymond Aron and those that followed during what has been referred to as “the anti-totalitarian moment.” Elie Halévy was one of the first, and only figures to connect modern anti-totalitarianism with the nineteenth century’s anti-authoritarianism and maintain, at the same time, an interest in liberal values and the power of democracy.

Finally, it is worth noting, that this legacy is particularly important for current debates on the liberal revival in late twentieth century, because it highlights the importance of a regular engagement with liberalism in France even in the early twentieth century just as it challenges the centrality of Tocqueville for that tradition. Halévy was notoriously not a reader or follower of Tocqueville. And yet he had a tremendous influence on Raymond Aron and François Furet, among [End Page 168] others. From this perspective, Elie Halévy establishes the continuity between Tocqueville and Aron, between the two ages of modern historical political philosophy, liberalism and democratic thought in France.

Elie Halévy revealed this new philosophical and democratic politics through his personal engagement during the Dreyfus Affair, the war, and the rise of fascism. He proposed a modernization of the citizenship of the old parliamentarian societies, and defended a democratic consciousness and moral responsibility. From this perspective, Halévy was not only a “historian and philosopher,” but also as a democratic intellectual challenging the inevitability of the “spirit of fanaticism” and working in the “spirit of compromise”, spirit of reason, dialogue, and law.

The democratic intellectual incarnated by Elie Halévy was rooted in two projects for autonomy, a critical...

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