Shockingly Worldly 
David Runciman
- Emmanuel Sieyès: Political Writings edited by Michael Sonenscher
Most of the 18th-century political theorists with the biggest reputations come from rather out-of-the-way places, at least in geopolitical terms: Vico from Naples; Hume and Adam Smith from Edinburgh; Rousseau from Geneva; Kant from Königsberg. But because the 18th century was also, in the end, an Age of Revolution, its two most important political thinkers do not really belong in this club of international superstars. One, James Madison from Virginia, is more than just a superstar in the United States. He is one of the secular gods of the American Republic, the architect of its Constitution and the author of many of the Federalist Papers written in its defence, including ‘Federalist No. 10’, which is one of the Republic’s holy texts. This makes the rest of the world uncomfortable, and Madison’s ideas can often seem too American to be true (in contrast to Rousseau, whose ideas can often seem too true to be Swiss). The other, Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès from Provence, is not mistrusted outside his native France so much as ignored. Even in France he is more of an intellectual curiosity than an object of reverence. The French Republic has had too many constitutions, too many false gods and too many false dawns to go in for the hero-worship of its founding fathers that gives Americans such satisfaction. Sieyès contributed to some of the shortest-lived of those constitutions, and he was responsible for more than one of the false dawns. Nevertheless, he was a political thinker of genius, one to compare with any of the great names of the 18th century. And he understood, perhaps as well as anyone, the new world that both the American and French Revolutions helped to create.
Subscribers to the print edition can log in to view the entire article. For information about subscribing to the London Review of Books click here. This article is available for purchase online. Buy this article.
David Runciman teaches politics at Cambridge. Political Hypocrisy came out earlier this year.
Other articles by this contributor:
The Precautionary Principle · Taking a Chance on War
This Way to the Ruin · the British Constitution
The Cattle-Prod Election · The Point of the Polls
Liars, Hypocrites and Crybabies · Blair v. Brown
A Bear Armed with a Gun · The Widening Atlantic
The Garden, the Park and the Meadow · After the Nation State
Why Not Eat an Eclair? · Why Vote?
Cricket’s Superpowers · Beyond the Ashes
print layout
tell a friend