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Bertrand de Jouvenel (1903-1987) was one of the great 20th century political philosophers. Between 1945 and 1965, he produced influential works exploring the growth of state power, articulating conceptions of the common good, and reconciling tradition and change. Jouvenel was a critic of centralized states but recognized the need for political authority. His master works On Power, Sovereignty, and The Pure Theory of Politics provide penetrating reflections on modern political conditions. This symposium aims to reconsider Jouvenel's model of balanced, humane political reflection.
Bertrand de Jouvenel (1903-1987) was one of the great 20th century political philosophers. Between 1945 and 1965, he produced influential works exploring the growth of state power, articulating conceptions of the common good, and reconciling tradition and change. Jouvenel was a critic of centralized states but recognized the need for political authority. His master works On Power, Sovereignty, and The Pure Theory of Politics provide penetrating reflections on modern political conditions. This symposium aims to reconsider Jouvenel's model of balanced, humane political reflection.
Bertrand de Jouvenel (1903-1987) was one of the great 20th century political philosophers. Between 1945 and 1965, he produced influential works exploring the growth of state power, articulating conceptions of the common good, and reconciling tradition and change. Jouvenel was a critic of centralized states but recognized the need for political authority. His master works On Power, Sovereignty, and The Pure Theory of Politics provide penetrating reflections on modern political conditions. This symposium aims to reconsider Jouvenel's model of balanced, humane political reflection.
ertrand de Jouvenel (1903-1987) was one of the great political In the years between 1945 and 1965 he produced an impressive body of work in the tradition known as conservative liberalism. These writings explored the inexorable growth of state power in modern times, the difficult but necessary task of articulating a conception of the common good appropriate to a dynamic, "progressive" society, and the challenge of formulating a political science that could reconcile tradition and change while preserving the freedom and dignity of the individual. As the articles in this symposium amply attest, Jouvenel was the furthest thing from doctrinaire in his approach to political matters. A critic of the centralizing propensities of the modern state, he nonetheless appreciated that political authority was indispensable for maintaining social trust and the equilibrium of a free society. A charter member of the classical liberal Mont Pelerin Society, he rejected the individualist premises underlying modern economics and reminded his contemporaries that the good life entailed some- thing much more fundamental than the maximization of individual preferences. In his mature writings, Jouvenel vigorously challenged the progressivist conceit at the heart of modern thought, the illusion that social and economic development necessarily entailed moral progress. But he never rejected modernity per se. He believed that politics in the true sense of the term must actively promote civic friendship, but at the same time he resisted all forms of primitivist and communitarian nostalgia. An essentially conservative-minded thinker, he admired Rousseau and was an early advocate of ecology and a pioneer of "future studies." A Symposium on Bertrand de Jouvenel 37
Jouvenel's political judgment was not always reliable: he drifted
to the far Right for a brief time in the late 1930s and inexplicably supported Mitterrand and the Union of the Left in the 1981 French presidential elections. But his master works of the postwar period, On Power (1945), Sovereignty (1955), and The Pure Theory of Politics (1963), are models of intellectually penetrating and morally serious reflection on the political condition of modern man. The wisdom they impart is self-consciously in the best conservative liberal tradition of Constant, Guizot, and Tocqueville. In these classic works, Jouvenel freely accepted the inevitability of what he called the "productivist" or progressive society, marked by myriad initiatives and sources of change. At the same time, he crafted a political science that aimed to preserve the preconditions of "the good life" that were imperiled by those very innovations. In Jouvenel 's considered judgment, a balanced social order must have a place both for the innovator, which he called Dux, and the stabilizer, which he called Rex. Jouvenel's mature writings teach moderation and reveal the fragility of a liberal civilization that believed itself to be the pinnacle of modern "Progress." In that regard, his writings continue to speak to us today since nothing suggests that we have arrived at some definitive "end of history." While Jouvenel's major writings are now widely available in English once more-thanks largely to the good offices of Liberty Fund and Transaction Publishers-it cannot be said that he is a major presence in contemporary political philosophy. As the French political theorist Pierre Manent has suggested, we prefer the allure of "scientificity" (and, one might add, partisanship) to the urbanity, finesse, and good sense to be found on almost every page of Jouvenel's books and articles. The symposium that follows can best be understood as an invitation to reconsider Jouvenel's humane model of political and philosophical reflection: In that sense, it hopes to make a modest contribution to the renewal of academic political theory.
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