Is It Still Too Early to Tell? Rethinking Sociology’s Relations to the French Revolution

Abstract

It seems almost impossible today to deny the importance of the French Revolution in creating both the distinctively modern social world and sociology’s characteristic responses to it. This paper takes issue with various of the standard narrations of these matters. It aims at developing fresh thinking about what the Revolution was, and what roles it may, or may not have, played in generating subsequent social phenomena and the sociology tasked with comprehending them. The claim by Robert Nisbet that the roots of sociology especially lie in Conservative responses to the Revolution are critically assessed. The potential importance of Durkheim and de Tocqueville for creating new narrations of the connections between the Revolution and sociology are considered. The manners in which the Revolution has been invoked to construct concepts of “modernity” and dramatic historical breaks with the past are reflected upon.