Rights in France : reflections on the etiolation of a political language

Abstract

The last decade in France has seen an efflorescence of self-consciously liberal political thought. The reasons for this have been well-rehearsed elsewhere ; the discrediting of marxism, in practice and in theory ; the stabilisation and "pluralisation" of the political system ; rapid transformation of the economy and an accompanying interest in the American model. The latter enthusiasm has been echoed in the intellectual community by a new attention to works of political philosophy in the anglo-american tradition, many of which have recently been translated for the first time.