Abstract
Recently two influential and stimulating historians of the French Revolution, Francois Furet and Lynn Hunt, have singled out major deficiency in the political culture of France.' The French failure to conceive of politics in terms of the reconciliation of interests, seen as forming the basis of Anglo-Saxon political culture, was instrumental in producing messianic strain of politics aiming at the total transformation of society, rather than the limited, pragmatic politics of Britain and America. Designating unattainable aims, investing the struggle to attain them with an important moral dimension, anything less than total commitment was seen as backsliding, even betrayal. The expression of interest -says Lynn Hunt -seemed factious and divisive, sabotaging of the general will. Interests was a code word for betrayal of nation united. 2 However, while accepting the force of this argument,3 I suggest
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