Craig Schamel - Idealism and Actualization (en anglais)

Craig Schamel

Idealism and Actualization

Saint-Just in Theory, Practice, and Exigency

Dissertation in Political Philosophy

Submitted to the Department of Politics and Policy in the School of Politics and Economics at Claremont Graduate University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree

This dissertation has been duly read, reviewed, and critiqued by the Committee listed below, which hereby approves the manuscript of Craig Schamel as fulfilling the quality and scope requirements for meriting the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

James H. Nichols, jr., Chair

Claremont McKenna College

Professor of Government

Sharon N. Snowiss

Pitzer College

Professor of Political Studies

Gary R. Kates

Pomona College

Professor of History

Acknowledgments

My deepest gratitude I express to my mother, Sandra Schamel, who has supported me with heart, soul and wallet, to my beloved late aunt Alice Mercurio, whose spirit and love motivate all of my actions, and to my dissertation committee, Jim Nichols, Sharon Snowiss, and Gary Kates; also to Bill Dunmyer, who encouraged me to return to school to finish the degree for which this dissertation is submitted, and who encouraged me to work on Saint-Just rather than on Hegel. A special thank you is due to Scott MacDonough, who has ardently supported, in word and deed, all of my efforts over the years, to the late Eliza Lloyd Moore, who encouraged me to rise above the immediate desires that surrounded me and to keep my eye on a larger goal, and to my loving boyfriend, Zane Liston, for putting up with my lack of availability and my stress during this endeavor. I would also like to thank my students at ASA Institute and those at the University of Redlands for reminding me of one important reason why I've stuck with academia, since they are that reason itself. I am grateful to Jean Schroedel at the School of Politics and Economics at Claremont Graduate University for her assistance, which allowed me to remain in the program when I otherwise would have had to leave for financial reasons. I would finally like to mention my gratitude to the late, great French scholar of the Revolution Albert Mathiez, whose work pulled me out of the reactionary miasma of Anglophone discussions of the Revolution and brought me up to a level of enlightenment which inspired and began the path to this dissertation.

Abstract

Louis-Antoine Léon de Saint-Just (1767-1794) was a revolutionary, a statesman, and a political philosopher, yet it is largely only as a revolutionary that he is remembered. As a political person who occupied these three different but overlapping roles, Saint-Just is ideal as the subject and center of a study of actualization, the taking of political ideals into reality. Saint-Just’s political philosophy was that of an idealist, and yet he, by force of circumstance, ability, and audacity, had the opportunity in his short life to attempt to establish and put into practice his political ideals. In his work as a political person Saint-Just created templates for the understanding of the relationship between political theory and political action. Saint-Just’s political theory is examined in relation to his political action, using the concepts of ‘the natural’, ‘the civil’, ‘the social’ and ‘the political’, concepts which are central in Saint-Just’s political philosophy. Saint-Just’s formulations of these concepts, concepts which have also been central to the history of political philosophy, and his understanding of the relations between these concepts, helps to establish him as a political philosopher of some importance, as does the theory and practice approach to politics which his attempts demanded and which his political life demonstrated. In Saint-Just’s function as political philosopher the thesis finds the theoretical element of politics, which becomes redefined in its interaction with Saint-Just’s other functions as statesman and revolutionary, the latter two of which correspond roughly to practice and exigency. As a theorist who is also a statesman in a context of exigency, or revolution, Saint-Just’s political life is a constantly rearranged juxtaposition of theory, practice, and revolution, albeit one which never loses it essential ties to its philosophical base, even in the hours of greatest emergency. Such dedication to a philosophical base, one which refuses to dispense with political philosophy, demonstrates a new conception of political philosophy for the modern world, fills in elements of a theory of revolution as a phenomenon of both theory and action, and provides a contained case for examination of political philosophy and political action, questioning their disunity.

Idealism and Actualization: Saint-Just in Theory, Practice, and Exigency

Craig Schamel

Claremont Graduate University: 2012

Table of Contents

Biography of Louis-Antoine Léon de Saint-Just vi

Note on the Works of Saint-Just xvi

Note on Citations xviii

Introduction 1

I. Theory (The Right of Practice) Saint-Just as Political Philosopher

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