This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page . (Learn how and when to remove these template messages)
|
Julien Freund | |
---|---|
Born | |
Died | 10 September 1993 72) Colmar, France | (aged
Education | University of Strasbourg |
Era | 20th-century philosophy |
Region | Western philosophy |
School | Continental philosophy French liberalism Classical republicanism IR realism |
Main interests | Political philosophy |
Notable ideas | The political as human essence; the political as relation between command and obedience, private and public, and friend and enemy |
This article is part of a series on |
Conservatism in France |
---|
Julien Freund (8 January 1921 – 10 September 1993) was a French philosopher and sociologist. [1] Freund was called an "unsatisfied liberal-conservative" by Pierre-André Taguieff, for introducing France to the ideas of Max Weber. His work as a sociologist and political theorist is a continuation of Carl Schmitt's. Freund, like many people from Alsace, was fluent in German and French. His works have been translated into nearly 20 languages.
Born in Henridorff (Moselle) on 8 January 1921, to a peasant mother and a socialist working class father, Freund was the eldest of six siblings. When his father died he had to end his studies. He became a teacher aged 17, and secretary to the council in his hometown.
His brother Antoine, conscripted against his will into the Wehrmacht, was injured in the battle of Orel in Russia and then deserted. [2] This should have caused the deportation of his family, who were also aiding the resistance in Lorraine. [3] However, they were able to destroy the Gestapo-held documents relating to their proposed deportation.
During World War II, Freund was a member of the resistance. A member of the Libération group founded by Jean Cavaillès, [4] he was taken hostage by the Germans in July 1940. He managed to escape to the Free Zone of France. In January 1941, he began fighting for the Libération movement of Emmanuel d’Astier de la Vigerie, then in combat groups run by Henri Frenay, all the while getting his degree in philosophy.
Arrested in June 1942 in Clermont-Ferrand, then again in September in Lyon, he was accused alongside Emmanuel Mounier in the trial of Combat. Jailed in the central prison of Elysses, then in the fortress of Sisteron, he escaped on 8 June 1944. Returning to Strasbourg in November 1944, he became a journalist and political activist.
Initially, Freund was a young teacher in Hommarting (Moselle). He then became professor of philosophy in collège Mangin de Sarrebourg (1946–49), lycée Fabert de Metz (1949–53) and then the lycée Fustel de Coulanges de Strasbourg (1953–60). From 1960 to 1965, he was a head of research at CNRS. In 1965, the year of his thesis at Sorbonne, he was elected professor of sociology at the University of Strasbourg, where he founded the departement of social sciences. He then taught from 1973 to 1975 at the College of Europe in Bruges, then in 1975 at Université de Montréal.
Freund was a support of limited democracy and that growing democratisation increases the reach of government, allowing it to become ever more invasive. Politics, Freund believed, cannot solve any cultural problems or impose social values upon society, and it should not be involved in religious affairs. Equally, religion also cannot impose upon the principles of democracy. Freund's work also drew attention to the corruption of language and its misuse in democracy: "La démocratie se décompose quand elle dilapide la sincérité en démagogie et en flatterie", i.e. "Democracy breaks down when it squanders sincerity in demagoguery and flattery". [5]
His idea of "mesocracy" was first used in 1978, against the overuse and overreach of democracy. [6] Mesocracy from its Greek roots, is a form of power that exists in tandem with other 'counter powers'. Rather than speaking of a singular, abstract “freedom”, Freund preferred to refer to specific freedoms, freedom of the press, of association, of conscience etc. Without such concrete freedoms, Freund argued, we will never have freedom in the singular.
Olivier Ihl is a French professor of political science, director of the Grenoble Institute of Political Studies in Grenoble, France and member of the laboratory PACTE.
Pierre-André Taguieff is a French philosopher who has specialised in the study of racism and antisemitism. He is the director of research at the French National Centre for Scientific Research in an Institut d'études politiques de Paris laboratory, the Centre for Political Research (CEVIPOF). He is also a member of the Cercle de l'Oratoire think tank.
Patrick Cabanel is a French historian, director of studies at the École pratique des hautes études and holder of the chair in Histoire et sociologie des protestantismes. He mainly writes on the history of religious minorities, the construction of a secularised French Republic and French resistance to the Shoah.
Michel Wieviorka is a French sociologist, noted for his work on violence, terrorism, racism, social movements and the theory of social change.
Sandra Laugier is a French philosopher, who works on moral philosophy, political philosophy, philosophy of language, gender studies, and popular culture. She is a full professor of philosophy at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and a Senior member of the Institut Universitaire de France. She currently serves as the deputy director of the Institut des sciences juridique et philosophique de la Sorbonne. In 2014, she received the title of the Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur. In 2022, she was awarded the Grand Prix Moron by the Académie française. In 2024, she was elected to the American Philosophical Society.
Georges Balandier was a French sociologist, anthropologist and ethnologist noted for his research in Sub-Saharan Africa. Balandier was born in Aillevillers-et-Lyaumont. He was a professor at the Sorbonne, and is a member of the Center for African Studies, a research center of the École pratique des hautes études. He held for many years the Editorship of Cahiers Internationaux de Sociologie and edited the series Sociologie d'Aujourd'hui at Presses Universitaires de France. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1976. He died on 5 October 2016 at the age of 95.
Jean-Marie Brohm is a French sociologist, anthropologist and philosopher. Professor of sociology at the University of Montpellier III, he was also the founder of the journal Quel Corps ?, member of the editorial staff of the monthly Répertoire and is actually director of the journal Prétentaine. Brohm has written many books and is the leading proponent of the radical critique of sport in France.
Michel Maffesoli is a French sociologist.
Georges-Elia Sarfati is a philosopher, linguist, poet, and an existentialist psychoanalyst, author of written works in the domains of ethics, Jewish thought, social criticism, and discourse analysis. He has translated Viktor E. Frankl. He is the grand-nephew of the sociologist Gaston Bouthoul.
Jean-Paul Willaime is a French sociologist specialized in contemporary Protestantism, Christian ecumenism, Secularism and religions, theories and methods in the sociology of religions.
Claude Mossé was a French historian specializing in the history of Ancient Greece.
Geoffroy de Lagasnerie is a French philosopher and sociologist.
Gabriel Le Bras (1891-1970) was a French legal scholar and sociologist.
Monique Pinçon-Charlot is a French sociologist, research director at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) until 2007, year of her retiring, attached to the Research Institute on Contemporary Societies/ l'Institut de recherche sur les sociétés contemporaines (IRESCO).
Georges-Henri Bousquet was a 20th-century French jurist, economist and Islamologist. He was a professor of law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Algiers where he was a specialist in the sociology of North Africa. He is also known for his translation work of the great Muslim authors, Al-Ghazali, a theologian who died in 1111 and Tunisian historian Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406). He was known as a polyglot, spoke several European languages and Eastern ones.
Jean Andreau is a French historian, former student of the École normale supérieure (1960) and former member of the École française de Rome. As of 2016, he is research director at the EHESS.
Gérald Bronner is a French social scientist and author. Bronner is a professor of sociology at Université Paris-Diderot and is a member of the Institut Universitaire de France. He is one of the main proponents of cognitive sociology in France and is known for his work on collective beliefs as well as for his involvement in jihadist radicalization prevention programs with the French government. More generally, his research has focused on the key success factors of a belief in social contexts.
Émile Mireaux was a French economist, journalist, politician and literary historian. In the 1930s, he edited Le Temps and contributed to other right-leaning journals. He became a senator in 1936, and briefly served as a minister in 1940. From 1940 until his death, he held a chair in political economy, statistics and finance at the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques.
Edgard Milhaud was a French professor of economics, a militant socialist, and a promoter and theoretician of social economy.
Jean Baechler, born 28 March 1937 in Thionville (Moselle) and died 13 August 2022 in Draveil, was a French academic and sociologist.