Between Facts and Norms - Contributions to a ... - Blogs Unpad

464-------- ----- --------Appendix Ikeep different time in France and Germany. In France, liberal andsocialist interpretations of the Revolution have determined thenation's self-understanding. In contrast, since the initial enthusiasmof the Revolution's contemporaries died down, we Germanshave constantly been suspicious of the terrorist consequences ofthe "ideas of 1789." This was not only true of the earlier Prussianself-understanding of the German nation. Traces of a conservative,even aggressively hostile, historiography were still to be found onthis side of the Rhine up to 1945.5 International differences inreception history do not, by themselves, say anything about thetruth of a thesis, but the same thesis takes on a different significancein different contexts. Furet was responding to the tradition inwhich the French Revolution stands as a model alongside theBolshevik revolution. This dialectical relation supports his thesis ofthe end of the French Revolution-and simultaneously relativizesit. 6A nonhistorian cannot contribute much to that controversy.Instead, I want to take the perspective of political theory andaddress the question of whether the orienting power of the FrenchRevolution is exhausted. I am concerned with the normative issueof whether the shift in mentality that occurred during the FrenchRevolution still represents, in some respects, an unclaimed heritage.Can we read the "revolution in ideas" of 1789 in a way thatmight still inform our own needs for orientation?11.1We can discuss the question concerning the still promising aspectsof the French Revolution from various points of view.(a) In France, the Revolution in part made possible, in part onlyaccelerated, the development of a mobile bourgeois society and acapitalist economic system. It furthered processes that had occurredin other countries without a revolutionary reorganization ofpolitical authority and the legal system. Since then, this economicand social modernization has become not only permanently crisisriddenbut overtly secular as well. Today, with its dysfunctional side