Reflections on Violence (ed. 2)
- Language:
- English
- Translation:
- T. E. Hulme
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~110,000 words · 541 passages
Cite this work
- APAGeorges Sorel. (n.d.). Reflections on Violence [Reflections on Violence (ed. 2)] (T. E. Hulme, Trans.). Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/georges-sorel/reflections-on-violence
- MLAGeorges Sorel. Reflections on Violence [Reflections on Violence (ed. 2)]. Translated by T. E. Hulme. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/georges-sorel/reflections-on-violence.
- ChicagoGeorges Sorel. Reflections on Violence [Reflections on Violence (ed. 2)]. Translated by T. E. Hulme. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/georges-sorel/reflections-on-violence.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
The 1908 book in which Sorel defends the general strike not as a tactic but as a myth: an image that moves men to act even though it need never come about as they picture it.
Context and history
It is one of the most uncomfortable texts in the corpus, and it is worth saying why. Sorel came out of Marxism and found it too rationalist: he held that masses are moved not by calculation but by total images, and that revolutionary syndicalism should preserve its capacity for conflict instead of bargaining it away. He distinguished proletarian 'violence' from the 'force' of the state, and despised parliamentary democracy as a way of damping conflict down. These ideas were taken up both by the syndicalist left and by Italian fascism, and Sorel himself sympathised with Lenin at the end of his life. It is in the corpus because it is a real piece of the history of ideas, and it should be read knowing where it led.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
My Reflections on Violence have irritated many people on account of the pessimistic conception on which the whole of the study rests ; but I know that you do not share this impression ; you have brilliantly shown in your Histoire de quatre ans that you despise the deceptive hopes with which the weak solace themselves. We can then talk pessimism freely to each other, and I am happy to have a correspondent who does not revolt against a doctrine without which nothing very great has been accomplished in this world. I have felt for some time that Greek philosophy did not produce any great moral result, simply because it was, as a rule, very optimistic. Socrates was at times optimistic to an almost unbearable degree. The aversion of most of our contemporaries from every pessimistic conception is doubtless derived, to a great extent, from our system of education. The Jesuits, who created nearly ever5^hing that the University still continues to teach, were optimists because they had to combat the pessimism which dominated Protestant theories, and because they popularised the ideas of the Renaissance ; the Renaissance interpreted antiquity by means of the philosophers, and consequently misunderstood the masterpieces of tragic art so completely that our contemporaries have had considerable difficulty in rediscovering their pessimistic significance.^ 1 " The significant melancholy found in the masterpieces of Hellenic art prove that, even at that time, gifted individuals were able to peer through the illusions of life to which the spirit of their own surrendered itself without the slightest critical reflection " (Hartmann, The Philosophy of the Unconscious, Eng. trans., vol. iii. p. 78 ; ii. p. 436).…