Élie Halévy and French socialist liberalism

Élie Halévy (1870–1937) is best known in the Anglo-American world for his volumes on British Utilitarianism and his multi-volume history of England during the nineteenth century. His reputation in his native France, however, is associated with his directing role of the Revue de métaphysique et de morale and for his lectures on the history of European socialism, given every other year at the École libre des sciences politiques between 1902 and 1937. This essay analyses the relationship of Halévy’s scholarship on socialism with his self-proclaimed liberalism. Contrary to much of the literature about Halévy, and at odds with the ideological thrust of the posthumously published version of his lectures on the history of European socialism, this essay claims that Halévy was a socialist liberal before the First World War. It makes this case by providing a careful reading of Halévy’s correspondence and of the manuscript versions of these lectures (held at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris), and by placing these in the wider historical context. It argues that Halévy developed a sophisticated comparative analysis of European socialism, and that he was sympathetic to many of its dimensions

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