Sublime

Les paysans qui menèrent la révolte dans les campagnes pendant l’été 1789, les femmes qui prirent en octobre la route de Versailles et ramenèrent le roi à Paris, ces grandes foules anonymes ne connaissaient ni Condorcet ni Mably, elles marchaient sous le coup de la colère, de la peur et de la faim. Leur éducation politique se fera plus tard, au

The first was in 133 BCE, when Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, a tribune of the people with radical plans to distribute land to the Roman poor, decided to seek a second year in office. To put a stop to this, an unofficial posse of senators and their hangers-on interrupted the elections, bludgeoned Gracchus and hundreds of his supporters to death and

As the social contract forged in the 1930s breaks down and debt levels reach crisis proportions, more radical measures may become necessary. In ancient times, some societies addressed the polarization of wealth with a periodic nullification of debts. Examples include the Solonic Seisachtheia, the “shaking off of burdens,” in which debts were

which billionaire philanthropist Chuck Feeney calls “giving while living.” Feeney, who made his fortune as a founder of Duty Free Shoppers Group (the duty-free stores you see in airports), is a great role model for what I’m advocating: He started giving his money away (anonymously) early, and by the time he was in his eighties he had given away

The first reform in 494 BCE was the appointment of official representatives, known as tribunes of the people (tribuni plebis), to defend the interests of the plebeians.

By contrast, the French revolutionaries, especially the Jacobins, were guided by a militantly secular strain of the Enlightenment: For them, religion was the enemy of reason and human rights. “De-Christianization” was their policy. France quickly descended into social chaos, abolished basic civil liberties, and crowned a dictator for life.

Surviving lists of names, which by this period are largely accurate, suggest that about 20 per cent of consuls in the late second century BCE came from families whose extended network of relations had not produced a consul in the previous fifty years, if ever.