ABSTRACT
French liberal thought originated in the encounter of Enlightenment thinking with the Revolution of 1789. From the Enlightenment, it retained a universalistic conception of freedom and an attachment to the pursuit of peace through moderate government. To these, it added one of the key principles of the Revolution of 1789: the separation of the political sphere from the religious one as guarantee of human rights. A paradox characterizes it: its conception of freedom as absolute, first political principle outside religion or philosophy but as fragile and dependent on political institutions, just as much as on the virtue of individual citizens. This conception stresses the absolute autonomy of political action from technological and economic
progress. It relies on the morality of universal reason. Its attitude to history is suspicious of its presumed transcendent meaning. It is committed to representative politics, the best form of government to safeguard freedom against all those other currents of political thought that exercised their attraction over European political life over the course of two centuries. French political liberalism entertains an ambivalent relationship to its Anglo-American counterpart: it defines citizenship as incompatible with religion, the outcome of a process whereby individuals shed their family, ethnic, or religious ties to become sovereign over their destinies. In this respect, French liberalism intersects with British individualism but it does not put any faith in the market as principle of social organization and invests the state with the task of protecting social harmony (Baverez 1999).
