Virtue and Terror

Download or read book Virtue and Terror written by Maximilien Robespierre and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2017-09-26 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Robespierre's defense of the French Revolution remains one of the most powerful and unnerving justifications for political violence ever written, and has extraordinary resonance in a world obsessed with terrorism and appalled by the language of its proponents. Yet today, the French Revolution is celebrated as the event which gave birth to a nation built on the principles of Enlightenment. So how should a contemporary audience approach Robespierre's vindication of revolutionary terror? Zizek takes a helter-skelter route through these contradictions, marshaling all the breadth of analogy for which he is famous.