Some critics find the delivery difficult, noting the language is often torturously abstract and "hyper-intellectualized".
Sophie Wahnich's is a provocative, succinct essay that challenges modern "moralising" views of the Reign of Terror. Rather than seeing it as a descent into madness, Wahnich argues it was a rational institutional response designed to control and curb anarchic popular violence. Core Arguments & Themes In Defence of the Terror: Liberty or Death in t...
She attacks the "revisionist" history of scholars like François Furet, who view the Revolution through the lens of modern liberal democracy and judge it by "timeless" standards of morality rather than historical necessity. Critical Reception Some critics find the delivery difficult, noting the
Reviewers praise the book for being a "welcome corrective" to simplistic moral critiques and a "bracing intervention" in political theory. It is noted for its concise and compelling prose. Core Arguments & Themes She attacks the "revisionist"
Wahnich suggests the Terror was established to prevent massacres by the populace (like the September Massacres) by transferring the "right of vengeance" to the state. In Danton's words, the state had to "be terrible so as to spare the people the need to be so".
Wahnich makes a sharp distinction between the 18th-century "Terror" (a state-led process for sovereignty) and contemporary "terrorism," which she argues aims at neither liberty nor equality.