Rebellion, Revolution, and Religion 2 credits Winter Term 2007 Lecturer: Matthias Riedl Time: Wednesday 1:40 3:20 Place: Nador 11/210 Uprisings against rulers appear throughout human history and across all civilizations, mostly when larger groups of humans experience hunger, injustice, humiliation, or cruelty as unbearable. However, the aim of such uprisings is often not much more than the restoration of the status quo ante. Revolutions are something different; they presuppose what S. N. Eisenstadt called the Jacobin Dimension, that is, the idea that social reality can be transformed through political action. The course aims at a comparative exploration of the idea of revolution. Key questions to be discussed are: What are the origins of revolutionary thought? What are the relations between revolution and religion? Is revolutionary ideology a secularized theology? What are the decisive experiences that constitute the revolutionary consciousness? What is the self image of revolutionaries? What is their view on history? What is their image of post revolutionary order? How do they justify violence? How far do non European revolutionaries depend on European ideas? How much do revolutionary thought and action contribute to the formation of modernity? The class is open the PhD and MA students. The requirements will differ. Details will be provided first class meeting. Course requirements and grading: 20% Class presentation of one of the readings 30% Class participation 50% Research Paper
Syllabus Week I: Introduction: Revolution, Rebellion, Religion, and Modernity S.N. Eisenstadt, The Reconstruction of Religious Arenas in the Framework of Multiple Modernities, in: Islam: Critical Concepts in Sociology, ed. Bryan S. Turner (vol. 4), Islam and Social Movements. London, NY 2003, pp. 1 22. Week II: Medieval and Early Modern Roots of Revolutionary Thought I Cohn, Norman, The pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages, London: Pimlico, 1993. Baylor, Michael G./Raymond Geuss/Quentin Skinner, The Radical Reformation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Week III: Puritanism and the English Revolution Sexby, Edward, Killing No Murder, in: Divine Right and Democracy: An Anthology of Political Writings in Stuart England, ed. David Wootton, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1986, pp. 360 388. Hill, Christopher, The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991. Wootton, David: Leveller Democracy and the Puritan Revolution, in: The Cambridge History of Political Thought 1450 1700, ed. J.H. Burns, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, pp. 412 442. Week IV: Jacobinism and the French Revolution I Robespierre, Maximilien, Virtue and Terror, (ed. Slavoy Zizek, forthcoming January 2007). Vovelle, Michael, The revolution against the Church: From Reason to the Supreme Being, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991.
Week V: Marx and Engels Marx, Karl/Engels, Friedrich, The Communist manifesto, London: Verso, 1998. Marx, Karl, German Ideology. Theses against Feuerbach, Prometheus Books, New York: 1998. Engels, Friedrich, On the History of Early Christianity, in: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels on Religion, ed. R. Niebuhr, New York: Schocken Books, 1964. Week VI: The Russian Revolution Lenin, V.I., Revolution at the gates: A Selection of Writings from February to October 1917, London: Verso, 2002. Trotsky, Leon, Terrorism and communism: A Reply to Karl Kautsky, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1963. Fitzpatrick, Sheila, The Russian revolution, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. Week VII: Nihilism and Revolt Turgeniew, Ivan S., Fathers and Sons. New York, New American Library, 1961. (CEU) Nietzsche, Friedrich, Thus spoke Zarathustra: A Book For All and None, New York: Penguin Books, 1987. Camus, Albert, The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt, New York: Vintage Books, 1956. Week VIII: Anarchism and Revolution Bakunin, Michael, God and the State, New York: Dover Publications, 1970. Proudhon, Pierre Joseph, What is property?, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Proudhon, Pierre Joseph, General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century, New York: Haskell House Publishers, 1969. Week IX: Revolution and Violence
Sorel, Georges, Reflections on Violence (1908), New York: Collier, 1950. Berlin, Isaiah, Georges Sorel, in: Against the current: Essays in the History of Ideas, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991. Week X: Civil Disobedience, Passive Resistance, and Non Violence Thoreau, Henry D., Civil Disobedience, in: Political Writings, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Tolstoy, Leo, The Kingdom of God is Within You. Christianity not as a mystic religion but as a new theory of life, Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press, 1984. Gandhi, Mahatma, An autobiography or The story of my experiments with truth, London: Penguin, 1982. Week XI: Rebellion and Revolution in China Gray, Jack, Rebellions and Revolutions. China from the 1800s to the 1980s, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990, pp. 52 76. Wagner, Rudolf G., Reenacting the heavenly vision: The Role of Religion in the Taiping Rebellion, Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 1982. Kuhn, Philip A., Origins of the Taiping Vision: Cross Dimensions of a Chinese Rebellion, in: Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 19/3 (Jul., 1977), pp. 350 366. (JSTOR) Week XII: The Iranian Revolution Keddi, Nikkie (ed.), Debating revolutions, New York: New York University Press, 1995. Additional Readings (more to be added): Arendt, Hannah, On Revolution, London: Penguin Books, 1990. Arendt, Hannah, On Violence, New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1970. Berlin, Isaiah, Russian Thinkers, London: Penguin Books, 1978.
Berlin, Isaiah, Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991. Kolakowski, Leszek, Main currents of Marxism: The Founders, The Golden Age, The Breakdown. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2005. Voegelin, Eric: From Enlightenment to Revolution. Durham: Duke University Press, 1977.