This book provides a lively account of the gilets jaunes, the yellow vest movement that has shaken France since 2018. Charles Devellennes assesses what lessons can be drawn from their activities and the impact for the contemporary relationship between state and citizen. Informed by a dialogue with past political theorists - from Hobbes, Spinoza and Rousseau to Rawls, Nozick and Diderot - and reflecting on the challenges posed by the yellow vest movement, the author rethinks the concept of the social contract for contemporary societies around the world. It proposes a new relationship between the state and the individual, and establishes the necessity of rethinking the modern democratic nature of our representative polities in order to provide a genuine process for the healing of social ills.

Charles Devellennes looks at the first four thinkers of the French Enlightenment to explicitly argue for atheism as a positive philosophy. He explores the religious, social and political thought of Pierre Bayle, Jean Meslier, Paul-Henri Thiry d'Holbach and Denis Diderot and in doing so adds new dimensions to our understanding of their contribution to the history of ideas.Atheism is seen to have evolved considerably over the century that spans the works of these four authors. Starting with the possibility of the virtuous atheist in the late seventeenth century, atheism metamorphoses to encompass a deeply rooted materialist philosophy with radical social and political consequences by the eve of the French revolution. The metamorphosis of atheism from a purely negative phenomenon to one that became self-aware is shown to have profound consequences for the establishment of an ethics without God, as well as for the rise of republicanism as a political philosophy. Culminating in the work of Diderot, atheism became increasingly critical of its own position, and by the late eighteenth century had already proposed to move past its positive formulation into a form of metatheism. Diderot, who sees atheism as both a critical tool to assess religious, social and political institutions and as an object of his own critique, foreshadows the rise of a post-Enlightenment conception of atheism.

This book provides a lively account of the gilets jaunes, the yellow vest movement that has shaken France since 2018. Charles Devellennes assesses what lessons can be drawn from their activities and the impact for the contemporary relationship between state and citizen. Informed by a dialogue with past political theorists - from Hobbes, Spinoza and Rousseau to Rawls, Nozick and Diderot - and reflecting on the challenges posed by the yellow vest movement, the author rethinks the concept of the social contract for contemporary societies around the world. It proposes a new relationship between the state and the individual, and establishes the necessity of rethinking the modern democratic nature of our representative polities in order to provide a genuine process for the healing of social ills.

When Emmanuel Macron was elected President of the French Republic, it ended the long-standing political alternation between the mainstream right- and left-wing parties. This book examines Macron’s political career from his rise as a public figure to his time as a president. The book explores Macron’s political ideology and examines the enactment of the key notions of security, merit and hope during his time in office. By offering a close study of his actions and ideological commitment, this book argues that, despite claims of being ideologically neutral, Macron actually represents a new form of right-wing politics in France.

When Emmanuel Macron was elected President of the French Republic, it ended the long-standing political alternation between the mainstream right- and left-wing parties. This book examines Macron's political career from his rise as a public figure to his time as a president. The book explores Macron's political ideology and examines the enactment of the key notions of security, merit and hope during his time in office. By offering a close study of his actions and ideological commitment, this book argues that, despite claims of being ideologically neutral, Macron actually represents a new form of right-wing politics in France.