651. Redefining Revolutions: From Ancient Cycles to Modern Movements with Dan Edelstein

About this episode

Dan Edelstein discusses the evolving concept of revolution from ancient times to modern interpretations with host Greg La Blanc.

Dan Edelstein is a professor of French, history, and political science at Stanford University. He’s also the author of several books on revolution and the Enlightenment, including The Revolution to Come: A History of an Idea from Thucydides to Lenin, Let There Be Enlightenment: The Religious and Mystical Sources of Rationality, Scripting Revolution: A Historical Approach to the Comparative Study of Revolutions, and The Enlightenment: A Genealogy. Greg and Dan discuss the changing meaning of “revolution” as an idea rather than a catalog of revolts. Dan explains how Greeks distinguished violent upheaval (stasis) from regime change, how “revolution” entered political vocabulary via Polybius’s rediscovered Book VI, and how fears of cyclical instability shaped mixed-constitution thinking from antiquity to the American founders. They contrast pre-1789 “revolution” as restoration (including England’s Glorious Revolution) with the French Revolution’s progress-driven, consensus-seeking model that produces counterrevolution, factional purges, and a “Red Leviathan.” The discussion covers Enlightenment cultural uses of “revolution,” the ancients-vs-moderns debate and historical progress…

People in this episode

Host: Greg La Blanc

Guest: Dan Edelstein

Topics covered

• revolution
• political science
• history
• Enlightenment
• cultural analysis
• comparative study of revolutions

Keywords

• revolution
• Enlightenment
• political vocabulary
• historical progress
• counterrevolution
• revolutionary psychology

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Stanford University

Books & works: The Revolution to Come: A History of an Idea from Thucydides to Lenin, Let There Be Enlightenment: The Religious and Mystical Sources of Rationality, Scripting Revolution: A Historical Approach to the Comparative Study of Revolutions, The Enlightenment: A Genealogy, Polybius’s rediscovered Book VI

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