The 1998 François Guizot Prize

The third Prix Guizot of the Calvados General Council was awarded to Lucien Jaume for his book L’individu effacé, ou le paradoxe du libéralisme français [The Effaced Individual, or the Paradox of French Liberalism]. Holder of the agrégation in philosophy and a research director at the CNRS (Centre d’étude de la vie politique française), he specialises in political philosophy and the history of the categories of the modern state (sovereignty, representation, citizenship), and has published works on Hobbes, Jacobinism and the rights of man.

L’individu effacé, ou le paradoxe du libéralisme français [The Effaced Individual, or the Paradox of French Liberalism]

It is generally believed that liberalism everywhere established the triumph of the individual, the right to choose oneself and to choose one’s form of society. This is true of Mme de Staël and Benjamin Constant, in whose work there emerges, against Napoleon’s “despotism”, a conception of the individual as a free subject who judges institutions. It is not the case, however, in France, of the dominant current founded by Guizot, which tends to efface the individual in favour of the state, the notables and esprit de corps. This book offers the first synthesis, at once philosophical and historical, of French liberalism, including the all-too-often neglected liberal Catholicism…