The French Revolution was undoubtedly the most important political experience in the life of young Hegel and it had a great impact on his later philosophical system. One of the main ideas of the Revolution: the liberty became one of the main notions of his philosophy of history. He considered the Revolution an universal history event and a manifestation of the activity of the 'Weltgeist'. Thanks to the Revolution it was possible to destroy the alienated state of the 'Ancien Régime' and to build a new one founded on the basis of the reason. However, destructive forces of the Revolution were at the same time its advantage and its greatest danger. The liberty degenerated into the 'absolute liberty', which led to the terror. Notwithstanding this ambiguity of the Revolution Hegel perceived it as a necessary stage in the historical process of realization of freedom, in which France at the moment bore the palm.
The question about the ethical sense of history is asked by Pawel Jasienica (1909-1970) and Jaroslaw Marek Rymkiewicz (b.1935) in essays which explore the idea of revolution both in a broader, genological perspective and in connection with some series of events in their historical specificity and concreteness. Compelled by the nature of their subject to tackle the problems of historical necessity, progress, and the rationality of the historical process, ie. key components of any revolutionary myth, both writers take a remarkably similar stance. One indication of it is the narrative strategy of both 'Meditations about Civil War' and 'Hanging'. The fragmented, non-linear narration puts all emphasis on the local detail, while the events featured in the essays, the revolution in Vendée and the Warsaw hangings of 1794, represent, in a way, mere details on the canvas of global history. This approach allows either writer to suspend moral judgment and exempt the interpretation of his local episode from the exigencies of grand narratives and their 'totalizing' logic. While questioning the revolutionary paradigm and calling for a revision of its formulas Jasienica and Rymkiewicz insist on the crucial role of 'life' in its rich concreteness and semantic potency for subsequent interpretations and evaluations.
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