Daniel Halévy

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Daniel Halévy
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Born 12 December 1872
Paris, France
Died 4 February 1962
Paris, France
Occupation Historian
Parent(s) Ludovic Halévy
Relatives Élie Halévy (paternal great-grandfather)
Léon Halévy (paternal grandfather)
Élie Halévy (brother)

Daniel Halévy (12 December 1872 – 4 February 1962) was a French historian and essayist.

Biography

The son of Ludovic Halévy, Daniel Halévy was born in and died in Paris. His family was of Jewish descent, but his parents were Protestant and he was brought up as a Protestant. He studied at the Lycée Condorcet (where he became friends with Marcel Proust); then he attended courses at the École des langues orientales.

Daniel Halévy was the father-in-law and grandfather of politicians Louis Joxe and Pierre Joxe and the uncle of the libertarian Marxist and Daniel Guérin. He was a member of the Association for the Defence of the Memory of Marshal Pétain, and of the board of directors of the Home Association of the Royaumont Abbey.

He contributed to Charles Péguy's Cahiers de la Quinzaine between 1903 and 1910, in which he published Apologie pour notre passé, and to the journal Pages Libres from 1901 to 1909 alongside Charles Guieysse. He was director of the collection Cahiers verts at the Éditions Grasset from 1921 to 1937.

He occasionally contributed to the Courrier français (1948–1950) and also collaborated with La Nation française, a journal founded by Pierre Boutang. Halévy wrote studies on Nietzsche, Péguy, Michelet, Proudhon and Vauban. He was close to Georges Sorel and it is thanks to his insistence that the latter decided to publish in book form his famous Reflections on Violence (1908).

With André Spire, whom he had met in the Cooperation des Idées, he founded the Université populaire. Halévy was elected member of the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques in 1949.

Despite his early stand as a pro-Dreyfusard, he later became a supporter of the political right. Following the 6 February 1934 crisis, he lost all trust in parliamentary institutions. Halévy publicly declared that following 6 February 1934 he was now a "man of the extreme right". Although he personally abhorred Italian Fascism and German National Socialism, he went on to support Marshal Philippe Pétain's Vichy government.[1] The radicalisation of the right wing would accelerate after the election of the Popular Front in 1936 and the Spanish Civil War (1936–39).

Social historians have acknowledged Halévy for his Essai sur l'accélération de l'histoire ("Essay on the Acceleration of History"), while he remains largely overlooked by literary scholars.[2] He wrote a book, Degas Parle... ("My Friend Degas"), based on his diary notes as a teenager and young man in his 20s. The book was revised and finished when he was in his late 80s. It was published in English in 1964. Edgar Degas was a close friend of Ludovic and a family friend too.

Thought

In his essay, Pour l'étude de la Troisième République ("For the Study of the Third Republic'), Daniel Halévy questioned the Masonic connections of the republican regime, asserting that the occult actions, by definition undocumented, were beyond the historian's analysis.

In his Apologie pour notre passé, he offered a new analysis of the century between 1789 and 1881, which is not simply reduced to a struggle between the old regime and the revolution. He showed that the French Revolution founded a republican tradition and a new order that degenerated into disorder under the Directory; the 18 Brumaire was an inseparable monarchist and republican restoration; the July Revolution of 1830 and the French Revolution of 1848 were republican restorations.

Daniel Halévy also regretted that in 1898, the right-wingers betrayed the Jules Méline government, thus losing "an opportunity for order": "The right-wingers, in 1898, deliberately went to the ignoble defeat. O warriors! they set out, crest flying, and were picked up in the field, with all their flags, by fifty workers, ten pastors, thirty grammar or philosophy graduates, and the Jews. The conservative instinct was weak. This tradition was committed to you, men of the right; you had to defend it by your acts, to honor it by your lives. You have dishonored yourselves, you have dishonored it. It is a misfortune for the country."[3]

During the interwar period, disappointed by the liberals and worried about the future of European civilization, he clearly moved towards the Maurassian right, then with his essay, Trois épreuves: 1814, 1871, 1940 (1941) he tended to support the first reforms of the Vichy government. His personal evolution, qualified him as a reactionary in the interwar period. He wrote articles in the Maurassian press during the occupation.

This would disgraced him in the post-war period.

Works

  • Essai sur le Mouvement Ouvrier en France (1901)
  • La Vie de Friedrich Nietzsche (1909; 1944)
  • Luttes et Problèmes (1912)
  • La Jeunesse de Proudhon (1912)
  • Quelques nouveaux Maîtres (1914)
  • Le Président Wilson. Étude sur la Démocratie Américaine (1918)
  • Charles Péguy et les Cahiers de la Quinzaine (1918; enlarged edition in 1941)
  • Vauban (1923; awarded the Prix Thérouanne by the Académie française in 1924)
  • Jules Michelet (1928)
  • La Fin des Notables (1930; 1995)
  • Décadence de la Liberté (1931)
  • Pays Parisiens (1932; autobiographical writings on his youth)
  • La République des Comités: Essai d'Histoire Contemporaine (1895-1934) (1934)
  • Visites aux Paysans du Centre (1935; 2012)
  • La République des Ducs (1937; 1995)
  • Pour l'Étude de la Troisième République (1937)
  • Histoire d'une Histoire Esquissée pour le Troisième Cinquantenaire de la Révolution Française (1939)
  • Trois Épreuves: 1814 - 1871 - 1940 (1941)
  • Essai sur l'Accélération de l'Histoire (1948)
  • Degas Parle.... (1960; translated in English My Friend Degas, 1964)
  • Histoire de quatre ans, 1997-2001 (1997; futuristic novel, serialized in the Cahiers de la Quinzaine, 1903)
  • L'Europe Brisée, Journal et Lettres (1914–1918) (1998)

Notes

  1. ↑ See, inter alia, Mark Hulliung Citizens and citoyens: republicans and liberals in America and France (2002) at p. 158.
  2. ↑ Daniel Halévy and His Times by Alain Silvera, Robert T. Denommé, The French Review, Vol. 40, No. 5 (Apr., 1967), pp. 714–16.
  3. ↑ Albertini, Pierre (2006). "Les Juifs du Lycée Condorcet dans la Tourmente", Vingtième Siècle: Revue d'histoire, No. 92, pp. 81–100.

References

  • Garfitt, Toby (2004). Daniel Halévy, Henri Petit et les Cahiers Verts. Bern: Peter Lang.
  • Laurent, Sébastien (2001). Daniel Halévy, du Libéralisme au Traditionalisme. Paris: Grasset.
  • Silvera, Alain (1966). Daniel Halevy and His Times. Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press.

External links

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