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François Furet (; 27 March 1927 – 12 July 1997) was a French historian and president of the Saint-Simon Foundation, best known for his books on the French Revolution. From 1985 to 1997, Furet was a professor of French history at the University of Chicago.
Furet was elected to the Académie française in March 1997, just three months before he died in July.
Furet's major interest was the French Revolution. Furet's early work was a social history of the 18th century bourgeoisie, but after 1961 his focus shifted to the Revolution. While initially a Marxist and supporter of the Annales School, he later separated himself from the Annales and undertook a critical re-evaluation of the way the French Revolution is interpreted by Marxist historians. He became the leader of the revisionist school of historians who challenged the Marxist account of the French Revolution as a form of class struggle. As other French historians of his generation like Jacques Godechot or Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Furet was open to ideas of English language historians, especially Alfred Cobban. Likewise, Furet frequently lectured at American universities and from 1985 onwards taught at the University of Chicago. In his first work on the Revolution, 1966's La Révolution, Furet argued that the early years of the Revolution had a benign character, but after 1792 the Revolution had skidded off into the blood lust and cruelty of the Reign of Terror. The cause of the Revolution going off course was the outbreak of war in 1792 which Furet controversially argued was intrinsic to the Revolution itself, rather than being an unrelated event as most French historians had argued until then.
The other major theme of Furet's writings was its focus on the political history of the Revolution and its relative lack of interest in the Revolution's social and economic history. Other than a study of Lire et écrire (1977), a study co-edited with Jacques Ozouf concerning the growth of literacy in 18th century France, Furet's writings on the Revolution tended to focus on its historiography. In a 1970 article in Annales, Furet attacked "the revolutionary catechism" of Marxist historians. Furet was especially critical of the "Marxist line" of Albert Soboul which Furet maintained was actually more Jacobin than Marxist. Furet argued that Karl Marx was not especially interested in the Revolution and that most of the views credited to him were really the recycling of Jacobinism.
Furet considered Bolshevism and fascism totalitarian twins in terms of violence and repression.
From 1995 until his death on 12 July 1997 in Figeac, Furet's views about totalitarianism led to a debate via a series of letters with the German philosopher Ernst Nolte. The debate had been started by a footnote in Furet's Le passé d'une illusion criticising Nolte's views over the relationship between Bolshevism and fascism, leading Nolte to write a letter of protest. Furet defended his view about totalitarian twins sharing the same origins while Nolte argued that fascism was a response to Bolshevism.
The Parisian newspaper Le Figaro called him "a revolutionary of the Revolution". According to the newspaper, "One could even say that there is a Furetian school (of the Revolution)," with a "galaxy" of professors and writers, influenced by Furet, living in France, the United States and the United Kingdom.
Furet was a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.
Furet, an ex-French Communist Party member, published his classic La Révolution Française in 1965–1966. It marked his transition from revolutionary left-wing politics to moderate centre-left position and reflected his ties to the social-science-oriented Annales School.Michael Scott Christofferson, "François Furet between History and Journalism, 1958–1965". French History, Dec 2001, Vol. 15 Issue 4, pp 421–447
Furet then re-examined the Revolution from the perspective of 20th-century totalitarianism as exemplified by Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. His Penser la Révolution Française (1978), translated as Interpreting the French Revolution (1981), was a breakthrough book that led many intellectuals to reevaluate Bolshevism and the Revolution as inherently totalitarian and anti-democratic. Looking at modern French communism, he stressed the close resemblance between the 1960s and 1790s, with both favoring the inflexible and rote ideological discourse in party cells where decisions were made unanimously in a manipulated direct democracy. Furet further suggested that popularity of the far left to many French intellectuals was itself a result of their commitment to the ideals of the Revolution. Furet set about to imagine the Revolution less as the result of social and class conflict and more a conflict over the meaning and application of egalitarian and democratic ideas. He saw Revolutionary France as located ideologically between two revolutions, namely the first egalitarian one that began in 1789 and the second the authoritarian coup that brought about Napoleon's empire in 1799. The egalitarian origins of the Revolution were not undone by the Empire and were resurrected in the July Revolution of July Revolution, the 1848 Revolution and the Commune of Paris in 1871.Michael Scott Christofferson, "An Antitotalitarian History of the French Revolution: Francois Furet's Penser la Revolution francaise in the Intellectual Politics of the Late 1970s", French Historical Studies, (1999) 22#4 pp. 557-611
Working much of the year at the University of Chicago after 1979, Furet also rejected the Annales School with its emphasis on very long-term structural factors and emphasized intellectual history. Influenced by Alexis de Tocqueville and Augustin Cochin, Furet argues that Frenchmen must stop seeing the Revolution as the key to all aspects of modern French history.James Friguglietti and Barry Rothaus, "Interpreting vs. Understanding the Revolution: François Furet and Albert Soboul", Consortium on Revolutionary Europe 1750-1850: Proceedings, 1987, (1987) Vol. 17, pp 23–36 His works include Interpreting the French Revolution (1981), a historiographical overview of what has preceded him and A Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution (1989).Claude Langlois, "Furet's Revolution", French Historical Studies, Fall 1990, Vol. 16 Issue 4, pp 766-776Donals Sutherland, "An Assessment of the Writings of François Furet", French Historical Studies, Fall 1990, Vol. 16 Issue 4, pp 784–91
Because of his influence in history and historiography, Furet was granted some of the field's most prestigious awards, among them:
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