What Is a Nation? and Other Political Writings

Joseph Ernest Renan (1823–1892) was a French expert of Middle Eastern ancient languages and civilizations, philosopher, and writer. He is best known for his influential historical works on early Christianity and his political theories, especially concerning nationalism and national identity.Giglioli M. F. N. :

Matteo Fabio Nels Giglioli (PhD, Politics, Princeton) is a Research Fellow in the Department of Political and Social Science at the University of Bologna. He is the author of Legitimacy and Revolution in a Society of Masses: Max Weber, Antonio Gramsci, and the Fin-de-Siècle Debate on Social Order (Routledge, 2013).Howard Dick :

Dick Howard (PhD, Philosophy, Texas) is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at SUNY Stony Brook. He is the author of Between Politics and Antipolitics: Thinking About Politics After 9/11 (Palgrave, 2016), The Primacy of the Political: A History of Political Thought from the Greeks to the American and French Revolutions (Columbia, 2010), and The Specter of Democracy (Columbia, 2006), among other titles. He is also a columnist for Le Monde on the American political scene. I chose him as a reader for his expertise in political theory and philosophy.Ernest Renan (1823–1892) was a French scholar of the Ancient Near East and early Christianity, best known for The Life of Jesus (1862), an international best seller, and his views on national identity.

M. F. N. Giglioli is a research fellow in the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the University of Bologna. He is the author of Legitimacy and Revolution in a Society of Masses: Max Weber, Antonio Gramsci, and the Fin-de-Siècle Debate on Social Order (2013).

Jennifer Pitts, University of Chicago:
This welcome volume makes the political thought of a major figure in the liberal tradition accessible to English readers for the first time. Setting Renan's famous lecture 'What Is a Nation?' alongside a series of previously untranslated essays on diverse subjects from Islamic science to the future of Europe to the nature of historical causation, the volume shows Renan grappling with the many legacies of the French Revolution for the modern world. Giglioli's translations are lucid, reliable, and a pleasure to read. His informative and judicious introduction traces the considerable impact of Renan's controversial ideas—about race, religion, civilization, and reform—on thinkers from left to right in subsequent generations.

J.P. Daughton, Stanford University:
This wonderfully translated and edited collection offers a welcome opportunity to reassess the political writings of Ernest Renan. M.F.N. Giglioli’s judicious selection of essays allows readers to explore how this influential nineteenth-century liberal understood the major challenges of his day: empire, religion, education, and liberty. A principled mind in an era of revolutionaries and demagogues, Renan inspires reflection on the place of intellectual and political engagement in turbulent times.