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Georges Sorel

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Georges Sorel

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Also known as Georges Eugène Sorel

French philosopher and sociologist

AI overview

Georges Sorel was a French philosopher and sociologist who developed influential ideas about society and social change. His work matters because his theories about collective action and social movements shaped political thinking in the early 20th century and continue to influence how we understand social conflict and change today.

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Person · Open Library

Works
38

Top works

  • Reflections on violence
  • Reflexions Sur la Violence
  • Pour Ou Contre le Socialisme
  • Introduction à l'économie Moderne
  • Matériaux d'une Théorie du Prolétariat

via Open Library + Wikidata

Music · MusicBrainz

Type
Person
Gender
Male
Origin
France
Active from
1977-09-21

Discography

via MusicBrainz · CC0

Listeners · Last.fm

Listeners
2
Total plays
2

<a href="https://www.last.fm/music/Georges+Sorel">Read more on Last.fm</a>

via Last.fm · Georges Sorel

Quotes

  • I have no reason to suppose that Lenin gained his ideas from my books; but if that were true, I should be not a little proud of having contribute to the intellectual development of a man who seems to me to be at once the greatest theoretician of socialism since Marx and a statesman whose genius recalls that of Peter the Great.
  • Lenin may be proud of what his comrades are doing; the Russian workers are acquiring immortal glory in attempting the realization of what hitherto had been only an abstract idea…..
  • Mussolini is a man no less extraordinary than Lenin. He, too, is a political genius, of a greater reach than all the statesmen of the day, with the only exception of Lenin…
  • All the future of socialism resides in the autonomous development of workers’ .
  • [Myths] are not descriptions of things, but expressions of a determination to act… A myth cannot be refuted since it is, at bottom, identical with the convictions of a group, being the expression of these convictions in the language of movement.
  • Revolutionary keeps alive the desire to strike in the masses and only prospers when important strikes, accompanied by violence, take place.

via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA

Wikidata facts

Image
Georges Sorel.jpg
Show 4 more facts
date of birth
1847-11-02
date of death
1922-08-29
Commons category
Georges Sorel
name in native language
Georges Sorel
Sources (2)

via Wikidata · CC0

Works in European collections

12 objects attributed to Georges Sorel, held across European museums, libraries & archives · via Europeana

~23 min read

Article

Georges Eugène Sorel (/səˈrɛl/; French: [ʒɔʁʒ øʒɛn sɔʁɛl]; 2 November 1847 – 29 August 1922) was a French social thinker, political theorist, historian, and later journalist. He has inspired theories and movements grouped under the name of Sorelianism. His social and political philosophy owed much to his reading of Proudhon, Karl Marx, Giambattista Vico, Henri Bergson (whose lectures at the Collège de France he attended), and later William James. His notion of the power of myth in collective agency inspired socialists, anarchists, Marxists, and fascists. Together with his defense of violence, the power of myth is the contribution for which he is most often remembered.

Politically he evolved from his early liberal-conservative positions towards Marxism, social-democracy, and eventually syndicalism. Between 1909 and 1910 he was marginally involved with Charles Maurras' Action Française, and between 1911 and 1913 he wrote for the politically transversal L'Indépendance, established together with Édouard Berth – one of Sorel's main disciples – and Georges Valois, closer to Maurrassian circles. After a long silence during the war, Sorel came out in favour of Lenin and moved towards Bolshevist positions until his death in 1922.

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