Looking specifically into criticism of technical modernity, the article endeavors to follow and reveal the anti-conformist reflections of one of the French authors and academics best known abroad. Indeed, Jacques Ellul developed a long-term intellectual system adopting a singular dialectic that allows him to be multidisciplinary and to make multiple entries in sociological, philosophical, legal, historical, and theological fields. He has developed an approach that went far beyond the simple consideration of the technical tool as a potential means of alienating man, to offer his readers an authentic technical system as well as of all its implications. Basically, Jacques Ellul masterfully explained the mechanism according to which the modern man, in order to escape his tragic destiny by an attempt to eclipse the sacred, will paradoxically strive to become the creator of a space totally mastered by the techno-sphere, which has gained autonomy, notably through imposition of an ideology of its own. Modernity has inaugurated a process of autonomy from which the bourgeois project benefited even before technological governance came about, to exonerate itself from the presence of man. Ellul’s objective is to draw the reader to the consideration of the real loss of individual freedom in such an environment, which encompasses both the public space and those issues that are most intimate to man. This task of awakening to the very topical issue will be enhanced with methodological considerations involving, in particular, current propaganda issues and political illusions.

In his later word, notably in the posthumously published essays in his book Vom Sinn und Unsinn der Geschichte (On the Sense and Non-Sense of History, 2010), the historian Reinhart Koselleck firmly rejected the concept of “collective memory.” Memory, as he stated, belongs to individuals and not to collectivities. This article, while recognizing the originary status of personal memory and the fact that groups as such do not remember, no more than they have an autonomous, substantial existence, interprets the nebulous concept of collective memory that Koselleck so harshly criticized. Through close examination of the grounds of Koselleck’s critique of this concept, and of the theory of historical time he elaborated, I aim to delineate, through interpretation of the symbol and of the public scope of symbolic interaction, the specific domain in which collective memory comes to expression. I undertake this task by referring to the work of Maurice Halbwachs who initially introduced the term and the concept of “collective memory” in his writings in the 1920s and in his posthumously published book, Collective Memory. As I note, Koselleck subjected this work to harsh criticism in his later essays, for he doubted that the concept of collective memory Halbwachs introduced was anything more than an artificial construction. The response I provide to Koselleck’s objections extrapolates from the interpretation of collective memory I present in my recently published work Collective Memory and the Historical Past (2016). According to my argument, while Halbwachs was concerned with collective memory above all as it is retained by small groups and families, a modified theory of collective memory that focuses on shared memory retained by large groups in the public sphere provides us with the key for responding to Koselleck’s critique. In the framework of my interpretation, symbols are grasped not as isolated signs, but in the broadest sense, as ways of configuring the spatiotemporal and conceptual meaning through language, styles, and gestures that make possible the communication of experience in the public sphere. Symbols in this broad sense underlie experience and memory that lend publicly identifiable significance to political, religious, aesthetic, and other facets of our everyday world. If we apply this conception of collective memory to the work of Koselleck himself, I argue that it closely corresponds to a view of iconographical symbols, and of the changes they undergo among different generations over time, which Koselleck himself advanced in his pioneering writings on monuments and war memorials.

The article analyzes Pierre-Simon Ballanche’s doctrine about the driving forces and directionality of history. The representative of early French Romanticism attached great importance to the feeling, which was understood as connecting element of wisdom, morality, and art. Feeling also inclines a person to religious faith, which should serve as a key to understanding of history. Distinguishing moral and intellectual aspects of human nature, Ballanche sees in their mutual mismatch the specificity of the modern stage of history. It is the gap between the moral and intellectual that explains the events of the French Revolution, considered by Ballance as the first significant anti-religious movement. Calling for reconciliation of all warring parties, he proposed to turn to ancient traditions. Ballanche divided history into three big stages. The first was the triumph of polytheism, the second was characterized by the spread of Christianity, the third will be marked by the liberation of thinking. These stages are interconnected, flow one into another, all the main discoveries of mankind retain their importance for them. At the heart of Ballanche’s theory of “social palingenesis,” there are ideas about the periodic revival, the restoration of society, the transformation of its dilapidated forms. But for him, morality, inseparable from religion, is always the core of the social organism. Society is constantly changing but never dying. Criticizing Enlightenment ideas, Ballanche rejected both the theory of social contract and the conception of popular sovereignty. He saw a political future in the prevalence of the principle of constitutional monarchy. He attached special importance to the doctrine of human solidarity, which he considered topical in the nearterm political prospects. In Ballanche’s theory, conservative elements are connected to the idea of progress, and his philosophy of history provides valuable evidence of the sentiments that were characteristic of French intellectual culture of the first decades of the 19th century.

The article examines the arguments of the discussion on colonization during the July monarchy. France had two colonial periods: one that ended around 1790 and one that began around 1860. The first concerned the American continent (West Indies, Canada, Louisiana) and India (Indian trading posts), the second - the African and Asian continents. Between these two periods, the debate on colonization was intense between its supporters and opponents. The French liberal school, led by men like Guizot, Tocqueville, or Passy, opposed colonization as well as slavery. Their arguments against this opposition are economic and humanitarian. Economic, because they consider colonization as something costly and useless for the country that carries it out, as it prevents the country from making the investments necessary for its development. Humanitarian, because they are shocked by the existence of slavery and the slave trade, which leads them to take political action to ensure that the trade is prohibited in areas held by Europeans. At the time of colonization, this movement was extended to the whole of Africa, which put an end to the slavery practised there. The arguments used during this period were taken up again from 1950 onwards at the time of decolonization.

The article analyzes the political and ethical principles of the Comte de Chambord’s conception of moderate monarchism. The grandson of Charles X, the Comte de Chambord, Henri V (1820–1883), possessing high authority, throughout his life personified the hopes of the French legitimists for the restoration of the monarchy. In his writings, Chambord formulated a full-fledged political program aimed at opposing the ideas of the French Revolution. The political ideas of the Comte de Chambord were the most developed expression of the counter-revolutionary judgments of the third quarter of the 19^th century. To restore social stability, the Comte de Chambord proposed to establish a moderate Christian monarchy based on a revision of the system of government, the restoration of local freedoms, and the desire for social justice, significant improvement in working conditions. Chambord rejected Machiavellianism in politics, he understood power not as political domination, but as service with the aim of restoring harmony and justice. In his view, power in the state should be transferred to a strong sovereign, who becomes the arbiter of private interests and the guarantor of the common good. In a moderate monarchy, there should be universal suffrage, but limited to a three-tiered electoral structure that allows each member to be consulted on competent issues, trained in the performance of duties and to make decisions based on experience and merit. This political program faced opposition from liberal-conservative circles that sought to prevent the return to power of the king who was adherent to the of Pope Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors with its well-known anti-modernist principles, and these circles demanded to acknowledge the democratic and humanistic “principles of 1789” as a condition for restoraution. However, the Comte de Chambord did not consider morally permissible to come to power through a compromise with ethical convictions.

This article discusses the influence of the ideas of Nicolas de Condorcet on the formation of the thought of Auguste Comte, as well as compares the theories of progress of these French philosophers according to their key criteria: education, science, and law. At the end of the 19th century, a new direction in intellectual thought appeared in France was the theory of the progress of the human mind. The author of this theory was the philosopher, mathematician, and statesman Nicolas de Condorcet. Later, Condorcet’s ideas were reflected in the works of the positivism’s founder, Auguste Comte, who on their basis created his own system of civilization progress, which was called the Law of Three Stages of the intellectual evolution of mankind. Condorcet’s doctrine can be defined as a kind of integral “system of progress,” which is founded on the concept of perfectibility (the endless ambition of man and society to improvement). According to the philosopher, the real progress of the human mind has three keystones: a developed system of public free education, progressive law and constantly improving science, technology and art. Auguste Comte, inspired by the works of Condorcet, emphasizes that the predecessor, on the first hand, created an important scientific notion of the social progress of humanity as an ongoing historical process; and on the other hand, he designated the main object of research in social philosophy, which consists in the study of the fundamental sequence of various social conditions. However, an important difference between Comte’s and Condorcet’s ideas of progress is an industrial aspect. Comte’s progress of society is inconceivable without the progress of technology and economics. And even civilization the philosopher defines as the joint development of the human mind and human impact on nature. Thus, Comte’s progress includes the progress of the sciences, the beaux-arts, and industry. The author concludes that the French philosophers’ arguments on the significance of moral and intellectual perfectibility for progress are still relevant for the contemporary technocratic world.

The article discusses the issue whether anarchism should be considered a right-wing ideology. Anarchism as an ideology, formulated in the works of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon of the 1830s-1840s, was originally in the leftwing political spectrum. The anarchist Joseph Dejacque, who advocates equality of rights for men and women and does not agree with Proudhon on this issue, called himself a libertaire. The French word libertaire has been translated into English as “libertarian.” Due to the fact that in the 20^th century, economic theories justifying state intervention in the economy became widespread among those who called themselves liberals, the word “liberal” came to mean “socialist.” American liberals (in the original sense of the word) adopted anarcho-communist Dejacque’s neologism “libertarian.” The author shows that, according to the social doctrine of the Catholic Church, unlimited liberalism and socialism have common origins, since these two ideologies proceed from the fact that human freedom is innate, which means that traditional values should not restrict human behavior. Thus, the ideological roots of anarcho-capitalism and libertarianism are to be found in the corpus of doctrines of the French left wing. In the 1970s, the French economist Henri Lepage translated the English word “libertarian” into the French, coining new world libertarien and not using the word libertaire, which is due to the fact that libertarianism began to be perceived as a right-wing ideology, and therefore it was necessary to distinguish it from its roots – libertarisme, which was considered a leftist movement. The author refutes the idea, which became widespread in the 20^th century, that, due to the emergence of the Libertarian party and anarcho-capitalism, a part of the anarchist movement joined the right wing.

The author considers the reasons and problems of civil unrest in France in the end of the 1960s. The author analyzes sources of revolutionary movement and comes to a conclusion that initially spontaneously developed events had no concrete political plan and organized guidance, its purposes had utopian character, methods of fight were mainly anarchical. Activity was motivated with romantic aspiration to freedom, reforming society, counteraction to totalitarianism, commercialism, social injustice, obsolete rules of life. Participants of events fondly believed that the spontaneous protest and refusal of submission to any established order automatically will lead to awakening of consciousness and transformation of social life. As a result, they faced an inevitable paradox of revolutionary movement. Approving need of use of violence for the purpose of opposition to violence from the government, revolutionaries destroy public order and a legal state for creation of the new world of freedom that leads to the enormous growth of violence, chaos, and unfreedom and causes in society fear and nostalgia of order. The author examines Ricœur’s position during revolutionary events in France. The philosopher evaluates the experience of his own work for the reorganization of education system (aiming to strengthen horizontal relations) as a fundamental failure. Nevertheless, as the author of the article claims, in the sphere of philosophy Ricœur created the profound and far-sighted conception of criticism of transformation, this conception is based on the principle of the conflict of interpretations and allows to resist destruction, to constructively rethink and improve society management system.

The article examines the concept of reform of university education by Paul Ricœur. During his tenure as professor at the Sorbonne, the philosopher begins to experience dissatisfaction with the quality of teaching at a leading university in France. Analyzing the problems in the field of higher education, he comes to the following conclusions. In the second half of the 20^th century, the world has entered the era of the cultural revolution. This process consists in the global transformation of the social system and the spiritual life of society, the formation of new ideas about values. In addition, the demographic explosion, significant changes in the field of social stratification, the need of society for qualified specialists have led to a sharp increase in the number of young people wishing to get higher education. In these conditions, there is a need to reform the university education system in accordance with the requirements of the time. Ricœur is developing a project for the reorganization of higher education, the main idea of which was to be the principle of open dialogue in the learning process. According to the philosopher, it was necessary to abandon the outdated interpretation of teaching as a formal translation of the existing body of knowledge from the teacher to passively perceiving information students, to consider teaching not as the assimilation of a system of static truths, but as a creative process of interpreting the material being studied, which presupposes a willingness to discuss and solve emerging problems. Curricula need to be formed in a modular-elective way, taking into account the individual needs of students. Universities should become centers of creativity and scientific innovation. To achieve this goal, it will be necessary to reform universities as educational institutions, making teaching efficient and flexible. Ricœur embarked on his project at the University of Nanterre, which was set up as the vanguard of renewing the higher education system. However, the revolutionary events of 1968 in France led to the collapse of his pedagogical experiment. The philosopher himself explained the reason for his failure by the fact that he built relationships horizontally and underestimated the importance of vertical relationships in management. The author comes to the conclusion that despite Ricœur’s failure during the period of his reform activities at the University of Nanterre, his pedagogical concept is deep and well-grounded. Many of the philosopher’s recommendations are consistent with the set of measures to reform higher education, carried out in France in the late 1960s – early 1970s. Ricœur’s idea remains relevant in the modern era and anticipates some of the ideas of a new model of education in the 21^st century.