See also: Pipe cleaner (homonymy)

François Pipe cleaner , born the March 27th 1927 with Paris, died with Toulouse the July 12th 1997, was a Historien and academician French.

Biography

Resulting from a middle-class family, her father following the occupation of banker, François Furet undertakes secondary studies with the Lycée Janson-with-Sailly. Raise shining, it begins studies with the Faculty of Arts and with the Faculty of Law of Paris but, reached Tuberculose, it must cease its studies in 1950. Until 1954, it spends several months in sanatorium in the the Alps, then in convalescence in Paris.

Brilliantly received with the Aggregation of history in 1954, François Furet is then named professor of college with Compiegne where he teaches until in 1955, before being transferred to Fontainebleau. In 1956, it enters to CNRS in order to begin research on the French revolution.

Pipe cleaner is also, very early, a political militant. Member of the Communist party in 1947, it leaves this last in 1959, then takes part in the foundation of the Socialist party unified in 1960. To advise of Edgar Faure after May 1968, it is also in parallel Journaliste with France-Observer , (the future Nouvel Observateur ). In 1995, François Furet will publish the Past of an illusion (of which the title is an allusion to the work of Sigmund Freud, the Future of an illusion ) which analyzes without concessions the communist current of the XXe century, by crossing two levels, its own advance militant and its thorough knowledge of the French revolution.

In 1960, Pipe cleaner between with the School of the high studies in social sciences where it will carry out the major part of its career. He is the president of 1977 with 1985, date where it leaves to the United States to teach, in particular with Chicago. These activities on the other side of the Atlantic are worth to him to receive a diploma Honoris Causa of the Université of Harvard.

Specialist in the XVIII° century, Furet marked, by his work " The Française" Revolution; published in 1965 with the collaboration of his/her brother-in-law Denis Richet, a major epistemological rupture in the historical research over this period. After several decades when the Convention and the Committee of Public Hello mobilize the majority of the university research, this book is placed resolutely from the broader point of view, exceeding the course of Thermidor, usually considered by the historians which preceded it, Aulard, Mathiez, Lefevbre, Soboul, like the term of the events of the Great Revolution.

This choice to rebalance the analysis of the revolutionary period by integrating there Convention thermidorienne and the Directory is not pain-killer. Pipe cleaner takes with misinterpretation the allowed theories by the Marxist historians. For the latter, Soboul and Lefebvre mainly, the French revolution is initially an expression of the revolt of the popular masses, with the example of the movement Jacobin supported by the avant-garde of the Sans-culotte S which disappears after Thermidor 9.

Contrary, not without causing polemics in the French university world, François Furet defends the idea of a revolution of the elites which would have " dérapé" in 1793. The violent confiscation of the capacity by the masses during Terror would have disturbed the peaceful course of a carried out social modernization " by the haut" as from 1789. It will look further into these reflections in its work, " To think the Revolution française" , published in 1978, in particular by redécouvrant work of Augustin Cochin that historiography had largely forgotten after its death in 1916, not without reconsidering the thesis of the skid , raising the first steps of Terror since 1789 and perceiving “a possible consonance of Terror with the very whole Revolution”. In its synthesis the Revolution, 1770-1880 , considering long time, it shows continuities between the Ancien Mode and the Revolution, of which the long process ends only with the come to power of the opportunist republicans, who separate the democracy from the revolution and refuse to sacrifice individual freedom to the historical needs.

Founder, with others, Foundation Saint-Simon, Furet also chaired the Institut Raymond-Aron, as many activities which enabled him to widen its research field and of reflections. The variety and the volume of its work were worth to him to obtain many prices: the Price Alexis de Tocqueville in 1991, the European Price of Social sciences and the Price Hannah Arendt of the political thought in 1996 while its the Past of an illusion had received, one year earlier, simultaneously, the price of the political book, the Prix Chateaubriant and the Grand Prix Gobert of the French Academy.

Elected with the French Academy, on March 20th, 1997, with the armchair 1 where it succeeds Michel Debré (death on August 2nd, 1996), it dies shortly after with Figeac following a fall which has occurred at the time of a match of tennis. Its disappearance prevents it from being officially received with the French Academy where it is replaced one year later by Rene Rémond. It is the latter which pronounces the praise of its two predecessors.

Publications

• the Revolution , with Denis Richet, Bookstore Arthème Beech, Paris, 1965; 2nd ED., the French revolution , Hatchet Literatures, “Plural” coll nº  950, Paris, 1999,944  p.
• To think the French revolution , Editions Gallimard, coll “Library of the stories”, Paris, 1978,259  p.; new ED. corrected review and, 1983
• the Workshop of the history , Editions Flammarion, Paris, 1982,312  p.; rééd., coll “Fields” nº  739, 2007,312  p.
• Left and the Revolution in the middle of the 19th century. Edgar Quinet and the question of the Jacobinism , Hatchet, Paris, 1986
• Dictionnaire criticizes French revolution (to dir. with Mona Ozouf), Editions Flammarion, Paris, 1988: 1154  p.; new ED., coll “Fields” nº  735-738 and 746,2007,5 vol.: 2017  p.
• the Century of the republican advent (to dir. with Mona Ozouf), Editions Gallimard, coll “Library of the stories”, Paris, 1993,475  p.
• Past of an illusion. Test on the communist idea with the {{S|XX|E}} , Editions Robert Laffont and Editions Calmann-Levy, Paris, 1995, 580  p.
• republican Monarchy. The constitution of 1791 , with Ran Halévi, Bookstore Arthème Beech, coll “French Constitutions”, Paris, 1996,605  p.
• Fascism and Communism , with Ernst Nolte, Editions Plon, Paris, 1998,145  p.; rééd., Hatchet Literatures, “Plural” coll, Paris, 2000,145  p.
• intellectual Route. The historian journalist, of France-Observer in Nouvel Observateur (1958-1997) , ED. established and prefaced by Mona Ozouf, Calmann-Levy, coll “Independence of the mind”, Paris, 1999,617  p.