Eli Sagan, author of Citizens and Cannibals, with Marshall Berman, author of All that Is Solid Melts into Air; and Mark Lilla, author of The Reckless Mind. Citizens and Cannibals, subtitled The French Revolution, the Struggle for Modernity, and the Origins of Idelogical Terror, examines questions that have haunted our intellectual life for two hundred years. How could the Great Enlightenment end in the Reign of Terror? How did Robespierre, who began his political life as a sincere moralist, evolve into a guillotine cannibal? Were 20th-century tyrants like Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot direct political descendents of Robespierre? What ambiguities and paradoxes arise when any culture consciously sets itself the task of achieving "modernity"? Why have fascism, left-wing terror, and religious fundamentalism so often risen to power in response to the moral advances of Modernism: the rights of man, equality, and democracy? Presented by the Wolfson Center for National Affairs.

Inscription: Modernity Revisited / Ad Spec Prog / orig / 10-28-02.