Georges Sorel

Georges Sorel

Georges Eugène Sorel (2 November 1847 in Cherbourg – 29 August 1922 in Boulogne-sur-Seine) was a French philosopher and theorist of revolutionary syndicalism. His notion of the power of myth in people's lives inspired Marxists and Fascists. It is, together with his defense of violence, the contribution for which he is most often remembered. Oron J. Hale writes:

"Anyone assessing the significance of Georges Sorel will reflect long on whether to classify him with the abstract thinkers or the social philosophers and reformers. He was, in fact, a mixture of both, but since he was a spectator in the workers' movement and not in any way a direct participant, he is best placed with the thinkers. He is remembered for one book -- Reflections on Violence -- and for his later intellectual linkage with Communism and Fascism. Sorel, like Gabriel Tarde, had two distinct careers. Bourgeois in origin, and an engineer by training and profession, he resigned from state employment after twenty-five years to devote his time to study and writing...He did not absorb and systematize the ideas of others but analyzed and reacted to all that he read. Original in his thought, he was an intellectual eccentric and very nearly a crank."