SOURCE: "Interpreting Georges Sorel: Defender of Virtue or Apostle of Violence?" in History of European Ideas, Vol. 12, No. 2, 1990, pp. 239-57.

In the following excerpt, Vincent examines previous critical interpretations of Sorel's workand categorizes him as a cautious pessimist.

Georges Sorel has never failed to evoke strong reactions. From Sartre's dismissal of Sorel's Réflexions sur la violence as 'fascist prattle',¹ from G.D.H. Cole's contemptuous characterisation of him as a pessimist 'moaning for blood',² to Croce's recommendation that Marx and Sorel were the only original thinkers socialism ever had,³ and to a recent estimation that he 'produced the most profound and extensive body of marxist analysis to appear in France until the post World War Two era',⁴ assessments have covered the spectrum from prattler to savant. And, as these citations also indicate, Sorel has been interpreted as presenting a large variety of different social visions. Hailed by...