Summary Of Fire In The Minds Of Men

In the book Fire in the Minds of Men, James H. Billington examines the role of revolutionaries in the explosion of political thinking from the late eighteenth century to the early twentieth. Over that time, their ideas, referred to as the revolutionary tradition, developed from the secret societies of the French Revolution to the development of institutionalized Communism. He identifies a characteristic of the most influential revolutionaries— belief in an idealized secular society that values liberty, fraternity, and equality. Furthermore, Billington argues that even though the revolutionaries did not believe in religion, they still had a faith, the faith in their revolution. This faith was just as strong, motivating, and influential as religious faith. Billington
Revolutionaries gathered in Paris, specifically in the gardens of the Palais Royal. Previously only accessible to royalty, the Palais Royal opened to nobles and intellectuals after Louis XIV moved the royal family to Palace of Versailles. The intellectuals who gathered at the Palais tended to oppose the monarchy. They began to exchange and develop adversarial ideas that spread rapidly throughout the Palais. The Palais Royal’s enclosed set-up provided isolation that allowed intellectuals to imagine, experiment with, and culture diverse ideas. Various revolutionary organizations developed, and the Palais Royal became the underground center of revolutionary ideas. Many discussions developed utopian ideals. Utopianism soon became so prominent in the Palais that it became a model of the revolutionaries’ ideal Utopian society in itself. The structure and spirit of the Palais Royal resulted in a culture in which “distinctions of rank were obliterated, and men were free to exercise sexual as well as political freedom." Billington described this as “the intoxicating ambiance of an earthly