The abbe Emmanuel Joseph Sieyes (1748-1836) distinguished himself as the chief theoretician of the French Revolution--and as a revolutionary constitutional and social theorist in his own right--through his rigorously analytical theory of representative government and its corollary, the representative character of social life in general. He expressed the essence of his thought in a series of three pamphlets published in the months leading up to the meeting of the Estates-General in 1789. This volume presents all three essays-- Views of the Executive Means , An Essay on Privileges , and What Is the Third Estate? --in their entirety. The third essay, in a new translation by Michael Sonenscher, is followed by Sieyes' s 1791 newspaper debate with Tom Paine on the merits of monarchy versus republicanism. Elucidated by Sonenscher' s insightful Introduction, these texts will fascinate anyone interested in the history of the French Revolution, the history of social and political thought, or the origins and character of modern liberalism.
