In The Headless Republic, Jesse Goldhammer explores how the French revolutionaries retrieved a set of ideas about founding violence from the classical Romans and early Christians and incorporated it into postrevolutionary debates that echoed into the twentieth century. By linking sacrifice as expressed in revolutionary practices to modern French theory, Goldhammer shows how ancient ideas of violent political renewal made their way into the contemporary age.Goldhammer elucidates the theoretical and practical significance of sacrificial violence during the Revolution, and then turns his...