Moses Dobruska, born as a Jew in Brno, Moravia, in 1753, and died on the guillotine in Paris in 1794 could be a character from a novel. In 1775 he converted to Catholicism, was ennobled by Empress Maria Theresa, and made a meteoric social rise. In 1792, at the height of his success, he left the court of Vienna to join the French Revolution. He became a leading intellectual in Jacobin Paris and composed the Philosophie sociale, a work that puts social science on a new footing. Arrested for espionage, he is executed together with Danton. But biography, although exciting, is not enough to understand the strength of thought of this atypical intellectual, who lived on the border between different worlds. Silvana Greco, sociologist of culture and Judaism, brings to the forefront the creative contribution of the Philosophie sociale, and highlights its fundamental role, so far ignored, for the origins of sociological thought. From Henri de Saint-Simon to Auguste Comte, Dobruska’s influence marks the intellectual history of an era of enormous social and cultural transformation. weiterlesen