The Great Revolutions and the Civilizations of Modernity

S.N. Eisenstadt, Ph.D. (1947), Jerusalem, is Professor Emeritus at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is member of many academies, recipient of honorary doctoral degrees of the Universities of Tel Aviv, Helsinki, Harvard, Duke, Budapest and Hebrew Union College. Recipient of many prizes and awards, he is author and editor of more than 50 books.

'... this is an important work in historical and comparative sociology that should be read by those seeking to understand both the structural causes of revolutions and the way the modern world came to be as it is.' S.C. Ward, Western Connecticut State University

Preface

Part I - The Great Revolutions and the Origins and Crystallization of Modernity: Some Comparative Observations
Introduction
Chapter 1 - The Historical and Civilizational Frameworks of the Great Revolutions
Chapter 2 - The Distinctive Characteristics of the Revolutionary Processes and Ideologies

PART II - The "Causes" and Historical - Civilizational Frameworks of Revolutions
Chapter 3 - Structural and Social Psychological Causes
Chapter 4 - The Historical Settings - The Contradictions of “Early Modernity”
Chapter 5 - The Civilizational Frameworks of the Great Revolutions - The Axial Civilizations

Part III - The Variability of Axial Civilizations and Political Dynamics – The Distinctiveness of the Revolutionary Process
Chapter 6 - "Other-worldly" Civilizations – The Hindu Civilization
Chapter 7 - The Political Dynamics in "this-worldly" Civilization – the Chinese Confucian Political Order
Chapter 8 - Monotheistic Civilizations — Islam
Chapter 9 - Christian Civilizations – the European Complex
Chapter 10 - A Comparative excursus: Japan – the Non-Axial Revolutionary Revolutions and Concluding Remarks
Conception of social orders; access to the political order and political dynamics

Part IV - Cosmological Visions, Modes of Regulation and Revolutionary Potentials: Political Dynamics in Axial Civilizations
Chapter 11 - Revolutionary Potentials in Axial Civilizations
Chapter 12 - Cosmological Visions, Modes of Regulation, and Political Dynamics in Imperial and Imperial-Feudal Societies
Chapter 13 - Cosmological Visions, Modes of Regulation, and Political Dynamics in Patrimonial Regimes
Chapter 14 - Concluding Observations – The "Causes", Historical Contexts and Civilizational Frameworks of Revolutions

Part V – The Outcomes of Revolutions
Chapter 15 - The Outcomes of Revolutions - The Crystallization of the Political and Cultural Programs of Modernity
Chapter 16 - The Outcomes of Revolutions - The Variability of Revolutionary Symbolism in Modern Societies – Preliminary Indications
Chapter 17 - The New Setting - Changes in the Modes of the Model of the Nation and Revolutionary State