Emmanuel Joseph Sieyes

Emmanuel Joseph Sieyes occupies a prominent place within the history of political thought. He stands at the forefront of both the discourses on human rights and on democratic constitutionalism. And yet, because of his theory of the constituent power he holds a somewhat ambivalent reputation as an advocate of permanent revolution. This state of reception is largely due to the fact that the better part of his work has hitherto not been edited outside of France. The edition Emmanuel Joseph Sieyes: The Essential Political Writings proposes to fill out this desideratum. It seeks to portray Sieyes, against the backdrop of an enlarged textual corpus, as a moderate proponent of the constitutional State.