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A major new account of the post-Napoleonic Holy Alliance and the
promise it held for liberals The Holy Alliance is now most familiar
as a label for conspiratorial reaction. In this book, Isaac
Nakhimovksy reveals the Enlightenment origins of this
post-Napoleonic initiative, explaining why it was embraced at first
by many contemporary liberals as the birth of a federal Europe and
the dawning of a peaceful and prosperous age of global progress.
Examining how the Holy Alliance could figure as both an idea of
progress and an emblem of reaction, Nakhimovsky offers a novel
vantage point on the history of federative alternatives to the
nation state. The result is a clearer understanding of the
recurring appeal of such alternatives—and the reasons why the
politics of federation has also come to be associated with
entrenched resistance to liberalism’s emancipatory aims.
Nakhimovsky connects the history of the Holy Alliance with the
better-known transatlantic history of eighteenth-century
constitutionalism and nineteenth-century efforts to abolish slavery
and war. He also shows how the Holy Alliance was integrated into a
variety of liberal narratives of progress. From the League of
Nations to the Cold War, historical analogies to the Holy Alliance
continued to be drawn throughout the twentieth century, and
Nakhimovsky maps how some of the fundamental political problems
raised by the Holy Alliance have continued to reappear in new forms
under new circumstances. Time will tell whether current assessments
of contemporary federal systems seem less implausible to future
generations than initial liberal expectations of the Holy Alliance
do to us today.
When Istvan Hont died in 2013, the world lost a giant of
intellectual history. A leader of the Cambridge School of Political
Thought, Hont argued passionately for a global-historical approach
to political ideas. To better understand the development of
liberalism, he looked not only to the works of great thinkers but
also to their reception and use amid revolution and interstate
competition. His innovative program of study culminated in the
landmark 2005 book Jealousy of Trade, which explores the birth of
economic nationalism and other social effects of expanding
eighteenth-century markets. Markets, Morals, Politics brings
together a celebrated cast of Hont's contemporaries to assess his
influence, ideas, and methods. Richard Tuck, John Pocock, John
Dunn, Raymond Geuss, Gareth Stedman Jones, Michael Sonenscher, John
Robertson, Keith Tribe, Pasquale Pasquino, and Peter N. Miller
contribute original essays on themes Hont treated with penetrating
insight: the politics of commerce, debt, and luxury; the morality
of markets; and economic limits on state power. The authors delve
into questions about the relationship between states and markets,
politics and economics, through examinations of key Enlightenment
and pre-Enlightenment figures in context-Hobbes, Rousseau, Spinoza,
and many others. The contributors also add depth to Hont's
lifelong, if sometimes veiled, engagement with Marx. The result is
a work of interpretation that does justice to Hont's influence
while developing its own provocative and illuminating arguments.
Markets, Morals, Politics will be a valuable companion to readers
of Hont and anyone concerned with political economy and the history
of ideas.
This book presents an important new account of Johann Gottlieb
Fichte's "Closed Commercial State," a major early
nineteenth-century development of Rousseau and Kant's political
thought. Isaac Nakhimovsky shows how Fichte reformulated Rousseau's
constitutional politics and radicalized the economic implications
of Kant's social contract theory with his defense of the right to
work. Nakhimovsky argues that Fichte's sequel to Rousseau and
Kant's writings on perpetual peace represents a pivotal moment in
the intellectual history of the pacification of the West. Fichte
claimed that Europe could not transform itself into a peaceful
federation of constitutional republics unless economic life could
be disentangled from the competitive dynamics of relations between
states, and he asserted that this disentanglement required
transitioning to a planned and largely self-sufficient national
economy, made possible by a radical monetary policy. Fichte's ideas
have resurfaced with nearly every crisis of globalization from the
Napoleonic wars to the present, and his book remains a uniquely
systematic and complete discussion of what John Maynard Keynes
later termed "national self-sufficiency." Fichte's provocative
contribution to the social contract tradition reminds us,
Nakhimovsky concludes, that the combination of a liberal theory of
the state with an open economy and international system is a much
more contingent and precarious outcome than many recent theorists
have tended to assume.
In the winter of 1807, while Berlin was occupied by French troops,
the philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte presented fourteen public
lectures that have long been studied as a major statement of modern
nationalism. Yet Fichte's Addresses to the German Nation have also
been interpreted by many as a vision of a cosmopolitan alternative
to nationalism. This new edition of the Addresses is designed to
make Fichte's arguments more accessible to English-speaking
readers. The clear, readable, and reliable translation is
accompanied by a chronology of the events surrounding Fichte's
life, suggestions for further reading, and an index. The
groundbreaking introductory essay situates Fichte's theory of the
nation state in the history of modern political thought. It
provides historians, political theorists, and other students of
nationalism with a fresh perspective for considering the interface
between cosmopolitanism and republicanism, patriotism and
nationalism.
In the winter of 1807, while Berlin was occupied by French troops,
the philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte presented fourteen public
lectures that have long been studied as a major statement of modern
nationalism. Yet Fichte's Addresses to the German Nation have also
been interpreted by many as a vision of a cosmopolitan alternative
to nationalism. This new edition of the Addresses is designed to
make Fichte's arguments more accessible to English-speaking
readers. The clear, readable, and reliable translation is
accompanied by a chronology of the events surrounding Fichte's
life, suggestions for further reading, and an index. The
groundbreaking introductory essay situates Fichte's theory of the
nation state in the history of modern political thought. It
provides historians, political theorists, and other students of
nationalism with a fresh perspective for considering the interface
between cosmopolitanism and republicanism, patriotism and
nationalism.
For many Enlightenment thinkers, discerning the relationship
between commerce and peace was the central issue of modern
politics. The logic of commerce seemed to require European states
and empires to learn how to behave in more peaceful, self-limiting
ways. However, as the fate of nations came to depend on the flux of
markets, it became difficult to see how their race for prosperity
could ever be fully disentangled from their struggle for power. On
the contrary, it became easy to see how this entanglement could
produce catastrophic results. This volume showcases the variety and
the depth of approaches to economic rivalry and the rise of public
finance that characterized Enlightenment discussions of
international politics. It presents a fundamental reassessment of
these debates about 'perpetual peace' and their legacy in the
history of political thought.
For many Enlightenment thinkers, discerning the relationship
between commerce and peace was the central issue of modern
politics. The logic of commerce seemed to require European states
and empires to learn how to behave in more peaceful, self-limiting
ways. However, as the fate of nations came to depend on the flux of
markets, it became difficult to see how their race for prosperity
could ever be fully disentangled from their struggle for power. On
the contrary, it became easy to see how this entanglement could
produce catastrophic results. This volume showcases the variety and
the depth of approaches to economic rivalry and the rise of public
finance that characterized Enlightenment discussions of
international politics. It presents a fundamental reassessment of
these debates about 'perpetual peace' and their legacy in the
history of political thought.
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