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A landmark study of the Enlightenment from an eminent historian The
End of Enlightenment offers a radical re-evaluation of one of the
most important moments in human history. Tracing around the world
the changing perspectives of economists, philosophers, politicians
and polemicists, historian Richard Whatmore argues that, for
figures as diverse as David Hume, Edmund Burke, Adam Smith and Mary
Wollstonecraft, the Enlightenment was a profound failure. They had
strived to replace superstition with reason, fanaticism with
toleration, but witnessed instead terror and revolution,
corruption, gross commercial excess and the continued growth of
violent empire. Returning us to the tumultuous events and ideas of
the eighteenth century, and digging deep into the thought of the
men and women who defined their age, The End of Enlightenment is a
lucid exploration of disillusion and intellectual transformation, a
brilliant meditation on our continued assumptions about the past,
and a glimpse of the different ways our world might be structured.
Thinking about politics has tended to be historical in nature
because of the comparisons and contrasts that can be drawn between
past and present. Different periods in politics have used the past
differently. At times political thought can be said to have been
drawn directly from the study of history; at others, perhaps
including our own time, the relationship is more indirect. This
Very Short Introduction explores the core concerns and questions in
the field of the history of political thought. Richard Whatmore
considers the history of political thought as a branch of political
philosophy/political science, and examines the approaches of core
theorists such as Reinhart Koselleck, Strauss, Michel Foucault, and
the so-called Cambridge School of Quentin Skinner and John Pocock.
Assessing the current relationship between political history,
theory and action, Whatmore concludes with an analysis of its
relevant for current politics. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short
Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds
of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books
are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our
expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and
enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly
readable.
Recent decades have seen a remarkable growth of interest in
intellectual history. Intellectual history has become a popular
branch of historical studies at the same time as it has a growing
audience among students reading politics, philosophy, international
relations, English, and other academic areas across the arts and
social sciences. This new landmark collection from Routledge
provides a comprehensive survey of the subdiscipline, and assembles
the very best research undertaken by scholars in Britain, Europe,
North America, and the wider world from ancient times to the
present. The collection offers an essential synthesis of past and
current work but pays special attention to prevailing controversies
in order to provide readers with an up-to-date sense of the
area.
Originally published in 1975, The Machiavellian Moment remains a
landmark of historical and political thought. Celebrated historian
J.G.A. Pocock looks at the consequences for modern historical and
social consciousness arising from the ideal of the classical
republic revived by Machiavelli and other thinkers of Renaissance
Italy. Pocock shows that Machiavelli's prime emphasis was on the
moment in which the republic confronts the problem of its own
instability in time, which Pocock calls the "Machiavellian moment."
After examining this problem in the works of Machiavelli,
Guicciardini, and Giannotti, Pocock turns to the revival of
republican ideology in Puritan England and in Revolutionary and
Federalist America. He argues that the American Revolution can be
considered the last great act of civic humanism of the Renaissance
and he relates the origins of modern historicism to the clash
between civic, Christian, and commercial values in
eighteenth-century thought. This Princeton Classics edition of The
Machiavellian Moment features a new introduction by Richard
Whatmore.
Over his long and illustrious career, Knud Haakonssen has explored
the role of natural law in formulating doctrines of obligation and
rights in accordance with the interests of early modern polities
and churches. The essays collected in this volume range across this
exciting and contested field. These 13 new essays acknowledge
Haakonssen's immense academic achievement and give us new insights
into the cultural and political role of law and rights in a variety
of historical contexts and circumstances.
A bloody episode that epitomised the political dilemmas of the
eighteenth century In 1798, members of the United Irishmen were
massacred by the British amid the crumbling walls of a half-built
town near Waterford in Ireland. Many of the Irish were republicans
inspired by the French Revolution, and the site of their demise was
known as Geneva Barracks. The Barracks were the remnants of an
experimental community called New Geneva, a settlement of Calvinist
republican rebels who fled the continent in 1782. The British
believed that the rectitude and industriousness of these imported
revolutionaries would have a positive effect on the Irish populace.
The experiment was abandoned, however, after the Calvinists
demanded greater independence and more state money for their
project. Terrorists, Anarchists, and Republicans tells the story of
a utopian city inspired by a spirit of liberty and republican
values being turned into a place where republicans who had fought
for liberty were extinguished by the might of empire. Richard
Whatmore brings to life a violent age in which powerful states like
Britain and France intervened in the affairs of smaller, weaker
countries, justifying their actions on the grounds that they were
stopping anarchists and terrorists from destroying society,
religion and government. The Genevans and the Irish rebels, in
turn, saw themselves as advocates of republican virtue, willing to
sacrifice themselves for liberty, rights and the public good.
Terrorists, Anarchists, and Republicans shows how the massacre at
Geneva Barracks marked an end to the old Europe of diverse
political forms, and the ascendancy of powerful states seeking
empire and markets-in many respects the end of enlightenment
itself.
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.
A bloody episode that epitomised the political dilemmas of the
eighteenth century In 1798, members of the United Irishmen were
massacred by the British amid the crumbling walls of a half-built
town near Waterford in Ireland. Many of the Irish were republicans
inspired by the French Revolution, and the site of their demise was
known as Geneva Barracks. The Barracks were the remnants of an
experimental community called New Geneva, a settlement of Calvinist
republican rebels who fled the continent in 1782. The British
believed that the rectitude and industriousness of these imported
revolutionaries would have a positive effect on the Irish populace.
The experiment was abandoned, however, after the Calvinists
demanded greater independence and more state money for their
project. Terrorists, Anarchists, and Republicans tells the story of
a utopian city inspired by a spirit of liberty and republican
values being turned into a place where republicans who had fought
for liberty were extinguished by the might of empire. Richard
Whatmore brings to life a violent age in which powerful states like
Britain and France intervened in the affairs of smaller, weaker
countries, justifying their actions on the grounds that they were
stopping anarchists and terrorists from destroying society,
religion and government. The Genevans and the Irish rebels, in
turn, saw themselves as advocates of republican virtue, willing to
sacrifice themselves for liberty, rights and the public good.
Terrorists, Anarchists, and Republicans shows how the massacre at
Geneva Barracks marked an end to the old Europe of diverse
political forms, and the ascendancy of powerful states seeking
empire and markets-in many respects the end of enlightenment
itself.
Over his long and illustrious career, Knud Haakonssen has explored
the role of natural law in formulating doctrines of obligation and
rights in accordance with the interests of early modern polities
and churches. The essays collected in this volume range across this
exciting and contested field. These 13 new essays acknowledge
Haakonssen's immense academic achievement and give us new insights
into the cultural and political role of law and rights in a variety
of historical contexts and circumstances.
This volume on Hume's politics brings together essays that have
been formative of the scholarly and more general debate about
Hume's political thought. Unlike many theorists who express their
thought in terms of system, Hume uses the incidental genre of the
essay as the vehicle for his writing and his mode of presentation
is a reflection, indeed an expression, of his belief in the limited
power of reason to give any over-all shape to human life. Hume's
politics are particularly suited for discussion of a wide range of
view-points. The possibilities of seeing in Hume both the
conservative and the liberal are pursued along with Hume's
sophisticated analysis of party-politics. His acute and pioneering
theorisation of perhaps the most central issue for 18th-century
political observers, that of commerce and politics, is brought out
in the context of his ideas of the international order. His
fundamental theory of justice is discussed in its connection with
law, property and government.
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.
As Britain and France became more powerful during the eighteenth
century, small states such as Geneva could no longer stand
militarily against these commercial monarchies. Furthermore, many
Genevans felt that they were being drawn into a corrupt commercial
world dominated by amoral aristocrats dedicated to the unprincipled
pursuit of wealth. In this book Richard Whatmore presents an
intellectual history of republicans who strove to ensure Geneva’s
survival as an independent state. Whatmore shows how the Genevan
republicans grappled with the ideas of Rousseau, Voltaire, Bentham,
and others in seeking to make modern Europe safe for small states,
by vanquishing the threats presented by war and by empire.
Republicanism and the French Revolution provides a new interpretation of political thought and political economy in France from the death of Louis XVI to the July Revolution of 1830. The clash between modern republicanism and other theories of governing societies, typified by the antagonism between French and British intellectuals, is the background to a thorough reinterpretation of the life and writings of Jean-Baptiste Say, the most famous political economist of the post-revolutionary era.
Economy, Polity, and Society and its companion volume History,
Religion, and Culture bring together major new essays on British
intellectual history by many of the leading scholars of the period,
continuing a mode of enquiry for which Donald Winch and John Burrow
have been widely celebrated. This volume addresses aspects of the
eighteenth-century attempt, particularly in the work of Adam Smith,
to come to grips with the nature of 'commercial society' and its
distinctive notions of the self, of political liberty, and of
economic progress. It then explores the adaptations of and
responses to the Enlightenment legacy in the work of such early
nineteenth-century figures as Jeremy Bentham, Tom Paine and Maria
Edgeworth. Finally, in discussions which range up to the middle of
the twentieth century, the volume examines particularly telling
examples of the conflict between economic thinking and moral
values.
Modern British intellectual history has been a particularly
flourishing field of enquiry in recent years, and these two tightly
integrated volumes contain major new essays by almost all of its
leading proponents. The contributors examine the history of British
ideas over the past two centuries from a number of perspectives
that together constitute a major new overview of the subject.
History, Religion, and Culture begins with eighteenth-century
historiography, especially Gibbon??'s Decline and Fall. It takes up
different aspects of the place of religion in nineteenth-century
cultural and political life, such as attitudes towards the native
religions of India, the Victorian perception of Oliver Cromwell,
and the religious sensibility of John Ruskin. Finally, in
discussions which range up to the middle of the twentieth century,
the volume explores relations between scientific ideas about change
or development and assumptions about the nature and growth of the
national community.
Economy, Polity and Society and its companion volume History, Religion and Culture aim to bring together new essays by many of the leading intellectual historians of the period. The essays in Economy, Polity and Society begin by addressing aspects of the eighteenth-century attempt, particularly in the work of Adam Smith, to come to grips with the nature of "commercial society" and its distinctive notions of the self, of political liberty, and of economic progress. They then explore the adaptations of and responses to the Enlightenment legacy in the work of such early nineteenth-century figures as Jeremy Bentham, Tom Paine, Maria Edgeworth and Richard Whately. Finally, in discussions that range up to the middle of the twentieth century, they explore particularly telling examples of the conflict between economic thinking and moral values.
Modern British intellectual history has been a particularly flourishing field of enquiry in recent years, and these two tightly integrated volumes contain major new essays by almost all of its leading proponents. The contributors examine the history of British ideas over the past two centuries from a number of perspectives that together constitute a major new overview of the subject. History, Religion, and Culture begins with eighteenth-century historiography, especially Gibbon’s Decline and Fall. It takes up different aspects of the place of religion in nineteenth-century cultural and political life, such as attitudes towards the native religions of India, the Victorian perception of Oliver Cromwell, and the religious sensibility of John Ruskin. Finally, in discussions which range up to the middle of the twentieth century, the volume explores relations between scientific ideas about change or development and assumptions about the nature and growth of the national community.
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