Pub Date : 2022-11-22DOI: 10.1017/s1479244322000543
T. Giordani, H. Mead
The article examines T. E. Hulme's reading of Georges Sorel as a politically transversal thinker of moral renewal. It argues that, by distancing Sorel from syndicalism and by reading him as a thinker of moral absolutes, this interpretation constituted an act of resignification. This is shown by contrasting Hulme's reading with the dominant patterns of the British reception of Sorel. What emerges is the striking, and self-aware, originality of Hulme's positions. This originality, we argue, was made possible by the European scope of Hulme's intellectual horizon, which gave him the resources to read Sorel differently. Finally, we ask why Hulme read Sorel in this way. We suggest that Hulme was working through a contradiction between his relativistic philosophical education and an increasing need for political commitment. Sorel's ethics of commitment grounded in myth were a way to move from Bergsonian openness to a metaphysics capable of conceptualizing moral and political absolutes.
{"title":"“The Regeneration of Society”: Thomas Ernest Hulme and the Early British Reception of Georges Sorel","authors":"T. Giordani, H. Mead","doi":"10.1017/s1479244322000543","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1479244322000543","url":null,"abstract":"The article examines T. E. Hulme's reading of Georges Sorel as a politically transversal thinker of moral renewal. It argues that, by distancing Sorel from syndicalism and by reading him as a thinker of moral absolutes, this interpretation constituted an act of resignification. This is shown by contrasting Hulme's reading with the dominant patterns of the British reception of Sorel. What emerges is the striking, and self-aware, originality of Hulme's positions. This originality, we argue, was made possible by the European scope of Hulme's intellectual horizon, which gave him the resources to read Sorel differently. Finally, we ask why Hulme read Sorel in this way. We suggest that Hulme was working through a contradiction between his relativistic philosophical education and an increasing need for political commitment. Sorel's ethics of commitment grounded in myth were a way to move from Bergsonian openness to a metaphysics capable of conceptualizing moral and political absolutes.","PeriodicalId":44584,"journal":{"name":"Modern Intellectual History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42209556","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Few books on political economy have become as influential as Capital, volume 1. After Karl Marx, in 1867, published the first volume of Capital on the capitalist mode of production, the book was published again in Russian in 1872, in a second German edition in 1872–3 and in French—as Le capital—in 1872–5. The publishing process of the French edition started in December 1871 in the wake of the Paris Commune. This article aims to investigate the conditions that led to the initiation of this process. We specifically argue that by looking at the Paris Commune and its aftermath, we are in a better position to understand the new possibilities it created for publishing Marx's work in French, the connections it facilitated, and the way it shaped the publishing process of Le capital.
{"title":"The Paris Commune and Karl Marx's Le capital","authors":"Kenneth Hemmerechts, Nohemi Jocabeth Echeverría Vicente","doi":"10.1017/s1479244322000531","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1479244322000531","url":null,"abstract":"Few books on political economy have become as influential as Capital, volume 1. After Karl Marx, in 1867, published the first volume of Capital on the capitalist mode of production, the book was published again in Russian in 1872, in a second German edition in 1872–3 and in French—as Le capital—in 1872–5. The publishing process of the French edition started in December 1871 in the wake of the Paris Commune. This article aims to investigate the conditions that led to the initiation of this process. We specifically argue that by looking at the Paris Commune and its aftermath, we are in a better position to understand the new possibilities it created for publishing Marx's work in French, the connections it facilitated, and the way it shaped the publishing process of Le capital.","PeriodicalId":44584,"journal":{"name":"Modern Intellectual History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-11-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46320850","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-10DOI: 10.1017/s1479244322000555
Efthimios Karayiannides
This article traces the influence of theories of Third World underdevelopment on Stuart Hall's understanding of the nature of historical transitions. I show Hall's notion of “articulation,” central to his social theory, is indebted to ideas about development originating in the global South, rather than to the thinking of “Western Marxists.” By arguing that Antonio Gramsci was a theorist of “articulation,” Hall read Gramsci as a thinker comparable to development theorists he was engaging with in the same period. This had important implications, I suggest, for Hall's “Gramscian” analyses of British politics in the 1980s. Specifically, I show that by describing Thatcherism as a form of “regressive modernization,” Hall adopted the idiom of several theories of economic development to argue that the uneven development of capitalist relations of production is the key to understanding how advanced forms of capitalist accumulation can accommodate seemingly archaic and reactionary social relations and institutions.
{"title":"Stuart Hall, Development Theory, and Thatcher's Britain","authors":"Efthimios Karayiannides","doi":"10.1017/s1479244322000555","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1479244322000555","url":null,"abstract":"This article traces the influence of theories of Third World underdevelopment on Stuart Hall's understanding of the nature of historical transitions. I show Hall's notion of “articulation,” central to his social theory, is indebted to ideas about development originating in the global South, rather than to the thinking of “Western Marxists.” By arguing that Antonio Gramsci was a theorist of “articulation,” Hall read Gramsci as a thinker comparable to development theorists he was engaging with in the same period. This had important implications, I suggest, for Hall's “Gramscian” analyses of British politics in the 1980s. Specifically, I show that by describing Thatcherism as a form of “regressive modernization,” Hall adopted the idiom of several theories of economic development to argue that the uneven development of capitalist relations of production is the key to understanding how advanced forms of capitalist accumulation can accommodate seemingly archaic and reactionary social relations and institutions.","PeriodicalId":44584,"journal":{"name":"Modern Intellectual History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45270838","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-20DOI: 10.1017/s147924432200052x
B. Attard
Ever since the publication of “The Imperialism of Free Trade” by John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson in 1953, “informal empire” has been a key term for historians. It has, however, always been contentious. The central issue was whether imperial historians were prepared to accept a new concept of empire. This article explains the paradox of informal empire by creating a stronger provenance for the term. Since the early nineteenth century, imperial metaphors have been used to characterize Britain's position in the world economy. Gallagher and Robinson—like their immediate predecessors, Charles Fay and Keith Hancock—wanted to understand British imperialism in the broader context of European expansion while also formulating an alternative to the radical liberal and neo-Marxist interpretations widely current after World War I. Ultimately, the difficulty of using “empire” as a single category led Gallagher and one of his most influential successors to choose an alternative term.
{"title":"Informal Empire: The Origin and Significance of a Key Term","authors":"B. Attard","doi":"10.1017/s147924432200052x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s147924432200052x","url":null,"abstract":"Ever since the publication of “The Imperialism of Free Trade” by John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson in 1953, “informal empire” has been a key term for historians. It has, however, always been contentious. The central issue was whether imperial historians were prepared to accept a new concept of empire. This article explains the paradox of informal empire by creating a stronger provenance for the term. Since the early nineteenth century, imperial metaphors have been used to characterize Britain's position in the world economy. Gallagher and Robinson—like their immediate predecessors, Charles Fay and Keith Hancock—wanted to understand British imperialism in the broader context of European expansion while also formulating an alternative to the radical liberal and neo-Marxist interpretations widely current after World War I. Ultimately, the difficulty of using “empire” as a single category led Gallagher and one of his most influential successors to choose an alternative term.","PeriodicalId":44584,"journal":{"name":"Modern Intellectual History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43727358","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-11DOI: 10.1017/s1479244322000518
Max Ehrenfreund
Economists began using models between the First and Second World Wars. The first econometric model of the United States was produced by Jan Tinbergen at the League of Nations. Modeling was a methodological solution to the political problems of the interwar period. International norms of cooperation and governance had to be reconciled with new demands for national autonomy in economic affairs, with a new understanding of the nation-state's capacity to make and remake the economy. Models possessed a composite, ambiguous character that appealed to both nationalist and internationalist sympathies. Models combined fact and theory, the particular and the general, the local and the global. The practice of modeling contrasted with and largely displaced an older, universalizing discourse of scientific law, predominant in the nineteenth century. Modeling reflected the nation-state's ascendance as a legitimate arbiter of economic policy, situated uneasily within a regime of international norms and institutions.
{"title":"Laws and Models at the League of Nations: Econometrics in Geneva, 1930–1939","authors":"Max Ehrenfreund","doi":"10.1017/s1479244322000518","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1479244322000518","url":null,"abstract":"Economists began using models between the First and Second World Wars. The first econometric model of the United States was produced by Jan Tinbergen at the League of Nations. Modeling was a methodological solution to the political problems of the interwar period. International norms of cooperation and governance had to be reconciled with new demands for national autonomy in economic affairs, with a new understanding of the nation-state's capacity to make and remake the economy. Models possessed a composite, ambiguous character that appealed to both nationalist and internationalist sympathies. Models combined fact and theory, the particular and the general, the local and the global. The practice of modeling contrasted with and largely displaced an older, universalizing discourse of scientific law, predominant in the nineteenth century. Modeling reflected the nation-state's ascendance as a legitimate arbiter of economic policy, situated uneasily within a regime of international norms and institutions.","PeriodicalId":44584,"journal":{"name":"Modern Intellectual History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-10-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42157524","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-03DOI: 10.1017/s1479244322000440
T. Shenk
Over the last decade, a narrative centered around the rise of neoliberalism has become the dominant framework for explaining recent US, and often global, history. Although this neoliberal lens has repeatedly proven its value, it also obscures major continuities running across the twentieth century. This article highlights one striking example of continuity that becomes easier to see after taking off the neoliberal lens—namely the commitment to discretionary management of the macroeconomy, often short-handed as Keynesianism. It begins with a survey linking the development of a politics centered around managing the economy to the making of what Karen Orren and Stephen Skowronek have termed a “policy state.” Next it considers the role of economists within the policy state, paying particular attention to what it calls the MIT school of economics. Then it uses the career of Lawrence Klein, an exemplary product of the MIT school, to illuminate the politics of the economy in a supposedly neoliberal age.
{"title":"Taking Off the Neoliberal Lens: The Politics of the Economy, the MIT School of Economics, and the Strange Career of Lawrence Klein","authors":"T. Shenk","doi":"10.1017/s1479244322000440","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1479244322000440","url":null,"abstract":"Over the last decade, a narrative centered around the rise of neoliberalism has become the dominant framework for explaining recent US, and often global, history. Although this neoliberal lens has repeatedly proven its value, it also obscures major continuities running across the twentieth century. This article highlights one striking example of continuity that becomes easier to see after taking off the neoliberal lens—namely the commitment to discretionary management of the macroeconomy, often short-handed as Keynesianism. It begins with a survey linking the development of a politics centered around managing the economy to the making of what Karen Orren and Stephen Skowronek have termed a “policy state.” Next it considers the role of economists within the policy state, paying particular attention to what it calls the MIT school of economics. Then it uses the career of Lawrence Klein, an exemplary product of the MIT school, to illuminate the politics of the economy in a supposedly neoliberal age.","PeriodicalId":44584,"journal":{"name":"Modern Intellectual History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-10-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48808310","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-30DOI: 10.1017/s1479244322000452
D. Marshall
What does it mean “to put an idea in context”? Does it mean explaining the idea as the effect of a certain set of causes? Or articulating the range of responses to an issue that are recognizably conventional in a particular place and time so that the force of any given response can be assessed? Something else? Intellectual historians answer this question about context in a variety of ways, but I think all would recognize that this is a particularly important question for intellectual history as a field of inquiry. The book under review here may seem to be beyond the purview of Modern Intellectual History. After all, Robert Brandom's A Spirit of Trust: A Reading of Hegel's Phenomenology is a book written by a philosopher for philosophers. Perhaps it could be called history of philosophy (though even that is debatable), but it is certainly not intellectual history. Nevertheless, I think this is a book that intellectual historians should be dealing with. Why? Because, among other things, the book offers a compelling and illuminating answer to the question of what it is to put an idea in context. This is not because the book itself does contextual work. Brandom ignores almost everything that intellectual historians would regard as contextual for Hegel. Kant is a figure in the book, yet the broader tableau of early nineteenth-century German philosophy, politics, and culture is almost completely absent. But the book does offer a theory of concepts. In doing so, A Spirit of Trust also gives us an account of context. Here, I'll be arguing that this account of context is important for intellectual historians and helps us to understand more clearly debates that we have been having recently about how we do our work. In particular, I think Brandom helps us see that there is no necessary tension between putting ideas in historical contexts, on the one hand, and developing them critically, on the other. And this helps us overcome a binary between context and critique reinforced by a recent debate between Peter Gordon and Ian Hunter.
{"title":"Intellectual History, Context, and Robert Brandom","authors":"D. Marshall","doi":"10.1017/s1479244322000452","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1479244322000452","url":null,"abstract":"What does it mean “to put an idea in context”? Does it mean explaining the idea as the effect of a certain set of causes? Or articulating the range of responses to an issue that are recognizably conventional in a particular place and time so that the force of any given response can be assessed? Something else? Intellectual historians answer this question about context in a variety of ways, but I think all would recognize that this is a particularly important question for intellectual history as a field of inquiry. The book under review here may seem to be beyond the purview of Modern Intellectual History. After all, Robert Brandom's A Spirit of Trust: A Reading of Hegel's Phenomenology is a book written by a philosopher for philosophers. Perhaps it could be called history of philosophy (though even that is debatable), but it is certainly not intellectual history. Nevertheless, I think this is a book that intellectual historians should be dealing with. Why? Because, among other things, the book offers a compelling and illuminating answer to the question of what it is to put an idea in context. This is not because the book itself does contextual work. Brandom ignores almost everything that intellectual historians would regard as contextual for Hegel. Kant is a figure in the book, yet the broader tableau of early nineteenth-century German philosophy, politics, and culture is almost completely absent. But the book does offer a theory of concepts. In doing so, A Spirit of Trust also gives us an account of context. Here, I'll be arguing that this account of context is important for intellectual historians and helps us to understand more clearly debates that we have been having recently about how we do our work. In particular, I think Brandom helps us see that there is no necessary tension between putting ideas in historical contexts, on the one hand, and developing them critically, on the other. And this helps us overcome a binary between context and critique reinforced by a recent debate between Peter Gordon and Ian Hunter.","PeriodicalId":44584,"journal":{"name":"Modern Intellectual History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47553941","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-28DOI: 10.1017/S1479244322000488
Caio Moraes Ferreira
Voltaire's first historical work (History of Charles XII, 1731) is frequently read as a piece of literary satire designed to ridicule the tradition of military heroes and warmongering monarchs. I offer a contrasting perspective and make the case that the book grapples with a problem both epistemic and poetic: how to narrate and make sense of an implausible or unbelievable past. In shedding light on this issue, this article questions widely held assumptions about the relationship between truth, plausibility, and history in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It pushes back against the notion that Voltaire, like other neoclassical historians, had a rigid and naive understanding of the implausible as “fabulous” or “unhistorical.” Instead, I make the case that the implausible to Voltaire often pointed to a necessary and meaningful aspect of histories as narratives of the grand, the extraordinary, and the grotesque.
{"title":"The Bullet That Ended Chivalry: Voltaire's Histoire de Charles Xii As A Celebration Of The Implausible","authors":"Caio Moraes Ferreira","doi":"10.1017/S1479244322000488","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1479244322000488","url":null,"abstract":"Voltaire's first historical work (History of Charles XII, 1731) is frequently read as a piece of literary satire designed to ridicule the tradition of military heroes and warmongering monarchs. I offer a contrasting perspective and make the case that the book grapples with a problem both epistemic and poetic: how to narrate and make sense of an implausible or unbelievable past. In shedding light on this issue, this article questions widely held assumptions about the relationship between truth, plausibility, and history in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It pushes back against the notion that Voltaire, like other neoclassical historians, had a rigid and naive understanding of the implausible as “fabulous” or “unhistorical.” Instead, I make the case that the implausible to Voltaire often pointed to a necessary and meaningful aspect of histories as narratives of the grand, the extraordinary, and the grotesque.","PeriodicalId":44584,"journal":{"name":"Modern Intellectual History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42915140","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-28DOI: 10.1017/S147924432200049X
Ian Kumekawa
Political economy, as a field of study, now generally refers to work on the interplay of state actors and the macroeconomy. As practiced by economists, political scientists, and legal scholars, political economy concerns the behavior of central bankers, the impacts of changes in the tax code, world trade negotiations. It has to do with policy. But to historians of economics, the term “political economy” is more likely to call to mind thinkers who engaged in economic reasoning a century or more ago: Adam Smith, Jean-Baptiste Say, Karl Marx. For many historians of economics, “political economy” functions as a shorthand: “economics” avant la lettre. Evoking a time before the formal disciplinization of “economics,” “political economy” suggests a more humanistic perspective, “economics” a more scientistic one. Whereas the term “economics” has been used to refer to an academic discipline, practiced by disinterested intellectuals, the term “political economy,” in both its usages, highlights the close connection between economic ideas and political action.
{"title":"Reconsidering the History of Political Economy","authors":"Ian Kumekawa","doi":"10.1017/S147924432200049X","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S147924432200049X","url":null,"abstract":"Political economy, as a field of study, now generally refers to work on the interplay of state actors and the macroeconomy. As practiced by economists, political scientists, and legal scholars, political economy concerns the behavior of central bankers, the impacts of changes in the tax code, world trade negotiations. It has to do with policy. But to historians of economics, the term “political economy” is more likely to call to mind thinkers who engaged in economic reasoning a century or more ago: Adam Smith, Jean-Baptiste Say, Karl Marx. For many historians of economics, “political economy” functions as a shorthand: “economics” avant la lettre. Evoking a time before the formal disciplinization of “economics,” “political economy” suggests a more humanistic perspective, “economics” a more scientistic one. Whereas the term “economics” has been used to refer to an academic discipline, practiced by disinterested intellectuals, the term “political economy,” in both its usages, highlights the close connection between economic ideas and political action.","PeriodicalId":44584,"journal":{"name":"Modern Intellectual History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47557652","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-27DOI: 10.1017/S1479244322000476
Olivier Higgins
By recovering the pre-critical foundations of Immanuel Kant's political idealism, this article elucidates his fundamental concern with reorienting the “point of view” of real princes and sovereigns to the cause of peace. I trace this priority to Kant's reading of Pierre Bayle, whose skepticism illustrated that the true nature of princes rendered Saint-Pierre's ideal of peace “not possible.” Beginning in 1756, Kant reframed perpetual peace as the ultimate political honor for those unmoved by strict moral necessity, promising them a legacy that was entwined with the providential course of human history. This appeal to honor identified the first necessary phase of political change, accounting for ruling motives that might otherwise lead to wars of conquest and expansion. This view of Kant's shrewd attempt to steer the “point of view” of real power, which persisted into his final political writings in the 1790s, challenges dominant readings of a Kantian politics concerned solely with the distant realization of ideal institutions.
{"title":"Kant on Peace, Honor and the “Point of View” of Princes, 1755–1795","authors":"Olivier Higgins","doi":"10.1017/S1479244322000476","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1479244322000476","url":null,"abstract":"By recovering the pre-critical foundations of Immanuel Kant's political idealism, this article elucidates his fundamental concern with reorienting the “point of view” of real princes and sovereigns to the cause of peace. I trace this priority to Kant's reading of Pierre Bayle, whose skepticism illustrated that the true nature of princes rendered Saint-Pierre's ideal of peace “not possible.” Beginning in 1756, Kant reframed perpetual peace as the ultimate political honor for those unmoved by strict moral necessity, promising them a legacy that was entwined with the providential course of human history. This appeal to honor identified the first necessary phase of political change, accounting for ruling motives that might otherwise lead to wars of conquest and expansion. This view of Kant's shrewd attempt to steer the “point of view” of real power, which persisted into his final political writings in the 1790s, challenges dominant readings of a Kantian politics concerned solely with the distant realization of ideal institutions.","PeriodicalId":44584,"journal":{"name":"Modern Intellectual History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2022-09-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44854673","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：