From Republican polity to national community

reconsiderations of enlightenment political thought

Volume: 2003:09

Series: SVEC

Volume Editors: Paschalis Kitromilides

Series Collaborators: Lucian M. Ashworth, University of Limerick; Hans W. Blom, Erasmus University Rotterdam; Georg Cavallar, Institut für Geschichte, University of Vienna; Andreas Kalyvas, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; Ira Katznelson, Columbia University; Colin Kidd, University of Glasgow; Paschalis M. Kitromilides, University of Athens and Institute for Neohellenic Research; Hudson Meadwell, McGill University; Gregory I. Molivas, University of Crete; Anna Tabaki, University of Athens; Martin Thom, Cambridge.

Publication Date: 2003

Pages: 265

ISBN: 978-0-7294-0822-6

Price: £60

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Toleration, freedom of thought and liberation from social and intellectual convention have long been recognised as the basic tenets of Enlightenment thought and social morality. In the political sphere, the response of radical social criticism to these ideals led to the emergence of revolutionary claims of egalitarian social justice – the Enlightenment as forerunner of the Revolution. But do we need revise our understanding of Enlightenment political thought?

In this volume, eleven scholars examine how Enlightenment political and literary concerns work in different cultural and linguistic contexts; appraise Enlightenment reflection on interstate relations, political morality and religious toleration; and look at the challenges posed by eighteenth-century radicalism and republicanism to the organisation of public life. In analysing the theories underpinning Enlightenment political thought, they provide a searching re-examination of the concepts of republican polity and national community and trace the emerging international theory in eighteenth-century Europe and North America.

Foreword
P. M. Kitromilides, Reappraisals of Enlightenment political thought
I. Situating Enlightenment politics
Hans Blom, The republic’s nation: the transformation of civic virtue in the Dutch eighteenth century
Colin Kidd, Constitutions and character in the eighteenth-century British world
Anna Tabaki, Du théâtre philosophique au drame national: étude du lexique politique à travers l’ére des révolutions. Le cas grec
II. Enlightenment perspectives on inter-state relations
Georg Cavallar, ‘La société générale du genre humain’: Rousseau on cosmopolitanism, international relations, and republican patriotism
Lucian M. Ashworth, The limits of the Enlightenment: inter-state relations in eighteenth-century political thought
III. Radicalism, republicanism and the exigencies of modernity
Gregory Molyvas, Religious toleration and the question of state neutrality in the politics of the British Enlightenment
Andreas Kalyvas and Ira Katznelson, Embracing liberalism: Germaine de Staël’s farewell to republicanism
Martin Thom, The ancient city and the medieval commune: liberty in the light of the French Revolution
Hudson Meadwell, Republicanism and political communities in America and Europe
Index

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