Suchergebnisse

By the end of the eighteenth century, politicians in America and France were invoking the natural rights of man to wrest sovereignty away from kings and lay down universal basic entitlements. Exactly how and when did "rights" come to justify such measures? In On the Spirit of Rights, Dan Edelstein answers this question by examining the complex genealogy of the rights regimes enshrined in the American and French Revolutions. With a lively attention to detail, he surveys a sprawling series of debates among rulers, jurists, philosophers, political reformers, writers, and others, who were all engaged in laying the groundwork for our contemporary systems of constitutional governance. Every seemingly new claim about rights turns out to be a variation on a theme, as late medieval notions were subtly repeated and refined to yield the talk of "rights" we recognize today. From the Wars of Religion to the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen to the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, On the Spirit of Rights is a sweeping tour through centuries of European intellectual history and an essential guide to our ways of thinking about human rights today

Plutarch's Roman Lives present an unusual, if historically compelling, account of why the Roman Republic collapsed. Drawing on Polybius' political theory (sketched out in Histories 6.57), Plutarch suggests that after the fall of Carthage, traditional competition among
elites began to spiral out of control. Not only did competition lead to increasingly violent clashes over scarce honours, it exacerbated the tensions between social classes, which the elites played off each other for personal gain. As the stakes of these rivalries increased, so too did the
temptation to ignore or undo customary norms, especially for limits on executive offices. Intra-elite rivalry was doubly destructive: it led to the dismantling of the constitution and unleashed civil violence, and ultimately revolution. The political lesson that Plutarch provides is that elite
rivalry must be skilfully managed in order to avoid winner-takes-all and oneupmanship.

This essay reconsiders Jean-Jacques Rousseau's debt to Jean Bodin, on the basis of Daniel Lee's recent revision of Bodin as a theorist of popular sovereignty. It argues that Rousseau took a key feature of his own theory of democratic sovereignty from Bodin—namely, the dual identity of political members as both citizens and subjects of the state. It further makes the case that this dual identity originates in medieval corporatist law, which Bodin was summarizing. Finally, it demonstrates the lasting impact of corporatist law in eighteenth-century France, highlighting Rousseau's direct borrowings from the corporatist language and logic of contemporary commercial societies. In this regard, the article revisits and updates Otto von Gierke's classic argument about the origins of the state in corporatist thought.

The digital age has been a boon for intellectual historians, particularly those of us who work on early modern Europe and America. The mass digitization of old books has made research more efficient than ever: first editions are there for the downloading on Google Books, Gallica, Liberty Fund, Project Gutenberg, and elsewhere. The creation of such large-scale databases as Early English Books Online (EEBO), Eighteenth-Century Collection Online (ECCO), the Making of the Modern World (formerly Goldsmiths'–Kress), or, on a more modest level, the ARTFL project's FRANTEXT, has also breathed new life into old texts. Books that lay forgotten for generations can now be rediscovered thanks to the magic of search engines. To be sure, this power has not always been wielded for good: students today can "cite anything, but construe nothing," stringing together KWICs (keywords in context), and reading only a surrounding sentence or two (if that). But however they are used, these tools and platforms have transformed our daily work habits.

Antiquity is back. In some respects, it is surprising it ever went away: for the last forty years, Peter Gay's magisterial survey, which connected the "little flock" ofphilosopheswith "pagan" authors, has loomed large over the field of Enlightenment studies. But shortly after its publication, a methodological sea change pulled the field in an opposite direction. Robert Darnton hailed this rising tide of social and cultural history in a 1971 largely critical review of Gay's two volumes. The hyper-longue duréeof Gay's historical panorama, which extended from the age of Virgil to that of Voltaire, was soon to be displaced by more focused inquiries into the history of the book, forms of enlightened sociability, and national difference. Intellectual history, particularly of Gay's epic brand, soon became scarce, despite the lasting presence of Gay's two volumes on bibliographies and course syllabi.

Describes the French Law of 22 Prairial that was adopted by the National Convention on 10 June 1794. Maximilien Robespierre, president of the National Convention & dominant figure of the Committee of Public Safety (CPS), encouraged French citizens to "purify the earth that (the tyrants) have soiled." The law of 22 prairial radically reformed the revolutionary tribunal by denying the accused right to legal counsel; allowing the prosecution to present "moral" proofs of guilt in the absence of (or in addition to) material evidence; & accelerating the judicial process. It is noted that the new law initiated the period known as the "Great Terror" in which 1,400 people were sentenced to death within the space of seven weeks. Possible motives for the CPS to turn the tribunal into a killing machine & to depart so radically from more enlightened norms of judicial processes are considered. Particular attention is given to the natural right theory upon which the legal process of the 22 prairial law is based. J. Lindroth

Argues that there are uncanny similarities between 18th-century debates in France & contemporary debates in the US over enemies of the people & enemy combatants. The focus is on the identification of nature & terror as dual enemies in legal & political discourses of the French Revolution. Ways in which Enlightenment principles of natural right contributed to formation of the Terror are explored to contend that legislation authorizing most of the executions carried out during the Terror were based on a legal concept fashioned in the liberal natural right tradition. A philological analysis of this hostis humani generic (enemy of the human race) concept highlights its Christian genealogy & the way it was reappropriated by 18th-century liberal natural right authors. The combination of theological & juridico-philosophical traditions turned the enemy into a monster & allowed natural right to encourage state violence rather than preserve the rights & lives of the many. Parallels are pointed out between the French Revolution discourse & President George W. Bush's revolutionary discourse to advance his "democratic globalism" agenda. J. Lindroth

"This volume examines how writers during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries transformed and propagated new ideas about rights, and offers a global perspective on rights-making. A comprehensive resource for students and scholars of intellectual, social, and political history"--

Voltaire'sLetters Concerning the English Nation(Lettres philosophiques) have left the indelible impression that the Frenchphilosophewas fundamentally marked by his exposure to English thought in the late 1720s. On the map of his epistolary correspondence, however, England is hardly to be found. What are we to make of this discrepancy? In this article, we demonstrate that the missing letters to England are unlikely to be the result of a data glitch, but rather reflect a lack of interest in contemporary English matters. The only England that Voltaire seems to have cared about lay in the past, during the reign of Charles II. Moreover, this period of English history was (in his view) intrinsically French, given the English monarch's close ties to Versailles. Voltaire's limited admiration of English thought, accordingly, formed part of his broader philosophy of history, which was centered at the court of Louis XIV.

Intro -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Part One. Lux -- Via Lucis in tenebras: Comenius as Prophet of the Age of Light -- Whose Light Is It Anyway? The Struggle for Light in the French Enlightenment -- The "Lights" before the Enlightenment: The Tribunal of Reason and Public Opinion -- Writing the History of Illumination in the Siècle des Lumières: Enlightenment Narratives of Light -- Part Two. Veritas -- Another Dialogue in the Tractatus: Spinoza on "Christ's Disciples" and the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) -- A Backward Glance: Light and Darkness in the Medieval Theology of Power -- Lumen unitivum: The Light of Reason and the Aristotelian Sect in Early Modern Scholasticism -- The Aristotelian Enlightenment -- Part Three. Tenebrae -- Secular Sacerdotalism in the Anglican Enlightenment, 1660-1740 -- Refracting the Century of Lights: Alternate Genealogies of Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century Culture -- Enlightenment in the Shadows: Mysticism, Materialism, and the Dream State in Eighteenth-Century France -- Light, Truth, and the Counter-Enlightenment's Enlightenment -- Contributors -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Z