Utopia and Reform in the Enlightenment

Franco Venturi

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511896439

In this detailed study of the republican tradition in the development of the Enlightenment, the central problem of utopia and reform is crystallized in a discussion of the right to punish. Describing the political situation in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the author shows how the old republics in Italy, Poland and Holland stagnated and were unable to survive in the age of absolutism. The Philosophes discussed the ideal of republicanism against this background. They were particularly influenced by the political and religious radicalism of John Toland, which had survived the English Restoration and was then reaching Europe. Professor Venturi traces the debate on the penal laws and the attempt to relate utopian ideas of society to the practical problem of dealing with man in society, which culminated in the assertion by many Philosophes that an unjust social system necessitated harsh penal laws, thereby rejecting the possibility of reform.

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Utopia and Reform in the Enlightenment

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Contents

Frontmatter
pp i-iv

Contents
pp v-vi

Introduction
pp 1-17

I - Kings and republics in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
pp 18-46

II - English commonwealthmen
pp 47-69

III - From Montesquieu to the revolution
pp 70-94

IV - The right to punish
pp 95-116

V - The chronology and geography of the Enlightenment
pp 117-136

Bibliography
pp 137-155

Index
pp 156-160

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Utopia and Reform in the Enlightenment

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