Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-hfldf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-01T18:14:58.546Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

II. Enlightened Government and its Critics in Eighteenth-Century Germany

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Geraint Parry
Geraint Parry
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The debates between ‘rationalism’ and ‘traditionalism’ and between ‘organization’ and ‘community’ 1 which are such a striking feature of contemporary political thought may be traced back in their modern form to the eighteenth century. Men like Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, Bolingbroke, Hume, Bentham and Burke recognized the relevance of these debates to theory and practice and they attempted to link the issues by exploring the conceptual and practical connexions between rationalist politics and the theory of community. The problems were not, of course, discussed in either an intellectual or a political vacuum. The intellectual context was produced by the impact of the discoveries of natural science on social investigation. Students of social affairs hoped to discover behind the apparent diversity and complexity of actual societies a framework of uniform, consistent and, above all, predictable rules which would be analogous to the laws of the planetary system.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , June 1963 , pp. 178 - 192
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1963

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 See Sheldon Wolin, S., Politics and Vision(London, 1961), ch. 10, ‘The Age of Organization’, for a penetrating study of organization and community in nineteenth- and twentieth-century political thought.Google Scholar

2 In my account of ‘rationalism’ I follow the arguments of Professor Oakeshott in his articles in the Cambridge Journal, in particular ‘Rationalism in Polities’, vol. 1, nos. 2 and 3, November and December 1947; ‘The Tower of Babel’, vol. 2, no. 2, November 1948, and ‘Rational Conduct’, vol. 4, no. 1, October 1950.Google Scholar

3 Harrington, Montesquieu and, later, Marx are obvious instances. For others, of course, such as Herder and Burke, a divine purpose could be discerned behind at least some courses of historical events.

4 I am indebted to Mr Jack Lively of the University of Sussex for his suggestions and criticisms on this point.

5 Rousseau, , The Social Contract, Book 11, chs. 9 and 10 on the considerations of the size of states has, of course, been much commented upon, but Book III in particular is also devoted to the problem of defending the autonomy of the individual in the face of the accumulation of power in the hands of a political or administrative élite.Google Scholar

6 Gasser (1676–1745), Professor at Halle, . Author of Einleitung zu den Oeconomischen, Politischen und Cameral-Wissenschaften (Halle, 1729).Google Scholar

7 Dithmar (1678–1737), Professor at Frankfurt, . Also author of an Einleitung in die Ökonomischen, Polizei- und Cameral-Wissenschaften (Frankfurt, 1731). Sixth edition 1768.Google Scholar

8 Seckendorff (1626–92). His work represents the transition from Christian monarchy to enlightened absolutism. Privy Councillor in the administrative service and Chancellor in the Duchy of Gotha. Chancellor of new University of Halle, 1692. His most influential work was the Teutscher Fürsten Stat (1656), giving an outline of administrative procedure based on the government of Gotha.

9 von Hornigke (1638–1712). Mercantilist, . Author of Oesterreich über alles, wann es nur will (1684). Privy Councillor in the service of the Fürstbischof of Passau.Google Scholar

10 F. K. von Moser (1723–98). A critic of the abuses of despotic government in Germany, but a supporter of the principles of enlightened absolutism. His most celebrated work is Der Herr und der Diener (1759). A prominent official in the Austrian and Darmstadt administrations.

11 Justi (1720–71). Professor of cameralist studies at Vienna and Gottingen. Served in the Prussian mining administration.

12 Sonnenfels (1733–1817). Professor of cameralism at Vienna from 1763. An influential adviser to Maria Theresa and Joseph II on social, economic and educational reforms.

13 Schlözer (1735–1810). Historian, statistician and publicist. Professor at Göttingen and a leading figure of the Göttingen Enlightenment.

14 See Carsten, F. L., Princes and Parliaments in Germany (London, 1959), especially 123–48 and 422–44.Google Scholar

15 See Braune, F., Burke in Deutschland (Heidelberg, 1917).Google Scholar

16 See, e.g., Justi, , Gesammlete Politische- und Finanzschriften (Copenhagen and Leipzig, 1761), 1, 505; Die Naturund das Wesen der Staaten (Berlin, etc., 1760), §30.Google Scholar

17 Christian Wolff, Vernünftige Gedanken von dem Gesellschaftlichen Leben der Menschen(known as the Politik) (Halle, 1756 edition), §223

18 Estimation of the ‘happiness’ of a society in terms of the size of its population was common in the eighteenth century See also Rousseau, Social Contract, Book III, ch. IX, Everyman edition, p. 69Google Scholar; Hume, , ‘Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations’, Essays Moral, Political and Literary, ed. Green, and Grose, (London, 1898), 1, 384.Google Scholar

19 Gesammlete Politische- und Finanzschriften, III, 86–7Google Scholar. Also 11, 16, and Die Chimäre des Gleichgezvichts von Europa (Altona, 1758), 47–8.Google Scholar

20 Die politischen Testamente Friedrichs des Grossen, ed. Volz, G. B. (Berlin, 1920).Google Scholar

21 Social Contract, Book III, ch. VI, Everyman edition, 58–9.Google Scholar

22 Allgemeines Stats-Recht und Stats-Verfassungs-Lere (Göttingen, 1793), 144.Google Scholar

23 Die Natur und das Wesen der Staaten, §97.

24 Staatswirthschaft (Leipzig, 1755), vol. 2, Book III, 658.Google Scholar

25 Sonnenfels, , Grundsätze der Polizey, Handlung und Finanz, 5th edition (Vienna, 1787). Preface.Google Scholar

26 Sonnenfels, ibid. §15–25.

27 Sonnenfels, ibid. §15; Justi, Staatswirthschaft, p. xxv.

28 Justi, Staatswirthschaft, p. xxvi.

29 Testament politique (1752), Die politischen Testamente Friedrichs des Grossen, ed. Volz, (Berlin, 1920), 37.Google Scholar

30 Justi, , Gesammlete Politische- und Finanzschriften, III, 75–6.Google Scholar

31 See the extremely enlightened suggestions of Wolff on health, public parks, insurance, clean air and other welfare schemes, Politik, §§ 377f.

32 Justi, , Gesammlete Politische- und Finanzschriften, III, 55 ff. Also his Staatszvirthschaft, 11, 635.Google Scholar

33 Justi, , Gesammlete Politische- und Finanzschriften, III, 86.Google Scholar

34 That this was also a practical aim of the Prussian civil service is shown by Rosenberg, H., Bureaucracy, Aristocracy and Autocracy, the Prussian Experience, 1660–1815 (Harvard, 1958), ch. 8, an interesting study of the development in this period of a status group of Prussian bureaucrats.Google Scholar

35 This study was first undertaken in the eighteenth century in literary criticism, notably Blackwell, An Enquiry into the Life and Writings of Homer (1735); Lowth, De sacra poesi Hebraeorum (1753); Wood, Essay on the Original Genius and Writings of Homer (1769). From literature, the historical approach spread to the study of society where it was refined by the work of Vico, Montesquieu, Hume, Herder, Ferguson, Millar and Burke.

36 Sämtliche Werke, ed. Abeken, (Berlin, 1842-3), 10 parts in 4 volumes. References are to part and to page—v, 177ff.Google Scholar

37 Ibid. 11, 20.

38 Ibid. 11, 20.

39 Ibid, 11, 21. See also Rehberg on Rousseau and on the Physiocrats, Untersuchungen über die Französiche Revolution (Hanover and Osnabriick, 1793), 18–21 and 21ff.Google Scholar

40 Op. cit. v, 180.

41 Ibid. 11, 23.

42 Möser, , Sämtliche Werke, 11, 26.Google Scholar

43 On the contradictions which this situation involved see in particular Brunschwig, H., La cri.se de Vetat prussien ? la fin du XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1947).Google Scholar

44 Möser, , Sämtliche Werke, v, 180.Google Scholar

45 This view was aptly characterized in the case of Hume by Professor Trevor-Roper when he spoke of Hume's view that’ politics receded into the interstices left by social and economic laws’. ‘Hume as a Historian’, The Listener, 28 December 1961.

46 Möser, , Sämtliche Werke, v, 144.Google Scholar

47 Ibid, IX, 158ff.

48 Ibid, 11, 23–4.

49 Möser's Patriotische Phantasien, Osnabrückische Intelligenzblätter and his History of Osnabrück were intended to perform this service for his own Bishopric.

50 Moser, , Sämtliche Werke, III, 69–70. Cf. Burke's love of ‘the little platoon we belong to in society’.Google Scholar

51 Möser, , Sämtliche Werke, IX, 166.Google Scholar

52 Cf. Oakeshott, M., ‘Political Education’, in Laslett, ed. Philosophy, Politics and Society (Oxford, 1956), for a more subtle version of this view.Google Scholar

53 Möser, op. cit. III, 266.

54 See vom Stein, H. F. C., Ausgewählte Schriften, ed. Thiede, K. (Jena, 1929), 43.Google Scholar

55 Ibid. 140.

56 Darstellung der inneren Verwaltung Grossbritanniens (Berlin, 1815).Google Scholar

57 History of the English Constitution (London, 1886)Google Scholar; Self-government Communalverfassung und Verwaltungsgerichte in England, 3rd edition (Berlin, 1871).Google Scholar

58 The Torment of Secrecy (Glencoe, 1956)Google Scholar, especially chs. 6 and 11–13. Also ‘Primordial, Personal, Sacred and Civil Ties’, British Journal of Sociology, vol. 8, no. 2.Google Scholar