Enlightenment Political Thought

Reinhart Kosellecks »Kritik und Krise« gilt heute als Klassiker. Kaum noch wird moniert, dass diese Heidelberger Dissertation sich vom geächteten Carl Schmitt begleitet zeigte. Diese bislang dennoch eher spekulierte Intensität des Einflusses von Schmitt und Schmittianern auf den frühen Koselleck soll hier erstmals auf breitere Basis gestellt werden – indem eine Gegenerzählung des öffentlichen Intellektuellen Koselleck erforscht wird. Der späte Koselleck nämlich reklamierte, seiner 1959 publizierten Doktorarbeit hätte auch eine Bekanntschaft mit Hannah Arendt und deren Werk genutzt. Tatsächlich hatte Arendts in den 1950er Jahren wachsende Prominenz die dem Holocaust rechtzeitig entkommene Wahlamerikanerin mehrfach nach Europa zurückgeführt. Ihr nationalsozialistisch belasteter früherer Studienort Heidelberg aber blieb ihr suspekt. Umso mehr muss die vorliegende Studie der Rolle Arendts für Koselleck und Schmitt kontextualistisch, politiktheoretisch und motivgeschichtlich nachspüren.

Современники Войны за независимость США уже выработали довольно четкое представление о революционном процессе. Под термином «революция» понимался резкий переворот, будь то в политике, законодательстве или общественном мнении. Философы-просветители также обосновали право народа на сопротивление угнетению. «Где кончается закон, начинается тирания... И если кто-либо из находящихся у власти превышает данную ему по закону власть... то ему можно оказывать сопротивление, как и всякому другому человеку, который силой посягает на права другого», – рассуждал Дж. Локк [3, т. 3, с. 379; см. также: 2].
С самого начала англо-американского конфликта патриоты (американские виги) доказывали, что британский подданный не обязан подчиняться законам, на которые он не давал своего согласия, и вправе добиваться отмены таких законов. Именно в этом, как правило, и видели сопротивление угнетению. «Если по решению британского сената колонисты оказались бы отданными на произвол французской или турецкой тирании, – рассуждал виргинец P. Блэнд, – то они могли бы отказаться подчиниться такому решению и сопротивляться его исполнению насильственными средствами». Парламент не мог лишить их ни естественных, ни гражданских прав [8, p. 84].

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Het inzicht dat menselijk handelen varieert en bepaald wordt door van de individuele wil onafhankelijke externe omstandigheden is één van de noodzakelijke condities voor de ontwikkeling van de sociale wetenschappen. Constantin-François Volney (1757-1820), lid van de Franse groep intellectuelen gekend als de Idéologues, actief tijdens en in de nadagen van de Franse Revolutie, heeft in dit proces een belangrijke en onderschatte rol gespeeld; als auteur van een reeks etnografische en methodologische teksten.
Methodologisch bepleit Volney een doorgedreven empirisme gebaseerd op observatie en systematische gegevensverzameling. Daarnaast anticipeert hij op één van de sociologische hoofdvragen: de relatie tussen structuur en handeling. In de derde plaats is er het opmerkelijke inzicht in de mogelijkheden en beperkingen en daardoor ook de specificiteit van de sociale wetenschappen.

This study aims to question the traditional interpretation of the Enlightenment discourse, which rests upon the assumption that Eastern Europeans were considered as uneducated savages (an image created by Western European elites) that need to be developed according to the principles of Western civilization. Such a view might be deemed incomplete and thus misleading. Of course, there have always been many “Western progressive thinkers” who promoted the idea of westernization of the East, as well as there have been plenty of Eastern Enlightenment intellectuals holding onto Western ideals as a means of salvation from backwardness. However, one should admit that the original Eastern structures of state and society represented an inspiring alternative that enabled some theoreticians to get a different viewpoint; as obvious in the Polish case. Taking the uniqueness of their 18th century political system into account, one is able to acknowledge the importance of the Polish internal debate that tried to answer whether a republican spirit of the state was something that should have been reserved or completely rejected. In terms of the East-Western dichotomical point of view however, it is essential that this contradiction between republic as “bulwark of freedom” and “backward barbarism” did not only represent a local issue, but also piqued Western curiosity, especially Rousseau’s one. Hence, it is fully legitimate to analyse his approach towards this Eastern European country and his conclusions that contradicted both the Western as well as the Polish common convictions that the region was something undesirable. Thus, the main purpose of this paper is to analyse and explain the tensions between Rousseau and Polish Enlightenment thinkers such as M. Wielhorski or S. Leszczyński and, by clarifying them, to reveal a deeper ambiguity of the Enlightenment discourse concerning the interpretation of Eastern Europe as well as human nature.

Résumé: Cet article reconsidère le retournement théorique de Galiani à propos de la liberté du commerce des grains à la lumière de son activité de diplomate napolitain à Paris. Son passage tardif dans le camp des opposants à « l'édit de liberté » de 1764 ne peut s'expliquer uniquement par des motifs intellectuels, ni par le seul opportunisme politique. En ce sens, la critique des physiocrates constitue tout autant une offensive contre la politique étrangère de Choiseul.

This essay explores the movement of concepts from European political culture, and the historical and political order of things of the Enlightenment, to Iran in the nineteenth century. It elaborates translation as a process that brings together Iranian contact with European culture, and the changes in the language and practice of politics around the 1906 Iranian Constitutional Revolution. While tracing the translation of European thought to a paradigmatic piece of Qajar travel writing
by Mirza Saleh Shirazi, it relates translation to the epistemic shifts that give form to ‘the modern’ in Iran. It demonstrates that Mirza Saleh Shirazi’s travelogue is marked by an ‘epistemic confusion’ that reflect the changing order of Iranian things and shape the novel religious and political discourses of the Constitutional Revolution. As a result, and in contrast to the conventional narrative that attribute the Constitutional Revolution to the emulation of Europe as a site of difference, it
argues that the 1906 Revolution was made possible through a transferential relation with the difference internal to Iranian history and cultural traditions.

The concept of Justice constitutes a requisite foundation in Aristotle’s and Adam Smith’s moral thought. Smith places much importance on the question of defining and fulfilling justice in modern commercial society, which, in his view, exacts new moral principles. He therefore espouses Aristotle’s notion of justice in order to form a cogent argument in his magnum opus The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Smith contends further that his idea of propriety concurs with Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean. However, according to Aristotle, justice stands out from all the other virtues, for it can barely fit into the doctrine of mean, which fails to offer the explanations of the provenance and the corresponding emotions to justice per se. Justice, in Aristotle’s opinion, amounts to a virtue relating to the others; meanwhile, it reveals the internal stability of the moral agent’s soul, which enables him to conduct the properest moral judgements. Hence a just person is capable of manifesting himself by external actions, which contributes to the whole good of the state. Smith transforms the aforementioned ideas together with his impartial spectator, referring justice to the underpinning pillar of a society. This essay examines Smith’s understanding and application of the Aristotelian concept of justice via a comparison study. It elucidates the prima facile resemblance between Smith’s and Aristotle’s moral thought. It also attests that both the thinkers acknowledge the external and internal meaning of justice, namely, the harmony of the whole society and the moral agent’s state of character. Last but not least, Smith’s commitment to the theory of justice is, in fact, for the purpose of preserving liberty, which illuminates that a free society takes priority over a beneficent one in his political ideal.

Scottish philosophy and intellectual history have become the increasingly fashionable fields of academic studies. Alexander Broadie, one of the pioneers and an accomplished scholar of the Scottish Enlightenment, returns to the basic question, namely, “what is Scottish philosophy?”, and presents a comprehensive work on the history of Scottish philosophy. Broadie successfully elucidates the nature and significance of Scottish philosophy both historically and philosophically. He argues that Scottish philosophy must be studied in its historical context, for it is not only a philosophical enterprise but also a persistent tradition which has united the Scottish nation for centuries. The advancements in science, literature, politics, and culture in Scotland would be extremely unlikely, if not impossible, without such an intellectual culture established by thinkers in that tradition. This article is intended as a review of Broadie’s A History of Scottish Philosophy in the background of his shifting academic interests from philosophy to history while he holds the professorship in University of Glasgow. His commitment to Scottish philosophical culture deserves the attention of contemporary historians and philosophers, for his work opens up a space for dialogue between intellectual history and history of philosophy, an issue addressed at the end of this paper.