Monarchisms in the Age of Enlightenment

by Blom, Hans; Laursen, John Christian; Simonutti, Luisa

• ISBN13: 9780802091772
• ISBN10: 0802091776
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-05-01
• Publisher: Univ of Toronto Pr

Summary

In recent decades, historians of early-modern European political thought have tended to neglect the concept of monarchy and monarchism, focusing instead on the development of republicanism during this period. Monarchisms in the Age of Enlightenmentaims to correct this imbalance by illustrating that many thinkers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in fact, saw monarchy as a solution to the instability, chaos, and even violence of experiments with republican government. Editors Hans Blom, John Christian Laursen, and Luisa Simonutti have brought together outstanding scholars in the field to correct many of the misleading stereotypes about monarchy, and to explore the variety and dynamism of this form of government, in early-modern Europe. Contributors explore four major themes: monarchisms in the political thought of Spinoza, Bayle, Fénelon, Hume, and Montesquieu; enlightened Christian and millenarian monarchisms; defending and resisting absolute monarchy; and, finally, reflections on the British monarchy. Fascinating and timely, Monarchisms in the Age of Enlightenmentwill be of interest to historians, political theorists, political philosophers, and political scientists.

Author Biography

Hans Blom is a professor in the Department of Social Science at Erasmus University, Rotterdam. John Christian Laursen is a professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Riverside. Luisa Simonutti is a research associate at the Istituto per la Storia del Pensiero Filosofico e Scientifico Moderno û CNR, and an adjunct professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Ferrara.

Table of Contents

Spinoza on Res Publica, republics, and monarchies	p. 19
'Absolute, not arbitrary, power' : monarchism and politics in the thought of the Huguenots and Pierre Bayle	p. 45
Bayle and Hume on monarchy, scepticism, and forms of government	p. 60
Fenelon's 'republican' monarchism in Telemachus	p. 78
Free trade, free speech, and free love : monarchy from the liberal prospect in mid-eighteenth century France	p. 101
Caesar Augustus in Vico's New science : monarchy as remedy for democracy	p. 121
'Everything must be redone' : Condillac as critic of despotism and defender of toleration	p. 144
The fifth monarchy redux	p. 162
Defending monarchism in Denmark-Norway in the eighteenth century	p. 175
Popular philosophy and absolute monarchy	p. 194
The Prussian monarchy and the practices of enlightenment	p. 217
Theorizing enlightened absolutism : the Swiss republican origins of Prussian monarchism	p. 240
Intellectual resistance to absolute monarchy in eighteenth-century Prussia : Castillon's translation of Blount's Philostratus	p. 267
Monarchy in the name of Britain : the case of George III	p. 285
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