Revolutions in early-modern Europe  
 
Sociability and political society: 
topics in early-modern intellectual history 
 

Text and context: comparative intellectual history 

PhD colloquium 
Instructor: László Kontler 
Credits: 2 
 

The course is an introduction into the study of the transmission of ideas about society and politics through geographic/cultural and temporal boundaries in the Age of Enlightenment and the nineteenth century. The course is organized into three main units. First, dominant approaches in intellectual history will be surveyed. Next, two areas of meaningful comparison in the history of ideas will be explored on eighteenth and nineteenth-century material: (a) changing accents in the oeuvre of specific authors when transported to a different environment through translation and/or adaptation; (b) key concepts of social and political discourse as appearing in the oeuvre of authors of different backgrounds. 

The literature listed below can (and is welcome to) be supplemented by material from additional Central and/or East European cultures according to the composition of the class. Where no edition has been specified, any edition of several available ones can be consulted. Texts not available in the CEU Library shall be collected in a reader. 
 

I. Discourses of method 

John Plamenatz, Man and Society (revised edn., London, New York, 1992), Introduction 
Quentin Skinner, "Meaning and understanding in the history of ideas", in James Tully (ed.), Meaning and Context. Quentin Skinner and his Critics (Cambridge, 1988), or idem, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought (Cambridge, 1978), introduction 
J. G. A. Pocock, "The state of the art", in idem, Virtue, Commerce, and History (Cambridge, 1985) 
Conal Condren, The Status and Appraisal of Classic Texts (Princeton, 1985), esp. ch. 2. 
Melvin Richter, The History of Political and Social Concepts. A Critical Introduction (Oxford, 1995), esp. chs. 1-2. 
 

II.1. Enlightenment perceptions of old regime and modernity  

a) The spirit of the laws from North America to Central Europe  

Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, bks. I-XI, XIV, XV, XIX, XXIII-XXV 
Robert Shackleton, Montesquieu. A Critical Biography (Oxford, 1961), chs. XI-XV. 
Judith Shklar, Montesquieu (Oxford, 1987), chs. 4-6. 
Rudolf Vierhaus, "Montesquieu in Deutschland", in idem, Deutschland im 18. Jahrhundert. Politische Verfassung, soziales Gefüge, geistige Bewegungen (Göttingen, 1987) 

László Péter, "Montesquieu's Paradox on Freedom and Hungary's Constitutions 1790-1990", History of Political Thought XVI/1 (1995) 

b) Modern manners and their revolution: Robertson and Burke in the continent 

William Robertson: "A View of the Progress of Society in Europe from the Subversion of the Roman Empire to the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century" (introduction to The History of Charles V, 1769) 
Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (pp. 1-92 in the Indianapolis 1987 edition, with the Introduction by J. G. A. Pocock) 
Karen O'Brien, Narratives of Enlightenment. Cosmopolitan History from Voltaire to Gibbon (Cambridge, 1997), ch. 5. 
Rod Preece, "Edmund Burke and his European Reception", The Eighteenth Century 21/3 (1980) 
László Kontler, "William Robertson's history of manners in German 1770-1795", Journal of the History of Ideas 1997/1 
László Kontler, "The memory and theory of ancien régime: Edmund Burke and his German followers", European Review of History 1997/1 
 

II.2. From the eighteenth into the nineteenth century 

a) Civil society: the Scottish Enlightenment and Germany 

Adam Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society, ed. Fania Oz-Salzberger (Cambridge, 1995), pt. II. ii-iii, III. ii-iii, vi-viii, IV. i-iii, V. ii-iii, VI. i-iii, v-vi. 
G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, ed. T. M. Knox (Oxford, 1976) 
G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History (Cambridge, 1975) 
Fania Oz-Salzberger, Translating the Enlightenment. Scottish Civic Discourse in Eighteenth-Century Germany (Oxford, 1995), chs. 1-6. 
Norbert Waszek, The Scottish Enlightenment and Hegel's Account of "Civil Society" (Dordrecht/Boston/New York, 1988), chs. 2, 4-6. 
 

b) Moral philosophy and political economy, or the science of a legislator 

Adam Smith: The Wealth of Nations, (Indianapolis, 1976) bk. I. i-ii, bk. III, bk. IV. i-iii. 
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Indianapolis, 1982), pt. I. sect. iii, pt. III, pt. IV, pt. VII. sect. ii-iii. 
James Steuart, An Inquiry into the Principles of Political Oeconomy (Edinburgh/London, 1966), bk. II. chs. i-iii, xii-xiv, xx-xxii. 
Edmund Burke, Thoughts and Details on Scarcity, in The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, vol. IX. (Oxford, 1991) 
Robert Malthus, Essay on the Principle of Population (New York, 1976) 
Robert Malthus, Principles of Political Econmomy (Cambridge, 1989) 

Donald Winch, Riches and poverty. An intellectual history of political economy in Britain 1750-1834 (Cambridge, 1996) 
Christopher Berry, The idea of luxury. A conceptual and historical investigation (Cambridge, 1994), chs. 5-7. 
Keith Tribe, Governing economy. The Reformation of German Economic Discourse 1750-1840 (Cambridge, 1992), chs. 3, 7, 8. 
 

III. "The dominant ideas of the nineteenth century"  

Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Representative Governments 1, 2, 9, 15-19 and The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with that of the Ancients, in Political Writings, ed. Biancamaria Fontana (Cambridge, 1988) 
Alexis de Tocqueville, The Ancien Régime and Revolution, bk. I. i-v, bk. II. ii, viii-xi, bk. III. vii-viii. 
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty 
John Stuart Mill, Considerations on Representative Government, 3, 5-12, 16. 
Lord Acton, "Freedom in Christianity", "The Harbingers of Revolution", "Nationality", in Selected Writings (Indianapolis, 1986) 
Matthew Arnold, "Democracy", Culture and Anarchy 1-6, "Equality" in Culture and Anarchy and Other Writings, ed. Stefan Collini (Cambridge, 1993) 
József Eötvös, The Dominant Ideas of the Nineteenth Century and their Influence on the State (Columbia, 1997) 
Biancamaria Fontana, Benjamin Constant and the post-revolutionary mind (New Haven, 1991) 
Larry Siedentop, Tocqueville (Oxford, 1994) 
Alan S. Kahan, Aristocratic Liberalism. The Social and Political Thought of Jacob Burckhardt, John Stuart Mill and Alexis de Tocqueville (Oxford, 1992) 
Stefan Collini, John Burrow, Donald Winch, That Noble Science of Politics. A Study in Nineteenth-Century Intellectual History (Cambridge, 1983) 
Stefan Collini, Public moralists: political thought and intellectual life in Britain 1850-1930 (Oxford, 1993)