| Review of: | The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Political Thought edited by Mark Goldie, Robert Wokler |
|---|---|
| Reviewed By: | Simone Zurbuchen |
| Reviewed in: | Political Studies Review |
| Date accepted online: | 14/01/2008 |
| Published in print: | Volume 05, Issue 03, Pages 395-474 |
Book Reviews: Political Theory
This volume provides the most comprehensive survey of the development of political thought in the eighteenth century available today. The editors' stated aim was not to engage with any specific notion of the Enlightenment, but rather to lay out a thematic framework which lies within the orbits of competing claims about the origins, nature and limits of the Enlightenment. In order to emphasise the polemical character of eighteenth-century political thought, the volume focuses on national and international debates in diverse historical contexts, instead of following the internal logic of each author's career. The material is organised around six major themes presented in roughly chronological order: (1) the
The decision to structure the survey along a series of relatively autonomous essays was basically a happy one. While on the one hand this warranted internal coherence of the chapters, it allowed on the other great variety in method and content. Some chapters focus on key debates in different national contexts (e.g. Goldie on 'The English System of Liberty'), while others introduce major authors belonging to a distinct tradition of political thought (e.g. Fetscher on 'Republicanism and Popular Sovereignty') or outline the origin and development of new sciences (e.g. Wokler on 'Ideology and the Origins of Social Science'). This way of proceeding, however, is not entirely unproblematic. One may wonder, for example, why the idea of human rights, commonly held to be a key concept of the Enlightenment, does not gain any visibility in the volume, even though the idea of natural rights is extensively dealt with (by Haakonssen on 'German Natural Law' and Moore on 'Natural Rights in the Scottish Enlightenment') and authors who advocated the rights of 'mankind' or of 'men' and 'women' (Adam Smith, Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Mary Wollstonecraft, Thomas Paine, etc.) are at least briefly mentioned. A sub-chapter on this concept or an entry in the index would have been useful.
Equally striking is the omission of any discussion of theories of international relations, which gained much attention in contemporary political thought. The few cursory remarks on the Abbé de St-Pierre's and Kant's writings on perpetual peace or on Wolff's and Vattel's idea of