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PHILOSOPHY AND POLITICAL AGENCY IN THE WRITINGS OF FREDERICK II OF PRUSSIA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2020

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AVI LIFSCHITZ*
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University of Oxford
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Magdalen College, Oxford, ox1 4au[email protected]
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Abstract

Frederick II's writings have conventionally been viewed either as political tools or as means of public self-fashioning – part of his campaign to raise the status of Prussia from middling principality to great power. This article, by contrast, argues that Frederick's works must also be taken seriously on their own terms, and interpreted against the background of Enlightenment philosophy. Frederick's notions of kingship and state service were not governed mostly by a principle of pure morality or ‘humanitarianism’, as argued influentially by Friedrich Meinecke. On the contrary, the king's views were part and parcel of an eighteenth-century vision of modern kingship in commercial society, based on the benign pursuit of self-love and luxury. A close analysis of Frederick's writings demonstrates that authorial labour was integral to his political agency, publicly placing constraints on what could be perceived as legitimate conduct, rather than mere intellectual window-dressing or an Enlightened pastime in irresolvable tension with his politics.

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Article
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The Historical Journal , Volume 64 , Issue 3 , June 2021 , pp. 533 - 556
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Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press.

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Footnotes

The article is based on the annual Quentin Skinner Lecture in Modern Intellectual History at the University of Cambridge, April 2018. I am grateful to the electors to the Quentin Skinner Fellowship for the invitation to deliver the Lecture, and to the discussants and audience at Cambridge for helpful suggestions and comments. The main arguments and examples also appear in the introduction to Frederick the Great's philosophical writings, ed. Avi Lifschitz, trans. Angela Scholar (Princeton, NJ, 2021).

References

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7 See, most recently, Pečar, Andreas, Die Masken des Königs. Friedrich II. von Preußen als Schriftsteller (Frankfurt am Main, 2016)Google Scholar.

8 Œuvres de Frédéric le Grand, ed. Johann David Erdmann Preuß (30 vols., Berlin, 1846–56) (henceforth OFG). This edition is freely accessible online at http://friedrich.uni-trier.de/.

9 An early example can be found in Frederick's letter to Voltaire, 12 June 1740 (D2233), in Œuvres complètes de Voltaire, ed. Theodore Besterman et al. (Geneva and Oxford, 1968–2021) (henceforth OCV), xci, p. 205.

10 See Quentin Skinner's distinction between recoverable discursive intentions and irretrievable psychological motives in ‘Motives, intentions and interpretation’, in Visions of politics (3 vols., Cambridge, 2002), i, pp. 90–102. On self-imposed constraints and the question of sincerity, see Skinner's ‘Augustan party politics and Renaissance constitutional thought’, in Visions of politics, ii, pp. 344–67.

11 Charles-Philippe d'Albert, duc de Luynes, Mémoires du duc de Luynes sur la cour de Louis XV, 1735–1758, iii, ed. Louis Dussieux and Eudore Soulié (Paris, 1860), p. 267.

12 See section IV below.

13 ‘The sovereign, far from being the absolute master of the people who are under his domination, is himself only their first servant’ (‘Anti-Machiavel’, in Frederick the Great's philosophical writings, ed. Avi Lifschitz, trans. Angela Scholar (Princeton, NJ, 2021), p. 15 (henceforth FGPW)).

14 On the differences between Pufendorf's historical works and Frederick's own accounts of his dynasty, see Clark, Christopher, Time and power: visions of history in German politics from the Thirty Years’ War to the Third Reich (Princeton, NJ, 2019), pp. 72–117Google Scholar; Pečar, Masken des Königs, pp. 33–81.

15 Skinner, Quentin, ‘The state’, in Ball, Terence, Farr, James, and Hanson, Russell L., eds., Political innovation and conceptual change (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 90–131Google Scholar; idem, ‘From the state of princes to the person of the state’, in Visions of politics, ii, pp. 368–413.

16 Ch. 17 in Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan, ed. Malcolm, Noel (Oxford, 2012), ii.i, pp. 254–7Google Scholar. For Pufendorf's version: Of the law of nature and nations, trans. Basil Kennet (London, 1717), book vii, ch. 2, p. 476.

17 Skinner, ‘From the state of princes’, p. 405.

18 As Frederick usually read classical and modern philosophy in French, the most probable conduit was Jean Barbeyrac's French translation of Pufendorf's De iure naturae et gentium under the title Le droit de la nature et des gens (Amsterdam, 1706). On Barbeyrac's background in the Huguenot community in Berlin, see Sieglinde Othmer, Berlin und die Verbreitung des Naturrechts in Europa (Berlin, 1970), pp. 60–90.

19 ‘Essay on the forms of government and the duties of sovereigns’, FGPW, p. 199.

20 Ibid., p. 205.

21 ‘Speech to parliament of 21 March 1610’, in King James VI and I, Political writings, ed. Johann P. Sommerville (Cambridge, 1995), p. 181 (modernized orthography).

22 See also ‘The trew law of free monarchies’, ibid., pp. 62–84.

23 Bodin, On sovereignty, ed. Julian H. Franklin (Cambridge, 1992), Book i.8.3 (Bodin, Les Six livres de la République/De Republica libri sex, Book i, ed. Mario Turchetti and Nicolas de Araujo, preface by Quentin Skinner (Paris, 2013), pp. 448–9). Unlike James VI and I or, subsequently, Bossuet, biblical precedent did not play a central role in Bodin's theory.

24 Ibid., p. 23.

25 Bossuet, Politics drawn from the very words of Holy Scripture, ed. Patrick Riley (Cambridge, 1990), p. 245; Politique tirée des propres paroles des l'Ecriture sainte, ed. Jacques Le Brun (Geneva, 1967), p. 272.

26 ‘Examination of the Essay on prejudice’, FGPW, p. 177.

27 Ch. 21 in Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Malcolm, ii.i, p. 332.

28 See the introduction to François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon, Telemachus, ed. Patrick Riley (Cambridge, 1994), pp. xiv–xv.

29 Bratuscheck, Ernst, Die Erziehung Friedrichs des Großen (Berlin, 1885), pp. 27–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Zeller, Eduard, Friedrich der Große als Philosoph (Berlin, 1886), pp. 237–8Google Scholar.

30 Schieder, Friedrich der Große, p. 105; Schieder, Frederick the Great, p. 77. Schieder notes that Frederick contrasted at the outset of chapter vii of Anti-Machiavel an angelic Fénelon to a demonic Machiavelli (FGPW, p. 27). The purpose of this juxtaposition was, however, surely to dismiss both views of morality as exaggerated and non-practical.

31 Meinecke, Idee der Staatsräson, pp. 350–1. An exception, emphasizing the modern elements in Anti-Machiavel (from a political perspective) is Isaac Nakhimovsky, ‘The enlightened prince and the future of Europe: Voltaire and Frederick the Great's Anti-Machiavel of 1740’, in Kapossy, Nakhimovsky, and Whatmore, eds., Commerce and peace, pp. 44–77.

32 ‘Examination of the Essay on prejudice’, FGPW, p. 176.

33 The literature on the luxury debate is vast. A partial list would include Hirschman, Albert, The passions and the interests: political arguments for capitalism before its triumph (Princeton, NJ, 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hont, István and Ignatieff, Michael, eds., Wealth and virtue: the shaping of political economy in the Scottish Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1983)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Berry, Christopher, The idea of luxury: a conceptual and historical investigation (Cambridge, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hont, István, Jealousy of trade: international competition and the nation-state in historical perspective (Cambridge, MA, 2005)Google Scholar; idem, ‘The early Enlightenment debate on commerce and luxury’, in Mark Goldie and Robert Wokler, eds., The Cambridge history of eighteenth-century political thought (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 379–418.

34 Saint-Lambert, Jean-François de, ‘Luxe’, in Diderot, Denis and Jean-Baptiste le Rond d'Alembert, eds., Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, ix (Neuchâtel, 1765), pp. 763–71Google Scholar (at p. 763).

35 ‘Commerce cures destructive prejudices, and it is an almost general rule that everywhere there are gentle mores, there is commerce and that everywhere there is commerce, there are gentle mores’ (Book xx, ch. 1, in Montesquieu, The spirit of the laws, trans. A. M. Cohler, B. C. Miller, and H. S. Stone (Cambridge, 1989), p. 338; ‘De l'esprit des lois’, in Œuvres complètes, ed. Roger Caillois (2 vols., Paris, 1949–51), ii, p. 585).

36 Letter 25 in Voltaire, Philosophical letters; or, letters concerning the English nation, ed. John Leigh, trans. Prudence Steiner (Indianapolis, IN, 2007), p. 103.

37 Gottmann, Felicia, ‘Du Châtelet, Voltaire, and the transformation of Mandeville's Fable’, History of European Ideas, 38 (2012), pp. 218–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Du Châtelet's version of Mandeville's Fable is available as an appendix in Wade, Ira O., Studies on Voltaire: with some unpublished papers of Mme du Châtelet (Princeton, NJ, 1947)Google Scholar.

38 See W. H. Barber's introduction to the Traité in OCV, xiv, pp. 384–7, 409–11.

39 OCV, xvi, pp. 295–303. See Haydn Mason's introduction to Le Mondain (ibid., pp. 273–88); Cronk, Nicholas, ‘The Epicurean spirit: champagne and the defence of poetry in Voltaire's Le Mondain’, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 371 (1999), pp. 53–80Google Scholar; Wade, Studies on Voltaire, pp. 49–56.

40 OCV, xvi, p. 296.

41 ‘The illustrious [seventeenth-century Swedish] Queen Christina abandoned her kingdom to look for the arts; govern, Sir, and let the arts come looking for you’ (Voltaire to Frederick, 26 Aug. 1736, in OFG, xxi, p. 8). For an exhortation to continue writing rhymed verse, see Voltaire to Frederick, [12?] Oct. 1737 (D1375), in OCV, lxxxviii, p. 380.

42 ‘Le Mondain’, lines 22–9, OCV, xvi, p. 296; ‘Au prince royal de Prusse’, lines 71–5, ibid., p. 380.

43 ‘Défense du Mondain’ (early 1737), lines 113–19, OCV, xvi, pp. 308–9.

44 ‘Sachez surtout que le luxe enrichit / Un grand État, s'il en perd un petit’ (‘Défense du Mondain’, OCV, xvi, p. 306).

45 Voltaire to Frederick, 16 Nov. 1743 (D2887), OCV, xciii, p. 25.

46 ‘Au prince royal de Prusse’ (Sept.–Oct. 1736), lines 76–89, OCV, xvi, pp. 381–2.

47 Voltaire to Frederick, Jan. 1737 (D1251), OCV, lxxxviii, p. 190.

48 Frederick to Voltaire, 16 Jan. 1737 (D1261), OCV, lxxxviii, p. 205. See also Voltaire's programmatic letter about ethics (D1376), 15 Oct. 1737: ibid., pp. 381–5.

49 ‘Anti-Machiavel’, FGPW, p. 47; my emphases.

50 Book vii, ch. 4, in Montesquieu, Spirit of the laws, p. 100; Œuvres completes, ii, pp. 336–7. Cf. Dreitzel, Horst, Monarchiebegriffe in der Fürstengesellschaft (2 vols., Cologne, 1991), ii, pp. 732–5Google Scholar.

51 Rousseau, , ‘Discourse on the sciences and arts’, in The discourses and other early political writings, ed. Gourevitch, Victor (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 1–28Google Scholar.

52 OFG, ix, pp. 195–207.

53 Rousseau, Discourses, p. 218.

54 ‘An essay on self-love, considered as a principle of morality’, FGPW, p. 146.

55 Ibid., p. 143.

56 Ibid., p. 140.

57 ‘Epistle xviii: To Keith, on the vain terrors of death and the fears of another life’, FGPW, p. 115.

58 Frederick was not aware of Rousseau's later, more positive reconceptualization of self-love (which resembled his own) in Émile, or on education (1762). See Lifschitz, Avi, ‘Adrastus versus Diogenes: Frederick the Great and Jean-Jacques Rousseau on self-love’, in Lifschitz, Avi, ed., Engaging with Rousseau (Cambridge, 2016), pp. 17–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

59 Meinecke, Idee der Staatsräson, pp. 354–6. Eduard Zeller compared Frederick's sense of obligation to the state to Kant's disinterested moral duty, while recognizing an irresolvable tension with the king's endorsement of the pursuit of self-love (Zeller, Friedrich als Philosoph, pp. 69–70).

60 ‘Essay on the forms of government and the duties of sovereigns’, FGPW, p. 205.

61 On public opinion and debate in print, especially in Germany, see Habermas, Jürgen, The structural transformation of the public sphere, trans. Burger, Thomas and Lawrence, Frederick (Cambridge, MA, 1989), pp. 71–117Google Scholar; Vopa, Anthony La, ‘Conceiving a public: ideas and society in eighteenth-century Europe’, Journal of Modern History, 64 (1992), pp. 79–116Google Scholar; Blanning, T. C. W., The culture of power and the power of culture: Old Regime Europe 1660–1789 (Oxford, 2002), pp. 194–232CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Goldenbaum, Ursula et al. , Appell an das Publikum: Die öffentliche Debatte in der deutschen Aufklärung 1687–1796 (Berlin, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

62 ‘De la Littérature Allemande; des defauts qu'on peut lui reprocher; quelles en sont les causes, et par quels moyens on peut les corriger’, in OFG, vii, p. 120.

63 Kant, Immanuel, Political writings, ed. Reiss, Hans, trans. Nisbet, H. B. (Cambridge, 1991), p. 58Google Scholar.

64 Klein, Ernst Ferdinand, ‘The freedom of thought and of the press’, trans. Christian, John Laursen, in What is Enlightenment?, ed. Schmidt, James (Berkeley, CA, 1996), p. 88Google Scholar. Originally published in Berlinische Monatsschrift, 3 (1784), pp. 312–30.

65 Blanning, T. C. W., Frederick the Great: king of Prussia (London, 2015), pp. 335–9Google Scholar.

66 Moore, John, A view of society and manners in France, Switzerland, and Germany (2 vols., London, 1779), ii, p. 187Google Scholar.

67 ‘Here is what a single man has brought about, without the help of legislation. One should well reflect how generous goodwill (libérale bienveillance) on behalf of the government made this great work happen’ (Honoré Gabriel Riquetti, comte de Mirabeau, De la monarchie prussienne sous Frédéric le Grand, v (London, 1788), p. 58). Mirabeau's focus on a few Berlin-based families did not capture the serious discrimination suffered by most Jews in Prussia; see Schenk, Tobias, Wegbereiter der Emanzipation? Studien zur Judenpolitik des ‘Aufgeklärten Absolutismus’ in Preußen (1763–1812) (Berlin, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

68 Mirabeau, De la monarchie prussienne, v, p. 348.

69 For an overview of public discussion in Prussia in the early 1780s, see Möller, Horst, Vernunft und Kritik. Deutsche Aufklärung im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt am Main, 1986), pp. 281–307Google Scholar.

70 Lessing to Nicolai, 25 Aug. 1769, in Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Sämtliche Schriften, ed. Karl Lachmann and Franz Muncker (23 vols., Leipzig, 1886–1924), xvii, p. 298.

71 Nicolai to Lessing, 29 Aug. 1769, in ibid., xix, p. 315. Under Frederick II's successor, Frederick William II, the remit of censorship was significantly extended in an edict of 19 Dec. 1788. In 1794, Nicolai's journal, Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek, was proscribed in several Prussian provinces, although it had been sold in 1792 to a non-Prussian publisher (Möller, Vernunft und Kritik, p. 283).

72 Kant, Political writings, p. 55 (original emphases).

73 Ibid., p. 59 (original emphases).

74 On the transformation of the draft legal code (Gesetzbuch) of the mid-1780s into the 1794 Allegemeines Landrecht, see Birtsch, Günter, ‘Reformabsolutismus und Gesetzesstaat: Rechtsauffassung und Justizpolitik Friedrichs des Großen’, in Birtsch, Günter and Willoweit, Dietmar, eds., Reformabsolutismus und ständische Gesellschaft (Berlin, 1998), pp. 47–62Google Scholar; Finkenauer, Thomas, ‘Vom Alegemeinen Gesetzbuch zum Allgemeinen Landrecht – preußische Gesetzgebung in der Krise’, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte (Germanistische Abteilung), 113 (1996), pp. 40–216CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

75 See n. 67 above.

76 This critique was more attenuated in his reviews of d'Holbach's works in 1770.

77 Tocqueville, The ancien régime, ed. Elster, pp. 201–5; Tocqueville, L'ancien régime, ed. Mayer, pp. 345–50.