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THE SEARCH FOR THE ORIGINS OF MODERN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLICAN POLITICAL THOUGHT IN EARLY MODERN SWITZERLAND*

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KapossyBéla, Iselin contra Rousseau: Sociable Patriotism and the History of Mankind (Basel: Schwabe, 2006)
MaissenThomas, Die Geburt der Republic: Staatsverständnis und Repräsentation in der frühneuzeitlichen Eidgenossenschaft (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006)
WeinmannBarbara, Eine andere Bürgergesellschaft: Klassischer Republikanismus und Kommunalismus im Kanton Zürich im späten 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2002)

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Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 September 2011

MARC H. LERNER
MARC H. LERNER*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Mississippi E-mail: [email protected]
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Extract

What are the debts that the modern world owes to the political culture of the Enlightenment? For historians of political thought this is a widely debated subject. Throughout Europe, the Enlightenment provided the critical lens for a widespread reassessment of the nature of political authority. Much of the intellectual history of the eighteenth century focuses on this reassessment and the debates over the nature of good government, liberty and sovereignty. The discussion of these issues is linked to the history of liberalism, democratic republicanism, popular sovereignty, and the nature of the modern political world itself.

Type
Review Essays
Information
Modern Intellectual History , Volume 8 , Issue 3 , November 2011 , pp. 647 - 658
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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References

1 Hume, David, “Of Civil Liberty,” in idem, Essays, Moral, Political, Literary, ed. Miller, Eugene F. (Indianapolis, 1987)Google Scholar.

2 See Hunt, Lynn, Inventing Human Rights: A History (New York and London, 2007)Google Scholar; Israel, Jonathan, Enlightenment Contested: Philosophy, Modernity, and the Emancipation of Man 1670–1752 (Oxford, 2006), 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 E.g., Pocock, J. G. A., The Machiviallian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, 1975)Google Scholar; Skinner, Quentin and van Gelderen, Martin, eds., Republicanism: A Shared European Heritage, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 2002)Google Scholar.

4 He references the term Denkfamilien to Marco Geuna.

5 Berlin, Isaiah, Two Concepts of Liberty (Oxford, 1958)Google Scholar; Seigel, Jerrold, foreword to Pierre Manent, Intellectual History of Liberalism, trans. Balinski, Rebecca (Princeton, NJ, 1995), xiGoogle Scholar; Skinner, , Liberty before Liberalism (Cambridge, 1998)Google Scholar.

6 See Wurgler, Andreas, “The League of Discordant Members or How the Old Swiss Confederation Operated and How Has It Managed to Survive for so Long?”, in Holenstein, André, Maissen, Thomas and Prak, Maarten, eds., The Republican Alternative: The Netherlands and Switzerland Compared (Amsterdam, 2008)Google Scholar; Peyer, Hans Conrad, Verfassungsgeschichte der alten Schweiz (Zurich, 1978)Google Scholar; Steinberg, Jonathan, Why Switzerland?, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 von Muralt, Leonhard, Alte und neue Freiheit in der helvetischen Revolution (Zurich, 1941)Google Scholar; Suter, Andreas, “Vormoderne und moderne Demokratie in der Schweiz,” Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 31 (2004)Google Scholar.

8 Blickle, Peter, “Communalism, Parliamentarism, Republicanism”, Parliaments, Estates and Representation 6 (June 1986), 13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Weinmann is explicit about Blickle's and Pocock's work shaping the prism with which she examines Swiss history (14–18). These references are made starting with her title, which refers to a translation into German of Pocock's essays (Pocock, John G. A., Die andere Bürgergesellschaft: Zur Dialektik von Tugend und Korruption (Frankfurt, 1993)Google Scholar) and a variety of Blickle's works, e.g. Kommunalismus: Skizzen einer gesellschaftlichen Organisationsform (Munich, 2000).

10 Kapossy, 311. Although he expresses doubts that the Swiss case is a perfect fit with the civic humanism explored in the Anglo-American world, Kapossy certainly sees Bern as a potential model of neo-Roman republicanism in the Swiss Confederation. E.g., Kapossy, “Neo-Roman Republicanism and Commercial Society: The Example of Eighteenth-Century Berne,” in Skinner and van Gelderen, eds., Republicanism.

11 Lavater, , Der Ungerechte Landvogt oder Klagen eines Patrioten (Zurich, 1762, 2)Google Scholar.

12 Her labels of philanthropic and ancient radical republicanism are terms that others have adopted. E.g., Zurbuchen, 75.

13 For another view on Lavater see Freedman, Jeffrey, A Poisoned Chalice (Princeton, 2002)Google Scholar.

14 Zurbuchen, chap. 2, 74–5; Kapossy, 28–46.

15 Pocock, , Barbarism and Religion, vol. 1, The Enlightenments of Edward Gibbon, 1737–1764 (Cambridge, 1999), 2Google Scholar.

16 Pocock, , “Historiography and Enlightenment: A View of Their History,” Modern Intellectual History 5 (April 2008), 83CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pocock, “Introduction,” Barbarism and Religion, vol. 1.

17 Kempe, Michael and Maissen, Thomas, Die Collegia der Insulaner, Vertraulichen und Wohlgesinnten in Zürich, 1679–1709: Die ersten deutschsprachigen Aufklärungsgesellschaften zwischen Naturwissenschaften, Bibelkritik, Geschichte und Politik (Zurich, 2002)Google Scholar.

18 For those who support the idea of a longer transition period into the nineteenth century see Weinmann; Adler, Benjamin, Die Entstehung der direkten Demokratie: Das Beispiel der Landsgemeinde Schwyz, 1789–1866 (Zurich, 2006)Google Scholar; Zimmer, Oliver, A Contested Nation: History, Memory and Nationalism in Switzerland, 1761–1891 (Cambridge, 2003)Google Scholar; Schaffner, Martin, “Direkte Demokratie: ‘Alles für das Volk—alles durch das Volk,’” in Hettling, Manfred et al. , Eine kleine Geschichte der Schweiz: Der Bundesstaat und seine Traditionen (Frankfurt, 1998)Google Scholar.

19 Maissen, , “Petrus Valkeniers republikanische Sendung: Die niederländische Prägung des neuzeitlichen schweizerischen Staatsverständnisses,” Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Geschichte 48 (1998), 149–76Google Scholar; Maissen, 349–58.

20 One might, in fact, consider Iselin's texts to be some of the texts that Maissen claims are missing.