Tracing the origins of modern political thought through three sets of arguments over history, morality, and freedom In this wide-ranging work, Michael Sonenscher traces the origins of modern political thought and ideologies to a question, raised by Immanuel Kant, about what is involved in comparing individual human lives to the whole of human history. How can we compare them, or understand the results of the comparison? Kant’s question injected a new, future-oriented dimension into existing discussions of prevailing norms, challenging their orientation toward the past. This reversal made Kant’s question a bridge between three successive sets of arguments: between the supporters of the ancients and moderns, the classics and romantics, and the Romans and the Germans. Sonenscher argues that the genealogy of modern political ideologies—from liberalism to nationalism to communism—can be connected to the resulting discussions of time, history, and values, mainly in France but also in Germany, Switzerland, and Britain, in the period straddling the French and Industrial revolutions. What is the genuinely human content of human history? Everything begins somewhere—democracy with the Greeks, or the idea of a res publica with the Romans—but these local arrangements have become vectors of values that are, apparently, universal. The intellectual upheaval that Sonenscher describes involved a struggle to close the gap, highlighted by Kant, between individual lives and human history. After Kant is an examination of that struggle’s enduring impact on the history and the historiography of political thought.

A history of political thought in France from the French Revolution of 1789 to the present day.

This book examines French Romantic medievalism through one of its many manifestations, the treatment of the Arthurian legends. Examining works of historiography and literary history, as well as literary texts proper, it assesses the place of the Arthurian material in French culture in the period up to 1860, the date of publication of Edgar Quinet's Merlin l'enchanteur. In so doing, it reveals key features of French Romanticism and traces the origins of some of the problems and contradictions which still affect the practice of medieval studies, the study of medieval literature, and the representation of the Middle Ages. The author argues that the depiction of Arthurian legends in French Romantic writing discloses some of the underlying ideological positions of the movement, such as the division between liberal and royalist views of the Middle Ages and the construction of a French national identity. He also explores the developing tensions between the interests of a general literary public and the ambitions of scholars seeking to define and promote medieval literature as an emerging field of study. In addition to scholars such as Claude Fauriel, Paulin Paris and Francisque Michel, other important figures in French Romanticism are considered, including Edgar Quinet and Michelet.