Monarchisms in the Age of Enlightenment : Liberty, Patriotism, and the Common Good

Fascinating and timely, __Monarchisms in the Age of Enlightenment__ will be of interest to historians, political theorists, political philosophers, and political scientists. Contents 5 Contributors 9 Introduction 13 Part I: Monarchisms and Republicanisms in the Political Thought of Spinoza, Bayle, Fénelon, Hume, and Montesquieu 29 1. Spinoza on Res Publica, Republics, and Monarchies 29 2. ‘Absolute, Not Arbitrary, Power’: Monarchism and Politics in the Thought of the Huguenots and Pierre Bayle 55 3. Bayle and Hume on Monarchy, Scepticism, and Forms of Government 70 4. Fénelon’s ‘Republican’ Monarchism in Telemachus 88 5. Free Trade, Free Speech, and Free Love: Monarchy from the Liberal Prospect in Mid-eighteenth Century France 111 Part II: Enlightened Christian and Millenarian Monarchisms 131 6. Caesar Augustus in Vico’s New Science: Monarchy as Remedy for Democracy 131 7. ‘Everything Must Be Redone’: Condillac as Critic of Despotism and Defender of Toleration 154 8. The Fifth Monarchy Redux 172 Part III: Defending and Resisting Absolute Monarchy 185 9. Defending Monarchism in Denmark-Norway in the Eighteenth Century 185 10. Popular Philosophy and Absolute Monarchy 204 11. The Prussian Monarchy and the Practices of Enlightenment 227 12. Theorizing Enlightened Absolutism: The Swiss Republican Origins of Prussian Monarchism 250 13. Intellectual Resistance to Absolute Monarchy in Eighteenth-Century Prussia: Castillon’s Translation of Blount’s Philostratus 277 Part IV: Reflections on the British Monarchy 295 14. Monarchy in the Name of Britain: The Case of George III 295 Index 313

In recent decades, historians of early-modern European political thought have tended to neglect the concept of monarchy and monarchism, focusing instead on the development of republicanism during this period. Monarchisms in the Age of Enlightenment aims to correct this imbalance by illustrating that many thinkers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in fact, saw monarchy as a solution to the instability, chaos, and even violence of experiments with republican government.

Editors Hans Blom, John Christian Laursen, and Luisa Simonutti have brought together outstanding scholars in the field to correct many of the misleading stereotypes about monarchy, and to explore the variety and dynamism of this form of government, in early-modern Europe. Contributors explore four major themes: monarchisms in the political thought of Spinoza, Bayle, Fénelon, Hume, and Montesquieu; enlightened Christian and millenarian monarchisms; defending and resisting absolute monarchy; and, finally, reflections on the British monarchy.

Fascinating and timely, Monarchisms in the Age of Enlightenment will be of interest to historians, political theorists, political philosophers, and political scientists.