DOCSLIB.ORG

Hannah Arendt's Critique of Individualism in Enlightenment And

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Hannah Arendt's Critique of Individualism in Enlightenment And Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Master's Theses Graduate School 2008 The aC se of Human Plurality: Hannah Arendt's Critique of Individualism in Enlightenment and Romantic Thinking Joshua Luke Yoder Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_theses Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Yoder, Joshua Luke, "The asC e of Human Plurality: Hannah Arendt's Critique of Individualism in Enlightenment and Romantic Thinking" (2008). LSU Master's Theses. 3155. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_theses/3155 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Master's Theses by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE CASE OF HUMAN PLURALITY: HANNAH ARENDT’S CRITIQUE OF INDIVIDUALISM IN ENLIGHTENMENT AND ROMANTIC THINKING A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in The Department of History By Joshua Luke Yoder B.A., Reinhardt College, 2005 August 2008 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………….…………….iii INTRODUCTION: INDIVIDUALISM, ENLIGHTENMENT, AND ROMANTICISM ………………………………………………....…1 CHAPTER 1. RAHEL VARNHAGEN AND THE BERLIN SALON…........................20 From Confession to Introspection…………………………...…....….......20 The Birth and Death of the Berlin Salon………………………..……….29 Parvenus and Pariahs………………………………………………..…...38 CHAPTER 2. SOCIETY AND POLITICS IN THE MODERN WORLD…...................51 High Society…………………………………………………….….….…51 A Social Response to a Political Question…………………….………....55 A New Kind of Society……………………………………….…….........65 CHAPTER 3. THE CASE OF HUMAN PLURALITY…………………….................74 The Human Condition……………………………………………............77 Between Past and Future…………………………………………….…...86 On Revolution……………………………………………………….…...91 CHAPTER 4. ARENDT, KANT, AND THE SEARCH FOR EICHMANN’S CONSCIENCE ………………………………………... 98 Thinking………………………………………………………………...104 Willing……………………………………………………………..…...114 Judging…………………………………………………………….…....121 CONCLUSION……….………………………………………………………………...133 REFERENCES...……………………………………………………………………….141 VITA……………………………………………………………………………………144 ii ABSTRACT The theme of this thesis is Hannah Arendt’s critique and ultimate rejection of the ideas of individualism developed during the Enlightenment and the Romantic periods. She rejects the Enlightenment notion of the “abstract man,” but equally rejects the notion of Romantic introspection that followed. Such a critique is important to Arendt because she makes human plurality the center for her entire system of thought. Using the French Revolution, Jewish history, and totalitarianism as her examples, Arendt explains the effects of such overtly individualistic thinking in both society and politics. The goal of this thesis is not a comprehensive look at the vast number of theories developed during the Enlightenment and Romantic periods. That is far beyond its intended scope. The goal, instead, is to show how Arendt used her critique of a select number of ideas to further define and clarify her own thoughts. In the end it will be shown that while Arendt ranged all over in her thinking (from history to politics to philosophy) she engaged these topics in a systematic way as to explore the affinities and contradictions to human plurality in whatever she studied. She is drawn to the late 18th/early 19th centuries precisely because she envisions it as a watershed moment in Western conceptions of individuality, one that stamped out all thought of human plurality. Arendt wants to rescue the notion of human plurality and elevate it to a primal position in Western thought. iii INTRODUCTION: INDIVIDUALISM, ENLIGHTENEMENT, AND ROMANTICISM The subject of this thesis is Hannah Arendt’s critique and ultimate rejection of the ideas of individualism developed during the Enlightenment and the Romantic periods. She rejects the rational individualism of the Enlightenment and its notion of an abstract human being, who for Arendt “seems to exist nowhere,” except in thought; but she equally rejects the notion of an introspective self in romanticism, where reality is given meaning only through self-consciousness. For Arendt, these two concepts represent two sides of the same coin. By over-emphasizing the individual, rational on the one hand and subjective on the other, these ideas helped create an intellectual atmosphere that was, in Arendt’s eyes, detrimental to the very foundation of politics. With the rise of the totalitarian powers, Arendt saw that politics had indeed been shaken to its core. She turned to the eighteenth/earlier nineteenth centuries precisely to understand the problems of her own time. Arendt, however, was not the only one looking back in history to understand the death and destruction that seemed to characterize the twentieth century. There was an overwhelming drive among academics to find the origins of modern thought, modern society, and modern politics. The response among scholars was anything but unanimous. Some blamed the Enlightenment for using reason to justify total domination while others condemned Romanticism for its seemingly irrational elevation of the self. Along similar lines, some scholars criticized the liberal tradition of the “left” while others rebuked the conservative “right.” Representative of her eclectic style of thinking, Arendt drew from each of these criticisms, but did not feel the need to accept their arguments wholesale. Instead, she developed her own way of addressing the 1 problems of the twentieth century. It is Arendt’s unique response to the troubles of her time that forms the content of this thesis. At the center of modern political thought is the debate over the rights of individuals versus the authority of the state. Going all the way back to the Reformation, questions of individual freedom and political authority appear in virtually every major discussion on the nature of politics, society, and even man himself. Can the individual and the state coexist or are they naturally conflicted against one another? The answer to this questions depended on where and when in Europe it was being asked. According to Leonard Krieger, the concept of individual freedom, or “individual secular liberty,” characterized political thought in Western Europe as early as the seventeenth century. The freedom of the individual depended on maintaining some kind of distance from political authority. In Germany, however, “individualized freedom,” or Freiheit, had to contend with another notion of freedom already present: Libertaet, which referred to the rights of German princes within the Holy Roman Empire.1 After 1650, as German princes began to exercise more political control, they interpreted Libertaet as the freedom to rule without Imperial interference. The idea of Libertaet, along with centralized administration and growing bureaucracies, changed the German principalities into sovereign territorial states.2 Yet, within these states the individual, and individual rights, still occupied an ambiguous role. Krieger argues The German princes never ceased to feel themselves aristocrats as well as monarchs, not only personally because of their family origins and connections, not only socially because of their special dependence on the nobility worked by the peculiarities of the German economic and social structure, but even institutionally, because the social and constitutional 1 Leonard Krieger, The German Idea of Freedom: History of a Political Tradition. (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1972), 5-6. 2 Ibid., 19-20 2 structures were so integrally intertwined that the very development of the German princes toward absolute sovereignty in their own territory was at the same time a development of their aristocratic rights within the [Holy Roman] German Empire. It was this institutional connection between sovereign power and aristocratic liberties…that made this kind of Libertaet the representative expression of German political liberty in the old regime.3 From 1650-1750, as the more individualistic ideas of Freiheit spread into Germany from enlightened thinkers in Western Europe, they were transformed to fit the prevalent ideas of Libertaet, resulting in the notion of enlightened absolutism. German thinkers “adopted western assumptions which made individuals the primary units of society and individual rights the basis and the limitation of the state, but they interpreted these assumptions in a way compatible with the preservation of the peculiar German corporate rights and made the prince arbiter over all.”4 Using natural law, German thinkers were able to combine inalienable rights and political obligation in the form of an absolutist state.5 After 1750, political ideas in Western Europe continued to further reflect notions of “material individualism,” but in Germany “natural law absolutism” held sway in both theory and practice until the French Revolution.6 During the second half of the eighteenth century, as Berlin became a center for the Aufklärung, Frederick the Great helped make Prussia a shining example of enlightened absolutism. He firmly believed “the sovereign represents the state…he and his peoples form but one body.” He wanted a rational state based on enlightened
Load more

Recommended publications
  • What Is Wrong in Heidegger's Revolution?
    CHAPTER 4 WHAT IS WRONG IN HEIDEGGER’S REVOLUTION? One of the consequences of Heidegger’s active participation in the National Socialist revolution is that the year 1933 functions as a kind of prism, separating Heideggerians and Heidegger’s detractors into different groups. At the same time, the different views and critiques provide light on Heidegger’s thought on revolution. The conundrum that Heidegger was both a Nazi and possibly the most influential philosopher of the 20th century forms a kind of entry-level exam for all wannabe revolutionary philosophers. This is also the reason why Heidegger’s thought on revolution forms a necessary background for Žižek. A SMALL MAN LIVING IN HARD TIMES Maybe the saddest but still quite an understandable apology—heard from some of Heidegger’s pupils1, from some commentators who haven’t looked at the matter in detail and from many orthodox Heideggerians who want to continue along the lines of the defence prepared by Heidegger himself—is the claim that Heidegger was basically an apolitical man, not very well aware of social questions, who is swept away, very briefly, in the powerful current of Nazism. Often the claim is combined with the general backdrop that philosophers and deep thinkers are not even supposed to be very sensitive towards their immediate surroundings. They deal with grander, deeper, if not eternal things. Forwarded by a philosopher, such a view is understandable, because it at the same time provides its presenter a kind of diplomatic immunity. For the same reason it is very sad, implying that philosophy should happen in an ivory tower (and, by being a comment on philosophy and politics, it manages to pull the rug from under itself).
    [Show full text]
  • Chapter 21 Lesson Reviews
    Chapter 21 Lesson Reviews Question Answer 1. Write a paragraph explaining how the In the scientific method, the scientist observes scientific method exemplified the new events, creates a hypothesis, and then tests it. emphasis on reason. The scientist uses the same reasonable process each time. 3. What developments were the foundation of The new reliance by scientists on direct the Scientific Revolution? observation and experiment marked a complete change from the reliance on ancient authorities for scientific knowledge. 4. What role did scientific breakthroughs play Students' answers should note that during the Scientific Revolution? breakthroughs, like Copernicus's new concept of the universe, cast doubt on long-held ideas. 5. What obstacles did participants in the Participants in the Scientific Revolution faced the Scientific Revolution face? challenge that the old, long-held ideas were still very powerful, especially in the view of the Church. 6. How did the Scientific Revolution change Scientific discoveries led Descartes to the belief people's worldview? that reason is the chief source of knowledge. Bacon used inductive reasoning to establish the scientific method. 1. Write a paragraph explaining what Montesquieu used England as an example of a Montesquieu meant by the phrase separation government with separation of powers. This of powers and where he saw this principle system provides the greatest freedom and applied. security for the state. 3. How did Enlightenment thinkers use the They tried to use reason to find the natural law ideas of the Scientific Revolution? that governed human behavior. They also questioned the ideas of ancient authorities and the Church.
    [Show full text]
  • Max Weber Programme Annual Report on 201/17
    ANNUAL REPORT ACADEMIC YEAR 2016-2017 The Max Weber Programme for Postdoctoral Studies ANNUAL REPORT ACADEMIC YEAR 2016/17 MAX WEBER PROGRAMME FOR POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES European University Institute Badia Fiesolana Via dei Roccettini, 9 50014 San Domenico di Fiesole (FI) – Italy Email: [email protected] www.eui.eu/MaxWeberProgramme PUBLISHED IN ITALY IN NOVEMBER 2017 BY THE EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE © EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE, 2017 The European Commission supports the EUI through the European Union budget. This publication reflects the views only of the author(s), and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein. Contents FOREWORD BY RICHARD BELLAMY, DIRECTOR OF THE MAX WEBER PROGRAMME 5 MAX WEBER PROGRAMME IN 2016-2017 STATISTICS 7 1. APPLICATIONS FOR THE 2016-2017 MAX WEBER FELLOWSHIPS 7 2. MAX WEBER FELLOWS: THE 2016-2017 COHORT 9 3. MAX WEBER FELLOWS AND THE JOB MARKET 13 MAX WEBER PROGRAMME ACTIVITIES 14 1. ACADEMIC PRACTICE 14 2. MULTIDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH 19 MAX WEBER PROGRAMME ACTIVITIES FEEDBACK 36 1. EVALUATION SURVEY 36 2. ACADEMIC PRACTICE GROUP REPORTS 40 3. THEMATIC GROUP REPORTS 43 MAX WEBER PROGRAMME ACADEMIC CAREERS OBSERVATORY (ACO) 47 MAX WEBER PROGRAMME STEERING COMMITTEE 48 MAX WEBER PROGRAMME TEAM 48 MAX WEBER FELLOWS 49 MAX WEBER PROGRAMME FOR POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES Foreword his report covers the first year of the Max Weber Programme Tsince moving to its new home in Villa Paola. As the report shows, it also coincided with yet another high number of applications to the Programme, and the largest intake of new Fellows so far.
    [Show full text]
  • Reading Arendt's on Revolution After the Fall of the Wall
    Keeping the Republic: Reading Arendt’s On Revolution after the Fall of the Wall Dick Howard Introduction: From where do you speak, comrade? Two decades after the fall of the Wall seemed to announce – by default, as an unexpected gift – the triumph of democracy, optimism appears at best naïve, at worst an ideological manipulation of the most cynical type. The hope was that the twin forms of modern anti-politics – the imaginary planned society and the equally imaginary invisible hand of the market place – would be replaced by the rule of the demos; citizens together would determine the values of the commonwealth. The reality was at first the ‘New World Order’ of George H.W. Bush; then the indecisive interregnum of the Clinton years; and now the crass take over of democratic rhetoric by the neo-conservatives of George W. Bush. ‘Man is born free, yet everywhere he is in chains,’ wrote Rousseau at the outset of The Social Contract; how this came about was less important, he continued, than what made it legitimate: that was what needed explanation. So it is today; what is it about democracy that makes it the greatest threat to its own existence? In this context, it is well to reread Hannah Arendt’s On Revolution, published in 1963. On returning recently to my old (1965) paperback edition, I was struck by the spare red and black design of the cover, which was not (as I thought for a moment) a subtle allusion to the conflict of communism and anarchism for the realization of ‘true’ democracy, but simply the backdrop against which the editor stressed these sentences: ‘With nuclear power at a stalemate, revolutions have become the principal political factor of our time.
    [Show full text]
  • {TEXTBOOK} the Portable Hannah Arendt Ebook
    THE PORTABLE HANNAH ARENDT PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Hannah Arendt | 640 pages | 25 Sep 2003 | Penguin Books Ltd | 9780142437568 | English | London, United Kingdom The Portable Hannah Arendt: Arendt, Hannah: : Books Professor Hannah. On Revolution. Usually dispatched within 3 to 4 days. Next page. About the Author Hannah Arendt was born in Hanover, Germany, in , and received her doctorate in philosophy from the University of Heidelberg. In , she was briefly imprisoned by the Gestapo, after which she fled Germany for Paris, where she worked on behalf of Jewish refugee children. In , she was stripped of her German citizenship, and in she left France for the United States. Her many books include The Origins of Totalitarianism , The Human Condition and Eichmann in Jerusalem , in which she coined the famous phrase 'the banality of evil'. She died in What other items do customers buy after viewing this item? Only 2 left in stock. No customer reviews. How are ratings calculated? To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we do not use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyses reviews to verify trustworthiness. Review this product Share your thoughts with other customers. Learn how to enable JavaScript on your browser. Overview: What Remains? What Remains? Jewess and Shlemihl Writing Rahel Varnhagen. What Is Authority? Home 1 Books 2. Add to Wishlist. Sign in to Purchase Instantly. Members save with free shipping everyday! See details. After the rise of the Nazis, she emigrated to America where she proceeded to write some of the most searching, hard-hitting reflections on the agonizing issues of the time: totalitarianism in both Nazi and Stalinist garb; Zionism and the legacy of the Holocaust; federally mandated school desegregation and civil rights in the United States; and the nature of evil.
    [Show full text]
  • A Special Supplement: Reflections on Violence by Hannah Arendt | the New York Review of Books
    A Special Supplement: Reflections on Violence by Hannah Arendt | The New York Review of Books EMAIL Tweet Share A Special Supplement: Refections on Violence Hannah Arendt FEBRUARY 27, 1969 ISSUE I These reflections were provoked by the events and debates of the last few years, as seen against the background of the twentieth century. Indeed this century has become, as Lenin predicted, a century of wars and revolutions, hence a century of that violence which is currently believed to be their common denominator. There is, however, another factor in the present situation which, though predicted by nobody, is of at least equal importance. The technical development of implements of violence has now reached the point where no political goal could conceivably correspond to their destructive potential or justify their actual use in armed conflict. Hence, warfare—since times immemorial the final merciless arbiter in international disputes—has lost much of its effectiveness and nearly all of its glamor. “The apocalyptic” chess game between the superpowers, that is, between those that move on the highest plane of our civilization, is being played according to the rule: “if either ‘wins’ it is the end of both.”1 Moreover the game bears no resemblance to whatever war games preceded it. Its “rational” goal is mutual deterrence, not victory. Since violence—as distinct from power, force, or strength—always needs implements (as Engels pointed out long ago),2 the revolution in technology, a revolution in tool-making, was especially marked in warfare. The very substance of violent action is ruled by the question of means and ends, whose chief characteristic, if applied to human affairs, has always been that the end is in danger of being overwhelmed by the means, which it both justifies and needs.
    [Show full text]
  • Study Guide Prepared by Rosanna Forrest, Dramaturg About the Playwright Kate Fodor Lives in Brooklyn, New York
    Study Guide Prepared by Rosanna Forrest, Dramaturg About The Playwright Kate Fodor lives in Brooklyn, New York. HANNAH AND MARTIN, which is her first play, won the Kennedy Center's Roger L. Stevens Award and was a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. It will be published in an anthology due out from Smith & Kraus this year. Kate would like to thank her husband, her parents and New York's Epic Theatre Center. Hannah Arendt Hannah Arendt, was born in Hanover, Germany, in 1906, the only child of secular Jewish parents. While Arendt remained close to her mother throughout her life, her father passed away when she was only seven years of age. She entered Marburg University in 1924, where she studied philosophy with burgeoning philosopher, Martin Heidegger. Her romantic relationship with Heidegger began in 1925 during which time he was creating his greatest work, Being and Time. The relationship between Heidegger and Arendt ended the following year, and Arendt moved to Heidelberg to study with Karl Jaspers, the existentialist philosopher and friend of Heidegger. Under Jasper's guidance, she wrote her dissertation on the concept of love in St. Augustine's thought. Throughout the years, Arendt remained close to Jaspers, although the influence of Heidegger's phenomenology was to prove the greater in its lasting influence upon her work. In 1929, Arendt met Gunther Stern, a young Jewish philosopher, with whom she became romantically involved, and subsequently married. After her dissertation was published, she delved into Jewish and Zionist politics, which had become a focus for her in 1926.
    [Show full text]
  • Common Place: Rereading 'Nation' in the Quoting Age, 1776-1860 Anitta
    Common Place: Rereading ‘Nation’ in the Quoting Age, 1776-1860 Anitta C. Santiago Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2014 © 2014 Anitta C. Santiago All rights reserved ABSTRACT Common Place: Rereading ‘Nation’ in the Quoting Age, 1776-1860 Anitta C. Santiago This dissertation examines quotation specifically, and intertextuality more generally, in the development of American/literary culture from the birth of the republic through the Civil War. This period, already known for its preoccupation with national unification and the development of a self-reliant national literature, was also a period of quotation, reprinting and copying. Within the analogy of literature and nation characterizing the rhetoric of the period, I translate the transtextual figure of quotation as a protean form that sheds a critical light on the nationalist project. This project follows both how texts move (transnational migration) and how they settle into place (national naturalization). Combining a theoretical mapping of how texts move and transform intertextually and a book historical mapping of how texts move and transform materially, I trace nineteenth century examples of the culture of quotation and how its literary mutability both disrupts and participates in the period’s national and literary movements. In the first chapter, I engage scholarship on republican print culture and on republican emulation to interrogate the literary roots of American nationalism in its transatlantic context. Looking at commonplace books, autobiographies, morality tales, and histories, I examine how quotation as a practice of memory impression functions in national re-membering.
    [Show full text]
  • Arendt's Violence/Power Distinction and SARTRE's Violence/Counter-Violence Distinction: the Phenomenology of Violence in Co
    CHAPTER SIX ARENDT’S VIOLENCE/POWER DISTINCTION AND SARTRE’S VIOLENCE/COUNTER-VIOLENCE DISTINCTION: THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF VIOLENCE IN COLONIAL AND POST-ColonIAL CONTEXTS Kathryn T. Gines The theme of violence can be traced throughout Hannah Arendt’s major political writings such as The Human Condition and On Revolution where she draws connections between war, violence, and necessity (or libera- tion from necessity); The Origins of Totalitarianism where she examines Europe’s uses of violence in concentration camps, as well as massacre and imperialism in Africa; and, of course, On Violence where she condemns the violence of the Black Power movement and of anti-colonialism. The essay that follows will take as its starting point the violence/power dis- tinction and then the appropriate uses of violence versus non-violence as presented in Arendt’s On Violence. I argue that this distinction between violence and power is misapplied in Arendt’s critique of Jean-Paul Sar- tre and Frantz Fanon’s analyses of anti-colonial revolutionary violence in Algeria. Arendt wrongly interprets Sartre and Fanon’s analyses of violence and counter-violence in The Wretched of the Earth and Critique of Dialecti- cal Reason and her critique of violence proves to be unbalanced. On my view, she rejects their analyses because they argue for the use of violence by the oppressed to overcome the violent system of colonialism. I con- tend that it is because they argue for revolutionary violence (or counter- violence) against their oppressors that Sartre and Fanon are accused of glorifying violence for violence’s sake. In the concluding section of the essay, I briefly consider the possibil- ity that while Arendt’s critique of anti-colonial violence is misguided, her analysis might prove helpful when applied to the post-colonial context in which former anti-colonial leaders fighting for independence strike out violently against the people.
    [Show full text]
  • Enlightened Despotism
    ENLIGHTENED DESPOTISM FRITZ HARTUNG 2s 6d PUBLISHED FOR THE HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION BY ROUTLEDGE AND KEGAN PAUL [G. 36] ENLIGHTENED DESPOTISM THIS PAMPHLET IS GENERAL SERIES NUMBER 36 First published 1957 Reprinted 1963 FRITZ HARTUNG Copyright by the Historical Association Printed in Great Britain by Cox and Wyman Ltd., London, Reading and Fakenham Non-members may obtain copies 2s. 6d. each (post free], and members may obtain extra copies at is. 6d. each (postfree) from the Hon. Secretary of the Associa- tion, 59A, Kennington Park Road, London, S.E.li The publication of a pamphlet by the Historical Association does not necessarily imply the Association s official approbation of the opinions expressed therein Obtainable only through booksellers or from the offices of the Association 1957 Reprinted 1963 ENLIGHTENED DESPOTISM SAINT AUGUSTINE once said: " If no one enquires of me, I know; if I want to explain to an enquirer, I do not know ". That is also the position of historians who have to deal with " En- lightened Absolutism ", or (as it is usually called in English) " Enlightened Despotism". When, some forty years ago, lecturing on modern constitutional history, I had for the first PREFACE time to deal with the subject in detail, it was still possible to treat it as a clearly defined and unambiguous notion. It was, It is a privilege for the Historical Association to have the opportunity of publishing this pamphlet by Professor Fritz Hartung, in an English version prepared by Miss in fact, the only stage which in the controversy about the H. Otto and revised by the present writer.
    [Show full text]
  • Enlightened Monarchy” in Practice
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Helsingin yliopiston digitaalinen arkisto “Enlightened Monarchy” in Practice. Reforms, Ceremonies, Self-Fashioning and the Entanglement of Ideals and Values in Late Eighteenth-Century Sweden Henrika Tandefelt This article sets out to study the entanglement of different political, ideological and moral ideals and traditions in the Kingship of Gustav III, King of Sweden 1772–1792. Political thinking and practice in Eighteenth-Century Europe offered many elements and examples that different monarchs could apply in their own particular circumstances. Gustav III was one of the European Kings that openly supported the French enlightened thinkers fashioning himself as a Reformer-King. He was also very influenced by the French culture over all, and the culture of the traditional royal court in particular. In addition the Swedish political history with a fifty-year period of decreased royal power before the coup d’état of Gustav III in 1772 influenced how the European trends and traditions were put into practice. The article pursues to understand the way different elements were bound up together and put to action by the King in his coup d’état 1772, his law reforms in the 1770s and in the establishment of a court of appeal in the town Vasa in Ostrobothnia in 1776 and the ceremonial, pictorial and architectural projects linked to this. In this article I examine what has been called the enlightened absolutism of the Swedish king Gustav III (1746–1792) during his reign of 1772–1792. Gustav III’s reign began with a royal coup d’état in August 1772 and ended with the king being murdered during a masquerade ball at the Royal Opera in Stockholm in March 1792.
    [Show full text]
  • Introduction 1
    Notes Introduction 1 . Seyla Benhabib, The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1996, p. xxv. 2 . M a r g a r e t C a n o v a n , Hannah Arendt: A Reinterpretation of Her Political Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, p. 109. 3 . D a n a V i l l a , Arendt and Heidegger: The Fate of the Political, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996, p. 8. 4 . B e n h a b i b , The Reluctant Modernism, p. 197. 5 . see, for example, Dana Villa, Arendt and Heidegger, p. 9. 6 . A m o s E l o n , The Pity of it All: A History of Jews in Germany, 1743–1933, New York: Metropolitan Books, 2002, p. 353. 7 . There is, of course, a significant literature that picks up this theme; to develop this in more detail here would take us too far from the task at hand. 8 . Peter Wagner, A Sociology of Modernity: Liberty and Discipline, London: Routledge, 1994, p. xii. 9 . S t e p h e n E r i c B r o n n e r , Reclaiming the Enlightenment: Toward a Politics of Radical Engagement, New York: Columbia University Press, 2004, pp. 97–98. 1 0 . C a n o v a n , Hannah Arendt: A Reinterpretation, p. 25. 1 1 . D a n a V i l l a , Public Freedom, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008, pp. 215–16. 1 2 . M a r g a r e t C a n o v a n , The Political Thought of Hannah Arendt, New York and London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974, p.
    [Show full text]