Civic Virtue and Modernity: Rousseau in Germany and Britain

Civic Virtue and Modernity: Rousseau in Germany and Britain

Veranstalter
Professor Andreas Gestrich (German Historical Institute London) and Dr Avi Lifschitz, University College London (UCL)
Veranstaltungsort
German Historical Institute and UCL
Ort
London
Land
United Kingdom
Vom - Bis
05.06.2009 - 06.06.2009
Von
Avi Lifschitz

“The sovereign authority being everywhere the same, the same principle should be found in every well-constituted state” (On the Social Contract, III.4). The principle underpinning all forms of sovereignty was, according to Rousseau, virtue; this was his response to Montesquieu’s characterisation of virtue as the foundational tenet of democratic republics alone. Civic virtue maintained a central position in Rousseau’s philosophy, from the early Discourses on the arts and sciences and on the origins of inequality to works on theatre, language, education, and politics. Accompanied by a harsh critique of commercial society and the denial of natural human sociability, Rousseau’s notion of civic virtue challenged contemporary views in various domains (as manifest in his proposal for a civic religion in the Social Contract, or in his opinions on women’s social roles in Émile).

This emphatic focus on virtue – either as it had allegedly been exercised in antiquity or as a blueprint for the regeneration of European society – exerted significant influence on philosophy and political praxis across Europe. The impact of Rousseau’s notion of civic virtue has been widely observed in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century France and in Rousseau’s native republic, Geneva; it has frequently been invoked in relation to the American and French Revolutions. German-speaking Europe has been less intensively studied, perhaps due to the broad variety of political and cultural outlooks within the Holy Roman Empire and the Habsburg territories alongside Swiss cantons, Hanseatic towns, and other areas in Central Europe. The conference aims to examine the reception and transformation of Rousseau’s notion of civic virtue in these different political, social, and religious contexts, while comparing them to English, Scottish and Irish responses. Contributors will analyse German and British reactions to the ancient and early modern sources of Rousseau’s concept of civic virtue; attempts at its practical application in education, philanthropy, and religious or political reform; and its repercussions not only in contemporary philosophy but in a wide range of cultural and literary practices. The geographical focus and comparative nature of the conference should highlight the diverse roles played by civic virtue east and west of France in the late eighteenth century.

Programm

Friday, 5th June 2009 (German Historical Institute)

9:00 Welcome: Andreas Gestrich (GHI London)

9:15-11:15 Civic virtue in politics and commerce

Béla Kapossy (Lausanne): Rousseau’s thought in German Swiss debates on economic reform

Isaac Nakhimovsky (Cambridge): Rousseau and Fichte

11:30-13:00 Philanthropy, education and civic virtue

Andreas Gestrich (GHI London): Education and social reform in
Germany

Daniel Tröhler (Luxembourg): Rousseau and Swiss education reform

14:00-16.00 Women and civic virtue

Heide von Felden (Mainz): Notes on the reception of Rousseau among contemporary Women in German-speaking Europe

Karen O’Brien (Warwick): Women, Rousseau and civic virtue in Britain

Liselotte Steinbrügge (Bochum): Mary Wollstonecraft’s reception of Rousseau

16:30-18:00 Civic virtue between republicanism and monarchy

Iain McDaniel (Munich): Sociability, inequality, and the liberty of monarchies: revising Rousseau in the later Scottish Enlightenment

Ultán Gillen (Queen Mary): Civic virtue in Irish republican and loyalist political thought in the era of revolutions

18:20-19:00 Keynote lecture

Istvan Hont (Cambridge): J. J. Rousseau and Adam Smith

Saturday, 6th June 2009 (Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine at UCL)

9:30-11:00 Virtue, religion and the arts

Alexander Schmidt (Jena): German responses to Rousseau’s Discourse on the Arts and the Sciences

Brian Young (Oxford): The nature and status of civil religion in England, compared to Europe

11:30-13:30 Civic virtue, the state of nature, and contemporary society

Tristan Coignard (Bordeaux): Wieland’s reflections on civic virtue and the social contract: beyond a critical position against Rousseau?

Avi Lifschitz (UCL): Debates on civic virtue and the state of nature in Berlin of the mid-eighteenth century

Iain Hampsher-Monk (Exeter): Rousseau, Burke’s Vindication of Natural Society, and Revolutionary ideology

Commentators include: Anthony La Vopa (North Carolina), Frecderick Neuhouser (Columbia), John Robertson (Oxford), Michael Sonenscher (Cambridge), Richard Whatmore (Sussex).

Kontakt

Avi Lifschitz

UCL Department of History
Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK

avi.lifschitz[at]ucl.ac.uk

http://www.ghil.ac.uk/index.php?eID=tx_nawsecuredl&u=0&file=fileadmin/redaktion/dokumente/2009/Conference20090605_programme.pdf&t=1239189666&hash=814d29da631b046b14e4d54e651e9703
Redaktion
Veröffentlicht am
Beiträger
Klassifikation
Region(en)
Weitere Informationen
Land Veranstaltung
Sprach(en) der Veranstaltung
Englisch
Sprache der Ankündigung