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This dissertation offers an analysis of the political theory of Johann Heinrich Gottlob von Justi (1717-1771) who is widely regarded as one of the founders of modern German economic thought. Previous scholarship saw Justi exclusively as a representative of Cameralism, defined as the specifically Austrian-German version of Mercantilism which had never been influenced by or had an impact on broader European intellectual discourse. Instead of seeing Justi as quintessentially German thinker, this dissertation argues that his thought was a by-product of Enlightenment debates over the political implications of modern trade. Justi’s aim was to create modern commercial monarchies in the larger states of the Holy Roman Empire that could equal the military strength, political standing and economic performance of England and France. His most important works were published between the conclusion of the War of the Austrian Succession (1748) and the end of the Seven Years (1763) when competition among European powers was sharply on the increase. Justi’s economic thought was part and parcel of an innovative and comprehensive political reform plan for the entire European state system. He believed that the transformation of all the states of the continent into modern commercial monarchies could create peace and prosperity in Europe. Justi was convinced that the English constitution was not transferable to Germany. France was his model, provided Louis XIV’s mistaken policies of hegemony and the financial upheavals of the Regency could be avoided. Borrowing most of his ideas from the opposition to Louis XIV and XV, Justi was a critic of Montesquieu and the most important commentator in Germany of French debates concerning the idea of commercial nobility. He tried to adapt the ideas of Fénelon, Saint-Pierre, d’Argenson and others, and looked for China as a guidance. As an adherent of ‘democratic monarchy’ and of a European system of free trade, Justi offered comprehensive theory of both. Following an introductory chapter, the dissertation discusses Justi’s political economy in three chapters, first focusing on his idea of modern monarchy, and then discussing his ideas of political and economic reforms that might lead to it.

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This thesis analyses constructions of ‘German identity’ since 1945. By examining political culture, historical debates and intellectual discourse in the Federal Republic, the thesis discusses various processes of identity construction. This project takes the form of an analysis of different discourses, and illustrates the shifting understanding of German ‘nation’ and ‘identity’ since 1945. The thesis focuses on the period since the late 1960s, taking as its starting point the questioning of the continuity between National Socialism and the early years of the Federal Republic. As this is a study of the Federal Republic, it contains only passing reference to the Democratic Republic. Several key historical debates and the works of key intellectuals have been chosen for their importance in the ongoing discourse of the ‘nation’. By concentrating on a section of historical debates, the thesis shows the shifting paradigms of the national question since 1945. The main emphasis of the thesis falls after the paradigm shift in West German political culture in the late 1960s, with particular concentration on the calls for a reinterpretation of German history in the 1980s and 1990s. The analysis of these debates will show the extent to which history has been used to define or legitimize concepts of identity in the present, whether they be ‘national’, ‘anti-national’ or ‘post-national’. To show how ‘nation’ and ‘identity’ are treated in intellectual discourse, the thesis concentrates on four major intellectuals of the Federal Republic: Günter Grass, Martin Walser, Rolf Hochhuth and Botho Straub. These figures have been chosen because they focus on issues of identity in their literary works and also because they have engaged actively in the public political sphere. Each author has been heavily involved with the national debate at various stages in the history of the Federal Republic. Although each writer has been occupied with different concepts of ‘nation’ and ‘identity’, each of these has been problematic in some way. The thesis reveals both diversity and uniformity in responses to the ‘nation’ and ‘identity’. As the discussions about the ‘RAF Ausstellung’ and the ‘Zentrum gegen Vertreibung’ illustrate, the debate over German identity is an ongoing one.

I have produced for examination and edition of James Mackintosh’s <i>Vindiciæ Gallicæ. </i>I have chosen the first edition (published on 7 May 1791) to preserve the author’s original, but have included the largest substantive revisions of <i>Vindiciæ Gallicæ</i> in an appendix, such as the sixth section added to the third edition. The appendix will offer the reader evidence of Mackintosh’s developing response to the French Revolution debate in England. <i>Vindiciæ Gallicæ </i>ranks as one of the finest replies to Edmund Burke’s <i>Reflections on the Revolution in France </i>(1790 and deserves a modern edition. Scholarly interest in <i>Vindiciæ Gallicæ </i>grew in the latter half of the twentieth century. Jane Rendall finished a doctoral thesis on Mackintosh (which includes a chapter on <i>Vindiciæ Gallicæ</i>) in 1972. Marilyn Butler published extracts from the third edition of <i>Vindiciæ Gallicæ </i>in <i>Burke, Paine, Godwin, and the Revolution Controversy </i>(Cambridge, 1984). In 1989 Jonathan Wordsworth introduced a facsimile of the first edition of <i>Vindiciæ Gallicæ </i>for Woodstock Press, Oxford, and an extract was included in <i>Romanticism: An Anthology</i>, edited by Duncan Wu (Oxford, 1994). Gregory Claeys lightly annotated the third edition of <i>Vindiciæ Gallicæ </i>in his eight volume series, <i>Political Writings of the 1790s </i>(London, 1995). My edition offer the reader a fully annotated text of <i>Vindiciæ Gallicæ,</i> as well as the scholarly apparatus of a biographical note, a note on the text, a list of abbreviations, a list of names, a list of selected reading, and an introduction. The first part of the introduction attempts to place <i>Vindiciæ Gallicæ </i>in its correct intellectual and historical context. It covers Mackintosh’s emigration from Scotland to London, the outbreak of the French Revolution pamphlet controversy, and the publication of <i>Vindiciæ Gallicæ</i>. The second part offers a detailed analysis of <i>Vindiciæ Gallicæ</i>, ending with an analysis of its textual variants. The final part establishes <i>Vindiciæ Gallicæ’s </i>positive critical reception and assesses Mackintosh’s political ideas and activities in the 1790s’ particularly in relation to Burke. My introduction will be of interest to readers in English Literature, History and Political Science. It is informed by previous work on Mackintosh, but it also presents a new thesis on Mackintosh’s radical Whig era. For instance, I introduce Mackintosh as a ‘Scottish scientific Whig’; I compare Calonne to Burke, and examine <i>Vindiciæ Gallicæ’s </i>engagement with Calonne; I explore the importance of Hume, Machiavelli and Rousseau to the Burke/Mackintosh debate. I also trace in Mackintosh’s language the dilution of his ‘Scottish scientific Whiggism’ with Burke’s ‘vulgar Whiggism’, culminating in the unpublished ‘grand essay on Burke’ acquired by the British Library in November 2000.

The dissertation traces the genesis of Proudhon’s famous conclusion that ‘property is theft’. It does this by examining in extensive detail the sorts of books Proudhon read and took notes on before he embarked upon writing his famous pamphlet, <i>What is Property?</i>. First it addresses Proudhon’s early interest in comparative linguistics and philology. It then examines his study of contemporary philosophical issues, his continued attachment to religious discussions, and his interest in Biblical history. Finally, it examines his prize essay on the Sabbath and his exploration of the particular political foresight of primitive legislators such as Moses. It concludes by suggesting how the issues he probed while researching this essay illuminated for him the problematic nature of exclusive ownership.

Many modern political philosophers have been dissatisfied with the claim, located in an influential strand of modern liberalism, that a conception of justice should be limited in scope to the principles that determine the operation of social institutions. This institutional focus, critics allege, ignores the crucial importance of the character of citizens and ideas of virtue. Some insist that a just society will ensure that citizens lead good and flourishing lives, and that the moral virtues are an essential aspect for flourishing. For them, the virtues are <i>foundationally </i>important. Other critics argue that in order for a society to remain just, citizens must possess certain civic virtues and a strong sense of civic identity. For such critics, the virtues are <i>instrumentally </i>important. My doctorate assesses the <i>foundational </i>and <i>instrumental </i>claims advanced by, respectively, contemporary Aristotelians and contemporary proponents of civic virtue. Against both, I defend the neglected position that insofar as considerations of character are important to a plausible conception of social justice, the focus ought to be on <i>vice</i> rather than virtue. I draw upon an expanded Humean account of “the circumstances of justice” to establish that no plausible conception of justice can idealise away deep moral disagreement. Accordingly reasons for moral propositions must be intelligible to agents who bear different moral outlooks. Aristotelian claims about the foundational importance of virtue, I argue, rely on assumptions about practical reasoning that render them too insensitive to disagreement. I then turn to claims that derive the instrumental importance of virtue from the requirements of stability. I demonstrate that, when the problem of stability is properly laid out and the extent of moral disagreement taken into account, a stable institutional scheme requires only that destabilising vices are minimised. No claims about virtue necessarily follow, and so the importance of virtue is, accordingly, extremely limited.

<I>Socialism on Two Fronts</I> is a study of one of the most original and yet least regarded political writers of the last century and a half. Bernard Shaw was not a politician, not a philosopher, and not obviously someone with original policy ideas. Both notwithstanding the fact he was a dramatist and critic - and, as one of his contemporaries said, the most brilliant and futile of the brilliant and futile group of people in the Fabian Society - he committed himself to the politics of Socialism. <I>Socialism on Two Fronts</I> deals with the political arguments used by Shaw in order to build, with the other members of the Fabian Society, an account of the theory and practice of Socialism which would distinguish it from what he considered the errors of both Marxists and Liberals. <I>Socialism on Two Fronts</I> has four Parts. Part 1 deals with the economic arguments by which Shaw justified Socialism from the assumptions of orthodox political economy that were usually used to justify individualism, and, in doing so, rejected Marx's economic theories. Part II deals with the political practice of Fabian Society, and its ambivalence towards the Liberal party in the early 1890s. Part III deals with the political arguments by which Shaw defended the necessity for Socialism to embrace politics against the Marxist orthodoxy which dominated the Second International in the 1890s and which distrusted politics. Part IV deals with the attempt Shaw made to harness Imperialist sentiment after 1990 in order to prevent Socialism falling back into Liberalism. The argument is, simply, that Shaw thought, unlike the Marxists, that politics ought to be embraced, but also thought, unlike the Liberals, that although Socialism was a gradual revolution it was nonetheless a total revolution, and not merely a useful way of patching up the Capitalist order. Shaw's Socialism therefore maintained a tension between politics and revolution which is studied with particular regard to the arguments he had with Marxists over the rejection of theory, historical materialism and the class struggle and the arguments he had with Liberals over the rejection of individualism and free trade. His disagreements with both of these great political camps explains why his serious thought has been left aside by scholars more interested in his eccentricities, his somewhat odd religious ideas, and his plays.

This thesis examines various aspects of the Victorian political debate over the empire. The question of the empire has been largely unexamined in relation to wider currents of political thought during the period, and the following analysis seeks to fill this gap. In particular, it focuses on the question of the status, purpose and destiny of the ‘settler empire’ as represented in the political writings and worldview of the late Victorian intellectual elite. The idea of imperial federation, and through this a global state, was central to this discourse and I explore different dimensions of the family of federalist ideologies. It is argued that the movement can only be grasped adequately in relation to the widespread anxieties concerning both increased global competition and the perceived threat of domestic disquiet heralded by the advent of democracy. Combined, these fears generated intense concern about the future of the country and led to a wide-ranging agitation for the strengthening of the planetary Greater Britain polity. This would act as a bulwark against the encroaching cacophony of threats. As well as charting the motivations driving the federalist discourse, I explore various facets of the arguments propounded during the debate. I examine in detail the political thought of Goldwin Smith and J.R. Seeley, two key figures in the heated exchanges, stressing that although their ideas differed in many respects they were both animated by comparable fears and proposed parallel solutions to the problems that were seen to face Britain at the time. Moreover, in the final two chapters of the thesis, I stress, firstly, the importance of the way in which America figured in the imagination and ideas of the federalists and, secondly, the importance of the new communications technologies (especially the electric telegraph) in reshaping perceptions of political possibilities. Driven by the purportedly successful example of America, and living in a world in which distance appeared to have been ‘annihilated,’ the federalists could conceive, for perhaps the first time in modern history, a globe-spanning Greater British state. The thesis serves as both a guide to an important but neglected element of empire political thought and, more broadly, as a contribution to the intellectual history of the era.