(Sociology of the Sciences 20) Peter Hanns Reill (Auth.), Johan Heilbron, Lars Magnusson, Björn Wittrock (Eds.) - The Rise of the Social Sciences and the Formation of Modernity_ Conceptual Change in C

THE RISE OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
AND THE FORMA nON OF MODERNITY

Sociology of the Sciences
A YEARBOOK - VOLUME XX - 1996
Managing Editor:
R.D. Whitley, Manchester Business School, University of Manchester
Editorial Board:
Y. Ezrahi, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

B. Joerges, WZB, Berlin
E. Mendelsohn, Harvard University
Y.F. Murakami, University of Tokyo
H. Nowotny, Institut fiir Wissenschaftstheorie und Wissenschaftsforschung,
Vienna
T. Shinn, Groupe d'Etude des Methodes de I'Analyse Sociologique, Paris
P. Weingart, University of Bielefeld
B. Wittrock, SCASSS, Uppsala
The titles published in this series are listed at the end of this volume.
THE RISE OF
THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
AND THE FORMATION
OF MODERNITY
CONCEPTUAL CHANGE
IN CONTEXT, 1750-1850
Edited by
JOHAN HEILBRON
Centre Lillois d'Etudes et de Recherches Sociologiques et Economiques
LARS MAGNUSSON
Uppsala University
and
BJORN WITTROCK
Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences at Uppsala,
and Stockholm University
SPRINGER SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.

A.C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
ISBN 978-1-4020-0254-0 ISBN 978-94-011-5528-1 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-94-011-5528-1
Printed an acid-fi'ee paper
All Rights Reserved

© 1998 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1998
Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover I st edition 1998
No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or
utilized in any farm ar by any means, electronic ar mechanical,
including photocopying, recording or by any infarmation storage and
retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements Vll
BJORN WITTROCK, JOHAN HEILBRON, LARS MAGNUSSON /

The Rise of the Social Sciences and the Formation of Modernity
ROBERT WOKLER / The Enlightenment and the French

Revolutionary Birth Pangs of Modernity 35
JOHAN HEILBRON / French Moralists and the Anthropology of

the Modern Era: On the Genesis of the Notions of 'Interest' and
'Commercial Society' 77
PETER HANNS REILL / The Construction of the Social Sciences

in Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Century Germany 107
RANDALL COLLINS / The Transformation of Philosophy 141
LARS MAGNUSSON / The Language of Mercantilism: The English

Economic Discussion during the Seventeenth Century 163
KEITH TRIBE / Natural Law and the Origins of NationalOkonomie:

L.H. von Jakob 189
ERIC BRIAN / Mathematics, Administrative Reform and

Social Sciences in France at the End of the Eighteenth Century 207
MICHAEL DONNELLY / From Political Arithmetic to

Social Statistics: How Some Nineteenth-Century Roots
of the Social Sciences Were Implanted 225
PETER WAGNER / Certainty and Order, Liberty and Contingency:

The Birth of Social Science as Empirical Political Philosophy 241
v
Vl Table of Contents
About the Contributors 265
Subject Index 269

Name Index 285
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The editors would like to thank the Swedish Collegium for Advanced
Study in the Social Sciences at Uppsala for sponsoring two meetings
at which the contributions to this book originated. We also want to
express our gratitude to the Stifterverband fur die Deutsche Wissen-
schaft and the Swedish Council for Studies in Higher Education for
their generous support of the activities of the Sociology of the
Sciences: A Yearbook.
Vll
THE RISE OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES AND
THE FORMATION OF MODERNITY
BJORN WITTROCK
Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences and Stockholm University
JOHAN HEILBRON
Centre Lillois d'Etudes et de Recherches Sociologiques et Economiques
LARS MAGNUSSON
Uppsala University
Epistemic Shifts and the Formation of Modernity
In popular discourse and in the self-understanding of the social and

human sciences alike, the period of the late eighteenth and the early
nineteenth century is one of fundamental and deep-seated upheaval.
Scholars as different as Eric Hobsbawm and Talcott Parsons capture
these transformations in terms of a "dual revolution" in, on the one
hand, industrial and technological practices and, on the other, the politi-
cal practices inherent in the French revolution and the ensuing waves of
democratic demands which had repercussions throughout the nineteenth
century. However, these technological, economic, and political transfor-
mations were parallelled and partly underpinned by transformations in
intellectual and cultural practices and in the institutions which served as
vehicles for such practices.
These intellectual transformations have been addressed in a range of
studies of individual disciplines or proto-disciplines and individual
intellectual environments. Scholars such as Nicholas Phillipson have
examined the Edinburgh of the late Scottish Enlightenment, while others
like Peter Hanns Reill have explored the Gottingen of the German
Enlightenment. The powerful imagery used by Roy Porter and G. S.
Rousseau in their descriptions of the eighteenth century is no longer
entirely valid. Historians of science no longer see this period "as a tire-
some trough to be negotiated between the peaks of the seventeenth and
lohan Heilbron et al. (Eds.) The Rise of the Social Sciences and the Formation of
Modernity, 1-33.
© 1998 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
2 Bjorn Wittrock, lohan Heilbron, and Lars Magnusson
those of the nineteenth century; or as a mystery, a twilight zone in which

all is on the verge of yielding."!
Two prominent scholars, Andrew Cunningham and Nicholas Jardine,
thus argue in Romanticism and the Sciences that "(t)wo 'Scientific
Revolutions' are now commonly recognized - a first revolution around
the turn of the sixteenth century, in which new mathematically and
experimentally oriented branches of natural philosophy were created,
and a second revolution around the turn of the eighteenth century, in
which was formed the federation of disciplines we call 'science'. Science,
in our sense, once held to be more than two thousand years old, is now
credited with less than two hundred years of history." 2
However, it is still not acknowledged in the self-understanding of the
social and human sciences that a conceptual and epistemic revolution
took place which was coterminous with the formation of the political
and technological practices that we have come to associate with the
world of modernity. Except for the heroic scholarly programs of
Foucault and Koselleck, which will be discussed both in this intro-
duction and in individual contributions to the present volume, few if any
careful attempts have been undertaken to combine the insights presented
by contemporary sources and subsequent studies in order to examine the
range and depth of the great intellectual transformation which in many
ways seems to have shaped some of the most fundamental categories and
assumptions of the social and human sciences.
Perhaps it is precisely because some of these assumptions are now
once again open for doubt and critical scrutiny, including assumptions
about the nature of human agency, about the constitution of societal
interests, about implications of a separation of empirical and moral
discourses, and about the basis for delimiting a civil society from the
polity proper, that social scientists and historians alike seem increasingly
willing to move beyond individual case studies and outline the contours
of a deep-seated transformation that came to affect all of the social
sciences as well as their relationships to the humanities and the natural
sciences. 3
This volume aims at such a critical and empirically informed study of
the rise of what came to be the social sciences during the period when the
features of the key societal institutions of modernity were themselves
taking shape. There are clearly various ways to characterize and inter-
pret this "great transition," as Steven Turner has called it,4 just as there
are different strategies for explaining it. A starting point may be the
observation that there was a pervasive trend towards a more differ-
The Rise of the Social Sciences and the Formation of Modernity 3
entia ted constellation of intellectual practices. This tendency among

others is indicated by the fact that a common vocabulary which had
previously centered around such terms as "nature" and "reason" lost
much of its appeal and a disciplinary orientation instead came to
dominate most fields of inquiry. "Natural philosophy" gave way to
"physics," "chemistry," and "biology;" something similar occurred with
"moral philosophy," which was gradually replaced by a new structure
involving anthropology, economics, political science and sociology. Even
the most general intellectual specialties, such as theology and
philosophy, tended to become separate disciplines. 5
This pattern of differentiation corresponded closely to institutional
changes. The centers of intellectual work shifted from academies, learned
societies, and literary salons to reformed universities and the newly
created professional schools and research centers. 6 Whether in the
reformed universities or the French gran des ecoles, scholarly work
became a disciplinary endeavor, more or less clearly distinguishable from
other disciplines as well as from amateur activities. Scientific training,
research, publication, and professional organization all tended to be
organized primarily along disciplinary lines. Modes of presentation and
historical accounts also changed in an analogous way. For example,
scientific fields were presented in encyclopedias by means of disciplinary
treatises which, according to Richard Yeo, took a standard form: a
definite historical introduction, a statement of the methodological
principles of the discipline, claims about the specific domain of the
subject and a defense of its boundaries, and celebration of the heroes of
the subject and of the roles they played in making it a modern science. 7
The emergence of the social sciences as a relatively distinct intellectual
field was itself an important feature of this process of intellectual and
institutional differentiation. Here again the terms indicate a double
process. There was, on the one hand, a marked shift from such general
frameworks as "natural law" and "moral philosophy" to more specific
and often more "scientific" ones (economics, anthropology, social
mathematics, and so forth). On the other hand, new terms also emerged
which served as general denominators for these discourses, such as
"moral and political science" and, somewhat later, "social science." The
expression "moral and political science" came into use in France during
the 1760s, probably in the circle of the physiocrats. The term "social
science" was coined in the 1790s in the circle around Condorcet and
subsequently spread to England and Scotland and the German-speaking
countries. 8 The introduction of these new terms was accompanied or
4 Bjorn Wittrock, Johan Heilbron, and Lars Magnusson
followed by institutional projects (journals, societies) that culminated in

France in the establishment of a separate "class" of the moral and
political sciences at the newly founded Institut de France (1795), which
replaced the former academies. The natural sciences formed the first
class of the Institut, the social sciences the second, and literature and the
fine arts the third and last class. The French national institute thus
perfectly exemplified Wolf Lepenies' description of the modern intel-
lectual world as a constellation of "three cultures."
The class of the moral and political sciences was itself divided into
different sections (philosophy, morals, law, history, political economy,
geography), all of which played an important role in the shaping of these
disciplines in France. During the Napoleonic period the "second class"
was abolished, but it was resurrected after the Restoration as the
Academie des sciences morales et politiques (1832), which remained the
official center of French social science until at least the end of the
nineteenth century, when university disciplines successfully challenged
the monopoly of the Academy.
The French development is a particularly clear case, but the emergence
of modern social sciences in the years between 1750 to 1850 is also evident
in other countries. Whereas the institutionalization of disciplinary social
science is generally of a somewhat later date,9 many of the central
assumptions, terms, and concepts were shaped in these years between the
Enlightenment and Romanticism. Though this is not a very original
proposition, surprisingly little systematic work has so far been done on
the subject. Two different reasons account for this lack of interest.
As far as intellectual historians are concerned, a major obstacle is that
the period from 1750 to 1850 is not an established unit of research and
analysis. Dix-huitiemistes and dix-neuviemistes both have their own time
spans and their own journals, and the same goes for historians
specializing in the intermediary period of the revolutionary years.
Conventional historical demarcations thus do not favor research on this
period, even if it might be acknowledged as a "great transition." There is
also another reason for the neglect among social scientists. Insofar as the
history of the social sciences is written by the practitIoners of these
disciplines, it has been disciplinary history in the traditional sense. lO
Closely interwoven with disciplinary demands and divisions, these
disciplinary histories have not only ignored much of the intellectual and
societal context, but also the "early history." In nearly all contemporary
social science disciplines the "early history" was, and often still is, per-
ceived as merely "prehistory," that is, as a topic which is best left to the
curiosity of retired professors and a few historians. In sociology, for

example, Marx, Weber, and Durkheim are considered to be "classics."
As such, they are widely read and republished, taught, and commented
upon. But the work of their predecessors, ranging from Montesquieu
and Rousseau to Saint-Simon and Comte, is no longer considered to be
part of the intellectual identity of the discipline.
The past decades have witnessed a widespread dissatisfaction with the
traditional modes of historical reconstruction. It is now widely admitted
that traditional textbook history suffers from anachronisms and whig-
gishness, displays all sorts of disciplinary biases, and lacks truly his-
torical scholarship as well as a proper sociological understanding. New
and more scholarly disciplinary histories have emerged in all fields, and
there is a new interest in interdisciplinary relationships, in contextual
questions, and in comparative issues. ll Much of this research is informed
by theoretical approaches derived from philosophy after the linguistic
turn, forms of discourse analysis, or recent sociological theory.l2 All
these renewals are apparent in such initiatives as the Societe franraise
pour l'histoire des sciences de {'homme (1987) and the journal History of
the Human Sciences (1988). Both have deliberately broken with the
monodisciplinary form of association and the whiggishness of conven-
tional accounts and have insisted on the exploration of the common past
of the humanities and the social sciences.
One of the most prominent sources of inspiration away from "tunnel
history" has been the program of what is known as the Cambridge
School, developed by scholars such as John Pocock, Quentin Skinner,
and John Dunn. Their challenge to the conventional history of ideas has
centered around the conception of "language" and how it could be used
in historical studies. According to Pocock, "if we are to have a history of
political thought constructed on authentically historical principles, we
must have means of knowing what an author "was doing" when he
wrote, or published a text."l3
Pocock maintains that at least three consequences which have wide
implications for intellectual history follow from the involvement with
"language." First, the scholar "is interested in acts performed and the
contexts in and upon which they were performed." Second, his research
will be textual and concentrate upon printed utterances and responses.
Third, his work will deal mainly with idioms and rhetoric rather than
with grammar, that is, with the affective and effective content of speech
rather than its structure. l4
Although the focus of this orientation was initially on political theory
in the early modern period, it has gradually broadened to include other

intellectual genres, such as political economy and theories of more recent
periods. IS Another major source of inspiration for a renewed under-
standing of the development of the social sciences is the increasingly
historically oriented sociology of the sciences. Moving beyond both
theoretical debates and their realistic or relativistic implications, the cur-
rent research in "science studies" has not only provided many detailed
case studies of contemporary scientific practice, but has also contributed
substantially to a reconceptualization of the history of the sciences. 16 The
new history of science is not primarily concerned with specific facts,
particular research specialties, or individual theories. It is, on the
contrary, problem oriented and tends to focus on issues which cut across
conventional boundaries in order to rethink the historical constitution of
categories such as objectivity, induction, experiment, scientific
experience, abstraction, and proof, as well as addressing the psycho-
logical and socio-political conditions of science. 17
Both the Cambridge School and the historically oriented research in
science studies have demonstrated the fruitfulness of returning to the
early modern period and inquiring into the genesis of modern concepts
and current arrangements. Investigating the period when none of these
notions were self-evident, when they had both other meanings and
powerful alternatives, is a particularly fruitful device not merely for a
new historical understanding, but also for a fresh consideration of
present-day concerns.
Two Models of Change
For any research project having the ambition to cast new light on the
formative years of modern social science at least two general models are
relevant: one was proposed by Michel Foucault, the other by the
German historian Reinhart Koselleck. Foucault's archeology of the
human sciences as presented in Les mots et les chases (1966) depicted a
transformation in the episteme, that is, the deep structure of knowledge.
Foucault considered this episteme to be a sort of "historical a priori," a
discursive code of which the users are unaware that is common to all
discourses in a given period of time.
Two epistemic transformations were analysed by Foucault in some
detail. The first occurred during the second quarter of the seventeenth
century and marked the transition from the Renaissance to the
"classical" era; the second took place during the decades between 1775
and 1825 and marked the transition from the classical to the modern
episteme. Foucault based his investigation on three fields of inquiry,
showing that the classical discourses concerning grammar, living
organisms, and wealth were profoundly transformed around 1800 into
the modern discourses concerning historical language, life, and product-
ive labour, the latter becoming the theoretical objects of philology,
biology, and economics. Foucault assumed that the observed regularities
were valid for the episteme of the whole period and he insisted on the
discontinuity between the different epistemic codes.
Although Les mots et les choses is still a provocative and stimulating
book, it has numerous drawbacks. Many problems with his analysis
arise from the structuralist mood in which it was conceived. For
example, Foucault not only eliminated the producers of the above dis-
courses from his analysis, but he showed no interest in the actual process
of discursive production, ignored its social and political conditions, and
refrained from asking how and why epistemic change occurs. While his
work has spawned many debates, even among specialists in the histories
of biology and linguistics, his central proposition that man as a subject
of science was invented only at the end of the eighteenth century has
found little support. In addition, Foucault's own research after Les mots
et les choses went in a different direction. 18
Koselleck's Sattelzeit and German Begriffsgeschichte
Another line of research has been outlined by Reinhart Koselleck. His

work has been debated and utilized in a wide circle of German scholars
but has only recently drawn attention outside of the German speaking
countries. Koselleck has argued that the decades around 1800 con-
stituted not so much a "break" in Foucault's sense but rather a period of
accelerated economic, social, and political change. This period of trans-
formation, a Sattelzeit, was both reflected in and shaped by processes of
conceptual innovation, which Koselleck took as the focus of his
research. Koselleck's work is, therefore, a particular form of conceptual
history, of Begriffsgeschichte.
Having earlier worked on the Enlightenment and on German social
history,19 Koselleck published in 1967 detailed instructions for a lexicon
of changes in the political and social vocabulary. The Geschichtliche
GrundbegrifJe was to be a collective enterprise co-directed by Otto
Brunner and Werner Conze that would map conceptual change in the
German language between approximately 1750 and 1850. According to
Koselleck, these conceptual changes would be seen to be characterized
by four specific tendencies:
1. Democratization. Concepts previously bound to specific social strata
and professional corporations spread to other social groups. This
process of social diffusion was generally accompanied by a loss of
terminological precision.
2. Temporalization. Whereas traditional vocabularies were largely static,
new conceptualizations were dynamic. They indicated processes and
were often oriented towards the future, expressing expectations and
aspirations.
3. Ideologiesierbarkeit. Because concepts were no longer bound to
specific social groups and professions, they became more general and
more abstract, especially in the form of "-isms" and singular nouns
("liberty"). Since concepts generally became less specific and
particular, they therefore became more diffuse and more open to
various interpretations and usages. Meaning thus became more
dependent on the users and on the context of usage.
4. Politicization. There was an obvious trend to politicize the use of
language in connection with the Ideologiesierbarkeit. This was
especially clear in the growing use of political slogans and political
propaganda. 20
Not all of these characteristics have received equal scholarly attention or
have proven to be equally fruitful. The best documented issue is
probably that of temporalization, or Verzeitlichung. This aspect is close
to the professional interests of historians and has a long scholarly tra-
dition, particularly in Germany and especially in respect to historicism. 21
Koselleck, in any case, has devoted many subtle essays to it. 22 In his
view, the Sattelzeit not only marks a transition to a new period, but in
fact indicates the transition to the first era in human history character-
ized by a predominant sense of historical time. This temporal structure
of human experience is visible in an unprecedented sense of change and
renewal (including the emergence of concepts such as progress and
development), in the notion of an open future which calls for human
intervention and "planning," and in the separation of "experience" from
"expectation. "23
These changes are apparent in various ways. For example, old and
static concepts may be redefined and thus become more dynamic, often
simultaneously expressing both movement or process and expectation. In
general, old topoi either loose their meanings, acquire more dynamic sig-
nificance, or are overshadowed by new terms and concepts.
The program which Koselleck outlined has been only partially ful-
filled in the volumes of the lexicon. In a certain sense the method of the
enterprise as a whole, which is a new form of conceptual history, has
been more successful than its initial thesis. In the lexicon, the theme of
the Sattelzeit is most apparent in the issues which touch upon the
question of time and temporalization and in the analyses of neologisms
(revolution, conservatism, socialism, and so forth). But since a great deal
of effort has been devoted to very detailed analyses of ancient and
medieval terminology, relatively little time and space has been left for the
issues specifically related to the transformations between 1750 and
1850. 24
The lack of comparative material is another reason why the theme of
the Sattelzeit may not have received the degree of attention initially
suggested. For example, Manfred Riedel argues in his detailed analysis
of the concept of society that it was only in Hegel's philosophy of law
that the modern notion of society was first systematically articulated. 25
From a broader European perspective, however, this is a comparatively
late date and the development he discusses was not in any way restricted
to the German states. What is lacking in Riedel's analysis is a similar
treatment of conceptual developments in the English and French-
speaking countries. 26
Considerations of conceptual history as a specific type of intellectual
history and historical scholarship have often received more attention
than the Satte/zeit in the reception of the lexicon abroad. The methods
and results of Begriffsgeschichte have been compared to somewhat
similar approaches such as historical semantics,27 the tradition of the
history of ideas,28 and the study of political languages and vocabularies
as advocated by the Cambridge schooP9
In fact, it seems that the same tendency also exists in Germany. Rolf
Reichardt, a former assistant to Koselleck, launched the Handbuch
politisch-sozialer Grundbegriffe in Frankreich 1680-1820 (1985-) in the
years following the publication of the Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe.
Reichardt and his collaborators have limited the period under
consideration and have also broadened the approach to include, among
others, French contributors and their historical traditions. An initiative
which preceded the Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe is the Historisches
Worterbuch der Philosophie (1971-). This latter lexicon, produced mainly
by philosophers, represents a more traditional form of conceptual
lO Bjorn Wittrock, Johan Heilbron, and Lars Magnusson
history as conceived by Erich Rothacker, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and

Joachim Ritter. It contains a large number of short entries, but it lacks
the attention to the social history of conceptual change that is present in
the Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe. As Melvin Richter notes, "The GG
originated in a style of historical inquiry that stressed hermeneutics and
hence the importance of conceptual apparatus, horizons and self-under-
standings of historical actors. However, as a result of incorporating
social history in its framework, both Brunner and Conze helped shift
Begriffsgeschichte away from a philosophical and hermeneutic method
towards another incorporating social history of a sort more acceptable
to historians."3o
An internalist and predominantly philosophical style of intellectual
history was thus opposed to a more historical mode of analysis which
was more sensitive to contextual questions. 3l This opposition was also
relevant in the English setting, where the Cambridge School of
intellectual historians developed their program partly as a critique of the
way Oxford philosophers treated the history of political theory.
Maybe surprisingly, Koselleck's ideas about the Sattelzeit have
received particular attention from system theorists in sociology. Niklas
Luhmann and some of his colleagues have been anxious to recast their
functionalist theory in a more historical manner and have extensively
utilized Koselleck's work for that purpose. Luhmann's interest in the
semantics of modern time was certainly shaped by the tradition of the
Begriffsgeschichte, but he has also greatly drawn upon Koselleck's idea
of the Sattelzeit. Luhmann reinterpreted the Sattelzeit as a period of
societal transformation in which the hierarchial system of estates and
orders was replaced by a system which is "functionally differentiated"
into a plurality of subsystems. 32 This notion of modernization as a
process of "functional differentiation" provided the starting point for
Stichweh's work on discipline formation and for similar studies of the
cultural transformations which occurred during this period. 33
The Revisionist Interpretation of Adam Smith
In considering the recent historiography of economic, political, and

social ideas, it has become clear that the issues involved are more
complex than such schematic notions as "functional differentiation" or
Sattelzeit suggest. For example, it was long possible to preserve the view
of a radical Smithian revolution that took place in 1776. In order to
argue for this radical break, the usual practice was to refer to the
existence of two Adam Smiths, namely, the moral philosopher of Theory
of Moral Sentiments and the political economist of Wealth of Nations.
However, the recent scholarly discussion has demonstrated to what a
large extent Smith's masterpiece of economic analysis relied on con-
temporary eighteenth century views concerning economic issues and
even more so on moral philosophy and politics. In this context Smith's
great reliance on Hume, Hutcheson, and the other writers of the Scottish
Enlightenment has been extensively researched by Winch, Haakonssen,
Skinner, and others. 34
As Winch points out, Smith's Wealth of Nations should be regarded
as a "specialised application to the detailed field of action of general
theories of social behaviour contained in the earlier work."35 And not
only was Smith's moral philosophy a child of its time. Smith had
important predecessors in respect to both his economic theories and his
general idea of the economic realm as a self-adjusting "natural" system.
In fact, the bulk of his ideas emerged gradually and can be found in
works by such earlier authors as Galiani, Carl, Cantillon, Tucker,
Mandeville, North, Gervaise, and, of course, Hume. Smith's greatest
achievement then was to melt all this together and emphasize the
prevalence of a self-equilibrating economic system monitored by an
invisible hand. For instance, it is now clear that the famous "invisible
hand" in Smith's system originated from the Scottish natural theory
discussion.
The discussion concerning public interest and private vices had an
even longer pedigree. This was a central issue addressed by natural right
thinkers as well as many "mercantilist" authors in England during the
late seventeenth century. Moreover, it was common to argue at least
since Mandeville and Hume that private vices could serve the public
interest under certain circumstances, although most argued that this
balance was hard to strike. "Corruption" in the sense used by John
Pocock was a chronic threat to the moral order, especially in author-
itarian states. 36 Private vices, if unhampered by the legislator or by
the civilising influence of a commercial society, could thus lead either to
a policy grounded on special interests and corruption or to public
benefits.
Emphasizing a tradition stemming from natural law theorists such as
Pufendorf over Mandeville and the Scottish Enlightenment suggests a
quite different understanding of the rise of social sciences than is
traditional. It seems clear according to this line of thought that "the
great transition" was a long drawn out process, far too long to be
spoken of as a sudden break and perhaps too long and complicated to be
described as a "great transition" at all. The "revisionist" interpretation
of the rise of economics also points to the importance of moral philo-
sophy, especially natural right discourse, for understanding the rise of
social science in general. Not only are Hutcheson, Hume, and the
Scottish Enlightenment thinkers important figures within this tradition,
but so too are Pufendorf and Hobbes.
This tradition provided the vocabulary for discussions concerning the
boundaries between state and civil society, the roles of social and
unsocial drives, and human psychology and the passions. It was this
language that formed the backbone of a number of discourses in which
conceptual change came to take place, discourses in which, from the late
eighteenth century onwards, the language of political and moral
philosophy developed into the language of social science.
The Volume: Arguments and Structure
In the immediately following chapter Robert Wokler examines in detail

the very idea of a deep-seated and relatively rapid epistemic transfor-
mation and considers the thesis of an epistemic break against the
background of the development of the human sciences in the course of
the EnlightenmentY Wokler in no way suggests that the human sciences
were invented in the late eighteenth century and he fully acknowledges
the persistence of a range of intellectual traditions. However, he argues
forcefully that there was indeed a fundamental discursive rupture within
a relatively short time span during the course of the French revolution,
in particular around 1795, a rupture which constitutes the formative
moment for the new social sciences that eventually came to supersede the
older modes of discourse.
Wokler writes that, "Among the more striking features of the new
sciences of society which Foucault's conceptual history of the modern
age portrays is the removal of politics from explanations of human
nature - the elimination of the spheres of legislation and political action
from fa science sociafe and their redescription as abstract, utopian,
metaphysical and, after the Terror, dangerous to know." Wokler thus
obviously takes issue with those interpreters of modernity who argue
that one of its defining characteristics is, within a broad Kantian
tradition, the key roles of agency, freedom of choice, and moral
responsibility as opposed to the shackles of tradition, convention, and

authority. Wokler claims that such an interpretation grossly under-
estimates the extent to which the new social sciences emphasized
structural and constraining conditions in their accounts. This feature of
the new social sciences of modernity must be seen against the backdrop
of the specifically modern form of polity that emerged during the French
Revolution, namely, the modern nation-state. The latter did not fulfill
the Enlightenment project but rather drastically curtailed it, including its
idea of free public spheres and its commitment to cosmopolitanism.
This argument entails an agreement with the much sharper temporal
focus of Foucault's analysis in Les mots et les choses as opposed to the
broad long-term account in Koselleck's conceptual history. However, it
also entails a much sharper focus on linkages between conceptual and
political-institutional developments as well as on the agents of the epis-
temic break than does the approach chosen by Foucault. The role of a
nexus of scholars such as the ideologues is thus central for W okler.
Similarly, the Institut national des sciences et des arts, established by the
Convention in 1795, is of crucial importance in providing an institut-
ional home for the new discourses on society.
Perhaps the boldest and most thought provoking feature of Wokler's
analysis is his effort to establish a direct link between the new social
sciences and the new political order of modernity, the nation-state, which
arose during the same period of time. Moreover, Wokler polemically
argues against a number of other scholars that these two features of mo-
dernity, that is, the social sciences and the nation state, and indeed the
very project of modernity itself, cannot be seen as a consequence or a
continuation of the Enlightenment, but instead constitute a break with
certain of its key features. 38
Wokler's chapter is thus a forceful argument for the notion of a
"great transition" which is both more specific than Koselleck's thesis and
also more institutional and political than Foucault's argument. It is also
as sensitive in an historical sense to particular detailed accounts as both
of these two monumental undertakings.
The chapter by Johan Heilbron is focused not so much on the process
of rapid transformation in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries as on the long-term process in which notions such as self-
interest and commercial society evolved in the course of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries. Rooted in Renaissance political thought, the
idea of "self-interest" first became a cornerstone in the reason-of-state
literature which flourished in the period around 1600 when the European
state system was emerging. It was primarily natural law theorists such as
Pufendorf and French moralists such as Pierre Nicole who elaborated
the sceptical anthropology of self-seeking individuals during the seven-
teenth century. Both linked the notion of interest to the possibility of a
commercial society, a conceptualization which was of critical significance
in the rise of modern social science. There was a continuous elaboration
of ideas and of conceptual change throughout this entire process, which
ranged from the beginning of the sixteenth until at least the end of the
eighteenth centuries. However, different paths of development may be
discerned in the French and the Anglo-Saxon settings. It is clear that the
nature of political and social order in these differing settings did indeed
influence the terms of intellectual debate as well as the forums available
for such debates.
But it is also equally clear that a careful examination lends little or no
support to simple explanations which in effect maintain that the in-
vention of homo oeconomicus can be immediately linked to the rise of the
bourgeoisie or to the emergence of a capitalist economy. Rather, a far
more subtle analysis is needed to account for the basic models of interest
and action that emerge in this period.
Whereas Wokler's chapter focuses on the late eighteenth century, and
especially on the mid-l 790s, Heilbron's chapter traces the long-term pat-
terns of conceptual change in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
that led up to the momentous redefinition of key notions in the
discourses on society at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of
the nineteenth centuries. Insofar as Heilbron emphasizes developments
in the latter half of the seventeenth century, he addresses a different time
span than does Wokler. However, Heilbron's discussion also leads to the
conclusion that there was indeed a process of fundamental conceptual
change which occurred in the late eighteenth century and in which
concepts of interest, as well as those of agency and ethics, become
transformed in the Anglo-Saxon, French, and German-speaking worlds.
Similarly, Heilbron shares Wokler's general sympathy for not only an
analysis of conceptual change in context, but also for an analysis which
links the study of micro-contextual change to features of macro-societal
institutions such as the state.
Both Wokler and Heilbron address the general problematique of
continuities and ruptures in the rise of the social sciences. The following
two chapters also examine the basic question of the volume as a whole,
namely, whether there was indeed a fundamental epistemic shift in the
process of the formation of modernity in the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries, a point which was suggested rather than demon-

strated by Foucault and Koselleck. While most of Wokler's and
Heilbron's empirical examples refer to developments in the French con-
text, these two chapters, written by Peter Hanns Reill and Randall
Collins respectively, focus on developments in the German-speaking
world.
Reill first of all shows that the common image of a unified Enlighten-
ment conception of scientific thought in the tradition of Newtonian
natural philosophy characterized by a mechanistic model of science and
nature is not valid. In the latter half of the eighteenth century there was
instead a range of competing discourses concerning nature and society.
In both the French and German contexts, the dichotomy between
mechanism and animism was transcended and the notions of science and
of scientific method shifted correspondingly.
In Germany, discourses on biology, history, and language came to
exert a profound overarching influence. An epistemic position thereby
emerged which rejected mathematical-mechanistic models and tried to
link observation to scientific imagination in an effort to capture the com-
positional and relational nature of reality. Avenues thus opened up
permitting the study of both being and becoming, both place and time,
and both structure and process, along with the reciprocal interactions
which constitute individuals within a changing systemic whole. It is
possible to discern in Reill's account basic themes which recurred
throughout the debates of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the
social and human sciences concerning such issues as the interpretation of
agency and social order. Perhaps one could even speak of the emergence
in the German context of a specific linguistic-interpretive tradition
concerning the notion of agency that is clearly distinct from the
structural-constraining accounts which came to characterize early
French social science and which have reverberated throughout much of
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The later division between the natural and the cultural sciences does
not appear in the movement of thought indicated by Reill. On the
contrary, there are strong elements of analogical reasoning in respect to
the realms of nature and society. The concept of Bildung, with its roots
in studies of the processes of formation in the field of the life sciences, is
but one example of this issue.
Reill traces such developments across discourses on anthropology,
history, and linguistics. He highlights the way they change conceptions
of comparative and analogical reasoning as well as notions of sign,
meaning, society, and agency. For example, a notion of a science of

society emerges within the late Enlightenment project of a science of
humanity which is directly linked to civilizational developments and to
the idea of Bildung, not only in respect to individual human beings, but
in respect to humanity as a whole. The work of Wilhelm von Humboldt
is illustrative in this regard.
Randall Collins' analysis, in which he argues that a revolution did
take place in philosophical reasoning in the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries, complements that of Reill. Collins states that this
revolution, "which affected virtually all of intellectual life down to the
present, was simultaneously a change in the organizational base and in
the intellectual style of philosophers." This organizational change was
intimately linked to the emergence first in Germany and eventually on a
global scale of the research-oriented university.
The intellectual transformation which Collins traces concerns German
philosophical idealism. As the university revolution spread, this came to
include a version of idealism which Collins views as closely linked to this
shift in the institutional basis for intellectual activities during the
transitional phase, although the next generation revolted against
idealistic philosophy. The lasting importance of this transformation in
philosophical discourse does not so much involve any individual
argument but rather a style of philosophical reasoning that has come to
be associated with critical or transcendental thought in the Kantian
sense.
In contrast to the "scientific revolution" of the seventeenth century,
the momentous transformations of the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries were such that they could no longer be made readily
compatible with the predominance of theology. Rather, they introduced
distinctively modern forms of discourse which were underpinned by
organizational and institutional transformations that were deep-seated
and largely irreversible. These concern phenomena such as the emerg-
ence of the research-oriented university, but also the shift of literary
production from its prior basis in systems of patronage to a dependence
on the commercial marketplace.
Collins is a sociologist writing the history of a discipline rather than a
philosopher. Thus, drawing upon his long-term research program con-
cerning the history of philosophy, he places a strong emphasis on the
social and intellectual networks that linked the different groupings of the
new idealist philosophers who brought about conceptual changes, some
of which are also analysed by Reill. Both of them highlight basic pro-
cesses of conceptual change, but they also consistently cast their analyses
of conceptual change in an institutional and societal context.
The chapters by Lars Magnusson and Keith Tribe focus on the for-
mation of discourses on economics. Magnusson's contribution is ana-
logous to Heilbron's in the sense that it deals primarily with the
emergence of a general systematic discourse on economics and addresses
a period significantly earlier than the turn of the nineteenth century. His
focus is thus on mercantilism. Magnusson argues that although there are
differences between the various authors whom posterity has labelled as
mercantilist, there is, nevertheless, a degree of common themes and a
common vocabulary sufficient for mercantilism to be a meaningful term
which denotes a series of important scholarly contributions to the
understanding of economic activities. Indeed, mercantilism - the focus is
mainly on British mercantilist thought - came to constitute the first
systematic, principled, and scientific discourse in a broad Baconian sense
on the creation and distribution of wealth.
Tribe, in contrast, focuses on precisely the period of "the great
transition" at the turn of the eighteenth century and takes up a pioneer-
ing figure in the transformation of economic reasoning in Germany
during this period, Ludwig Heinrich von Jacob. Jacob was active at the
University of Halle for his entire career, first as a student and then as a
professor, aside from the years when the university was closed following
Napoleon's defeat of Prussia in 1806. Both as a lecturer and as a
textbook author, Jacob came to playa crucial role in the transformation
of economics from a state centered cameralistic science to political
economy or Nationalokonomie in Adam Smith's sense.
Tribe shows how this transformation became possible in large part
through Jacob's commitment to precisely that type of critical philosophy
which forms the focus of Randall Collins' chapter in the present volume.
Jacob's case is highly revealing in terms of the intimate interplay between
philosophical commitments and the particular type of new reasoning on
economics which entailed a clear break with previously predominant
modes of discourse. It is also revealing in the way it demonstrates the
interplay between conceptual change and the institutional context of
university teaching as well as the macro-societal context of the nature of
state formation.
The chapters by Eric Brian and Michael Donnelly take up a crucial
theme in the rise of the social sciences, namely, the process whereby
statistical records of populations and societies became infinitely more
prevalent and more analytically sophisticated than had earlier been the
case. Brian focuses on French developments towards the end of the

eighteenth century and draws upon a large body of scholarship in this
regard, including his own major work La Mesure de l'Etat.
Administrateurs et geometres au XVIIle siecle (1994).
Brian traces the interrelationships between, on the one hand, the
development of an analytical theory of probabilities and of differential
and integral calculus and, on the other, the growing administrative and
political demand for statistical records concerning the population and
economic activities. These developments came together in the in-
stitutional setting of the Royal French Academy of Sciences, in the
works of scholars such as Condorcet, Laplace, and Borda, and in the
role of Turgot, the key administrative reformer under the Old Regime.
Many of the conceptual categories and potential applications that were
elaborated in these processes only came to be realized after the downfall
of the Old Regime. It was, of course, Condorcet himself who came to
playa key role in the restructuring of scientific institutions during the
Revolutionary era.
Brian argues that the administrative reforms of the decades to come
and the momentous intellectual transformation of the old moral and
political sciences into what became the institutionalized academic social
sciences towards the end of the nineteenth century can only be under-
stood in the context of the extraordinary conjunction of intellectual,
institutional, and macro-societal events of the l770s and l780s in
France.
Donnelly's contribution develops in another way some of the main
arguments proposed by both Brian and Wokler. However, Donnelly
does not focus on one specific and crucial intellectual context but rather
gives an overview of some of the main trends of development inherent in
what Ian Hacking has described as the "avalanche of printed numbers"
that accompanied the 300,000 fold increase in the scale of public
accounting between 1820 and 1900. This development entailed the
decisive shift from the old political arithmetic to social statistics. The
basic premise of accounting shifted away from merely a concern for the
riches of an absolutistic ruler or, for that matter, an inventory of the
spoils of a victorious conquering power, as in the case of Petty's famous
survey of Ireland. Drawing upon the works of scholars such as Robert
Descimon and Alain Guery, and also Pierre Bourdieu, Brian discusses
the very inception of this process in terms of "the autonomisation of the
State from the absolute monarchy."
The new social statistics of the nineteenth century provided infor-
mati on about society, including such issues as the numbers and methods
of suicides in different districts, which in no obvious way were within the
easy reach of a ruler. This clearly does not mean that statistics had
become unrelated to political concerns, but rather that new conceptions
of society and population were emerging in terms of system, systemic
properties, and regularities of aggregate numbers; furthermore, these
conceptions came to form the foundation for public interventions. A
view of the social universe thereby took shape which focused less on
individual peculiarities and particular actions and more on the re-
presentation and comparison of groups in aggregate terms. The
techniques through which it became possible to make such
representations in an accurate way were, in Donnelly'S words, "powerful
techniques" that led to "a new mode to act upon" by "making the world
thinkable for statistics." It might be argued that savoir and pouvoir came
to be even more closely linked because of this shift from a more narrow-
ly political to a more broadly conceived social science.
This theme is explored further in Peter Wagner's concluding chapter.
Wagner emphasizes what he sees as the deep-seated transition from the
moral sciences and political philosophy to the empirical sciences. This
shift in the order of knowledge, its themes, and foci of discourse was
intimately linked to the revolutionary upheavals in France and America.
In a situation characterized by a radically expanding realm of possible
human actions and the concomitant awareness of the contingency of
human existence in general, both beyond the old certainties of life in
given locales in traditional social hierarchies and in conditions when new
collective identities and political orders were being formed, there was a
dramatically growing need to understand the pre-political givens and
structures of human existence as well as the structural conditions and
consequences of the newly created polity itself.
In Wagner's reading, social science thus became a kind of empirical
political philosophy that transcended and replaced the old genres of
political philosophy, the moral sciences, and the cameralistic admin-
istrative sciences of an earlier political order, which both liberals and
Marx regarded as "the miserable cameral sciences." The social sciences
arose as the discourses of modernity, a modernity that was fundament-
ally characterized by the dualities of liberty and discipline, contingency
and stability, certainty and order.
Wagner then goes on to trace the unfolding of these aporias of
modernity in the gradual emergence of the social science disciplines in
the European and American settings during the course of the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries. He contrasts the historical formation of the

different epistemic positions of the two main strategies for rediscovering
certainties in the age of modernity, namely, systematic observation as
opposed to reflective conceptualization. Wagner notes that there was a
tendency for these to be linked to what he speaks of as different key
interests, which the early Habermas would have called Erkenntnis-
interessen. These interests in turn tended to give rise to research styles
later associated with terms such as behaviorism and a broad historical
and comparative sociological reasoning. Neither tradition, however,
could be easily contained within the discursive framework of classical
political philosophy. On the one hand, both of them extended beyond its
realm; on the other, each left unexplored some of the key philosophical
and moral questions which had formed the main foci of earlier political
philosophy.
Wagner concludes by emphasizing one of the possible reasons why the
great transition to modernity in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries now calls for our attention. Perhaps we are once again forced
to raise the same kinds of fundamental questions that were examined at
that time, the answers to which impinge upon our own understanding of
the whole age of modernity. A minimal hope might be that "scholars
remain somewhat able to grasp the reigning mode of selectivity and to
keep some reflexive distance to the intellectual project even while
pursuing it."
Certain of the contributors to the present volume have argued at
length in other contexts, such as in an earlier Sociology of the Sciences
Yearbook, that numerous explorations of society were carried out in the
late nineteenth century within the framework of a plethora of societies,
associations, academic settings, and various commissions. 39 Some of
these forms of inquiry came to be relatively clearly defined as research
programs that, partially and unevenly, become institutionalized in
academic settings in the form of a small number of academic disciplines.
These new disciplines permitted the reproduction of certain discourses
on society, but they also radically constrained the range of intellectually
legitimate inquiry. This process of reduction and disciplinary institution-
alization has a largely twofold backdrop.
First, the research oriented university that was created in rudimentary
fashion in the early nineteenth century had by the end of the century
become the archetypical institution for the generation and transmission
of advanced knowledge. 4o Second, the apparently natural ordering of the
cognitive universe of the social sciences during the process of academic
institutionalization closely corresponded to a more or less tacit as-

sumption in much late nineteenth century political thinking, namely, that
there was a "natural" tri-partite division between the economic activities
of the market, the political activities of the state, and the aggregate of
social relations in "society."41 This tri-partite division, which became
increasingly problematic even in terms of state activities during the
nineteenth century, eventually gave rise to the differentiation of the
social science disciplines. This first occurred in the American context for
largely institutional and professional reasons, belatedly taking place
during the twentieth century in the European context as well.
Now, in the late twentieth century, there would seem to be reasons to
heed the call for a minimalist critical philosophy that involves at least a
moment of distancing and reflection relative to any given, more or less
standardised, disciplinary history. In this respect there is an echo of that
revolution in philosophy two hundred years ago which was one of the
crucial intellectual events in the formative moment of the discourses of
modernity.
Conceptual Change and the Formation of Modernity
The essays in this volume together entail a fundamental reVlSlOn of a

view long dominant both among social scientists and humanists as well
as in lay debates concerning the formation of modernity in terms of a
conjunction of technological and political transformations, that is, the
conjunction of the industrial and the democratic revolutions. This
traditional interpretation not only underestimates but openly neglects
the deep-seated epistemic transformation which took place at the turn of
the eighteenth century.
These essays strongly suggest that, in spite of all the continuities and
long-term processes of gestation, there was indeed a great transition in
both epistemic and institutional terms at that point in time. They also
entail a call for a radically revised self-understanding among social
scientists of the histories of their own disciplines. It is simply not enough
to waver between a focus on the early political philosophers and legal
scholars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries on the one hand and
the nineteenth and early twentieth century "classics" of social science in
the period of its academic and disciplinary institutionalization on the
other. On the contrary, there are reasons for carefully examining the
ways in which the distinctively modern key concepts for the
understanding of society emerged during the great transition in the late

eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
One such shift pertains precisely to the concepts of society and history
and to the new awareness of the structural and constraining nature of
societal life beyond the domain of the communicative interactions in the
political sphere proper. There thus occurred the transition to a social
science which transcended the boundaries of the political sphere but also
traced the implications and conditions of that sphere much further than
could the old political philosophy. This point is perhaps argued most
consistently in the present volume by Robert Wokler, Michael Donnelly,
and Peter Wagner. Pierre Manent has put forward the notion that
society is a "postrevolutionary discovery." This is true enough and, as
Keith Baker convincingly demonstrated, the term society underwent a
long conceptual development within the French context in the course of
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with a dramatic increase in the
use of the term in the mid-eighteenth century.42 What Marcel Gauchet
argued in his critique of Louis Dumont's analysis of Western
individualism and holism is also true. As Baker elegantly summarized
this point:
"(I)ndividualism was not simply a symptom of the dissolution of the
primacy of the social whole as that had been understood in traditional
religious terms. It was also a necessary condition for what he once again
called (following Karl Polanyi) the 'discovery of society' - its discovery
in strictly sociological terms, disengaged from the religious
representations in which it had hitherto expressed its existence. Not until
the ideological primacy of individual interests was postulated, he argued,
could constraints upon these interests be discovered in the operation of
an autonomous social order subject to its own laws."43
10han Heilbron's contribution to the present volume can to a large
extent be seen as an inquiry into the constitution of individual interests
and of the various ways in which they came to be conceived in the course
of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as amenable to the con-
straints of various notions of sociability. This inquiry could be viewed as
an examination of how there could be socially acceptable outcomes
when human beings, who were doomed to an existence short of true
religious virtue but at least had the prospect of a life beyond the borders
of a Leviathan-like absolute order, pursued their own self-interests.
However, the thrust of most of the contributions in this volume is that,
in consequence of the unique event of Revolutionary upheaval, dis-
cursive controversy and political practice become joined in the formation
of the distinctly modern era, even if the modern concept of society had a
long process of gestation. Pierre Manent has elaborated a similar
argument:
"After the Revolution, the men of the nineteenth century no longer
lived merely in civil society or the state, they lived in a third element that
received various names, usually 'society' or 'history.' Regardless of what
it was called, this element had the greatest authority. This 'society' then
was more than and different from 'civil society': the latter had been
created by the totality of relationships spontaneously formed by men,
transformed by the desire for preservation, while the former had no
explicit natural foundation. Its authority did not lie in 'nature,' but in
'history', in the historical evolution."
Manent admits it is certainly true that an author such as Montesquieu
granted more authority than any other eighteenth century author to
history understood as the development of "knowledge" and "commerce."
However, even though Montesquieu wanted to establish the authority of
history, he "did not feel it .... It is definitely from the Revolution that this
feeling dates. More precisely, it derives from the fact that the Revolution
failed to develop adequate political institutions ... . The Revolution
offered the original spectacle of a political change of unheard-of-scope,
yet having no stable political effects, of a political upheaval impossible to
settle, of an interminable and indeterminate event.,,44
This description of the Revolution as an irreversible and interminable
process of fundamental change was formulated perhaps most clearly by
one of the most well-known thinkers of the nineteenth century, Alexis de
Tocqueville. He writes of the revolution in Souvenirs, his memoirs that
were written in the summer of 1850, two decades after the journey to the
New World which made him famous to posterity. Tocqueville there
describes the Revolution as one long upheaval "that our fathers have
seen the beginning of and which, in all likelihood, we shall not see the
end of. Everything that remained of the old regime was destroyed for
ever."45
Koselleck's conception in his early work Kritik und Krise is in fact
quite similar. He there links the temporal duration of the process of
upheaval to its spatial, and indeed world wide, extension, and indicates
its increasing intensity in terms of modernity as a process which affects
all human beings, not only, for example, those in central political
institutions or certain major cities. Koselleck writes: "Das achtzehnte
lahrhundert ist der Vorraum des gegenwartigen Zeitalters, dessen
Spannungen sich seit der Franzosischen Revolution zunehmend
verscharft hat, indem der revolutionare Prozess extensiv die ganze Welt
und intensiv aIle Menschen ergriff."46 However, this sense of openness
and contingency also served as a forceful impetus to an examination of
the structural conditions of the body politic, and it also entailed a
transition from political and moral philosophy to social science.
Five key problematiques were formulated, or at least fundamentally
reformulated, and entered into the new social science discourse as a result
of this transition. Today these issues are more acutely open to
reinterpretation than they have been for decades, if not for perhaps a
century.
First, the role of historical inquiry became crucial. On the one hand,
historical reasoning became an integral part of the intellectual transition;
even abstract reason itself became historicized in early nineteenth
century philosophy. However, on the other hand, the breakup of the
moral and political sciences into a variety of new discourses that in the
course of the nineteenth century coalesced and were reduced to a small
number of disciplines also meant that the stage was set for the divergence
between a professionalized historical discipline and the other social and
human sciences. This is still a major intellectual divide today.
Second, interest in language and linguistic analysis became important
in all domains of the human and social sciences. One result of this was
the constitution of textual and hermeneutic modes of analysis. A second
was the constitution of the relationships between text, interpretation,
and consciousness, which are evident in contemporary debates
concerning linguistic analysis and poststucturalism. 47 A third result was
the effort to historicize language and linguistic development itself. A
crucial link was thereby provided between language and various col-
lective entities, such as the historical constructions of different peoples. 48
Third, new collective identities were constituted. If membership in a
collectivity could no longer be taken for granted in terms of the life
experiences of the inhabitants of a certain village or region, or in terms
of the relationship of rule and obligation between the princely ruler and
his subjects, then even the most basic categories of societal existence are
open to doubt.
Categories such as ruler and subject were by no means irreversibly
superseded in the late eighteenth century. They in fact lingered on in the
imperial-like political entities in and at the borders of Europe for more
than a century, but, in the aftermath of the French Revolution, they
were opened to doubt and to the necessity of reconstitution. Categories
such as citizen and compatriot captured some of the results of these
processes of reconstitution. Wokler's chapter in particular strongly

warns against any hasty equivocation of the French revolutionary notion
of nation-state with the commitment to a truly universal conception of
the rights of human beings. 49
The parallel developments in Germany and many other parts of
Europe which linked the constitution of collective identities to a his-
torically constituted collectivity such as a linguistic group or some other
cultural entity only serve to further underscore Wokler's point in this
respect. These developments warn against an all too easy and prevalent
tendency, among the self-proclaimed defenders and detractors of
modernity alike, to identify the political and epistemic order of mo-
dernity as merely an extension the Enlightenment project into political
reality.
Fourth, the whole problematique of the relationship between notions
of polity, society, and civil society was succinctly and acutely
reformulated during this period of transition. This point has been
repeatedly emphasized throughout this introductory chapter. The
fundamental re-examination of these notions should not conceal the fact
that they were so deeply reformulated in so many ways during this
period that it could be said that they were then discovered anew or even
invented.
Fifth, the most basic notions of any social and human science pertain
to assumptions about what prompts human beings to act and how to
interpret their actions within a broader framework. Such assumptions
are at the very core of any scholarly program in the social and human
sciences, and the three or four fundamental categories that we still by
and large draw upon were elaborated and proposed precisely at the turn
of the eighteenth century. These categories, each of which had a
corresponding concept of what constituted "society," may be described
as follows:
a) a rationalistic-compositional conception of agency with the
corresponding view of society as a form of compositional collective;
b) a statistical-inductive conception of agency with the corresponding
view of society as a systemic aggregate;
c) a structural-constraining conception of agency with the
corresponding view of society in terms of an organic totality; and
d) a linguistic-interpretive conception of agency with the corresponding
view of a society as an emergent totality.
Although these conceptions were formulated against the backdrop of
discourses having quite long intellectual traditions, as has been described
in a number of contributions to the present volume, they were either

created anew or recast during this period. Furthermore, these
reformulations entailed a certain emphasis on structural or collectivist
features even in the case of seemingly individualistic notions. A tendency
thus emerged in the German discourse concerning the linguistic-
interpretive features of agency to transpose the properties of agency to
collective entities such as the collective of the people or the nation rather
than let it reside in the particular individual.
A similar shift occurred to some extent concerning the concept of
interest, as Johan Heilbron has demonstrated in his contribution. This
involved the movement away from a broad concern about moral and
political agency towards the notion of a standardized rational agent.
During the course of the nineteenth century, "average economic man"
becomes caught in a web of structural properties and dynamic
regularities and is no longer located in the moral universe of individual
action where the interest-exploring individual had been placed both by
seventeenth century Jansenist theologians and philosophers and by
eighteenth century Scottish moral philosophers.
The transition from a discourse on moral and political philosophy to
that of a social science, which Wokler has analysed in his contribution to
this volume and elsewhere, had already taken place in rudimentary form
in the middle and late 1790s in France after the Revolution. 5o This
entailed a decisive shift from a view of society in terms of agency that
some would describe as voluntaristic to one which emphasized structural
conditions.
Perhaps the deep irony of this secular reorientation and of the rise of
the social sciences is that the methodological origins are located in the
context of the French Revolution, where the emphasis on agency and
change was greater than it had ever been before. The concept of
revolution is itself an example of a concept that was subjected to drastic
change, coming to involve not only an effort to change political regimes,
but also the effort to build a new community and a new world from their
very foundations. It was in reaction to this that both radicals, such as
Saint-Simon and Comte, and conservatives, not to mention such
reactionaries as de Bonald and de Maistre, came to emphasize a
structuralist and anti-voluntaristic conception of society.
In contrast, the very absence of any revolutionary transformation in
the German political context despite the deep influence of the French
events on philosophy and scholarship in Germany was coterminous with
an intellectual transformation that dramatically emphasized precisely the
capacities of human beings as agents. A nexus of philosophical com-

mitments emerged in this intellectual environment which involved the
elaboration of a linguistic-interpretive conception of agency in op-
position to both the purely rationalistic-compositional conception that
became predominant in economic reasoning and the structural-aggregate
conception which came to characterize sociological and statistical
reasoning. This issue has been nicely articulated in the present volume by
Peter Hanns Reill and Randall Collins.
But while the fundamental categories of agency and society that were
developed and refined during much of the rest of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries can already be discerned in nascent form during the
great transition, so too can certain of the more or less tacit elements that
came to affect these endeavors.
The first such tacit but crucial element concerns the abandonment of
the truly universal heritage of the Enlightenment project in favor of the
representation and endowment of rights on the basis of either
territoriality or membership in a linguistically and historically con-
stituted and constructed community. The second element concerns the
curtailment, not to say abandonment, of the earlier tradition of moral
discourse even within the various basic Denkfiguren of agency which
were elaborated during this period. The third deals with the dual way in
which historical reasoning came to be both embraced and exorcised,
opening up the latent divide between history and the social sciences.
These three elements generate unbridgeable gaps between an overt
commitment to universality and the inability to conceptualize political
order in other than highly particularistic terms, between philosophical
and moral discourse and modern social science, and even between
history and the other social and human sciences.
Thus, the shift in epistemic and institutional regimes that occurred at
the turn of the eighteenth century did not immediately usher in the set of
disciplinary configurations in the social and human sciences that we now
all too often tend to take for granted. This only occurred during the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and then only in an uneven and
partial process that did not become a universal pattern of ordering until
well after World War II. It did give rise, however, in a more or less
rudimentary way to the institutional forms for intellectual activities and
to the epistemic forms that became constitutive of the discourses on
society in the age of modernity.
Notes
I. G. S. Rousseau and Roy Porter, eds., The Ferment of Knowledge: Studies in the
Historiography of Eighteenth Century Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1980).
2. Andrew Cunningham and Nicholas Jardine, eds., Romanticism and the Sciences
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. I.
3. For the interplay of these intellectual cultures see Wolf Lepenies, Between Literature
and Science: the Rise of Sociology, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge, U.K., 1988);
Peter Dear, ed., The Literary Structure of Scientific Argument: Historical Studies
(Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1991); I. Bernhard Cohen, ed., The Social
Sciences and the Natural Sciences: Critical and Historical Perspectives (Dordrecht:
Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994); Christopher Fox, Roy Porter, and Robert
Wokler, eds., Inventing Human Science: Eighteenth Century Domains (Berkeley: Univ.
of California Press, 1995); Origins of the Human Sciences, special issue of History of
the Human Sciences 6 (1993). Richard Olson, The Emergence of the Social Sciences,
1642-1792 (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1993) provides the most recent general
overview but is somewhat problematic. This study is characterized by a rather one-
sided focus on the natural sciences as models and exemplars and does not take them
into consideration within a process of interaction with the discourses on society. More
seriously, it seems to have taken little or no account of the insights that both the
Cambridge historians and scholars in the tradition of Begriffsgeschichte have so amply
demonstrated, namely, that for any historical reconstruction of the social and human
sciences that wishes to avoid a Whig interpretation a necessary strategy is to carefully
guard against the usage of anachronistic terminology and conceptual schemes.
4. R. Steven Turner, "The Great Transition and the Social Patterns of German Science,"
Minerva 25 (1987), 56-76.
5. One of the most extensive studies on discipline formation is Rudolf Stichweh, Zur
Entstehung des modernen Systems wissenschaftlicher Disziplinen: Physik in Deutschland
1746-1890 (Frankfurt am Main, 1984). For the changing role of philosophy see
Randall Collins, "A Micro-Macro Theory of Intellectual Creativity: the Case of
German Idealist Philosophy," Sociological Theory 5 (1987), 47-69, and Richard Rorty,
Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1979), pp.
133-139.
6. For a comparative account of these institutional changes see Bjorn Wittrock, "The
Modern University: The Three Transformations," in Sheldon Rothblatt and Bjorn
Wittrock, eds., The European and American University Since 1800: Historical and
Sociological Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993), pp. 303-362.
7. Richard Yeo, "Reading Encyclopedias. Science and the Organization of Knowledge in
British Dictionaries of Arts and Sciences, 1730-1850," Isis 82 (1991), 24--49.
8. Brian Head, "The Origins of «Ia science sociale» in France, 1770-1800," Australian
Journal of French Studies 19 (1982), 115-132. For the development from Enlighten-
ment social theory to Comtean ~ociology see Johan Heilbron, The Rise of Social
Theory (Cambridge: Polity Press, 19~5).
9. See Peter Wagner, Bjorn Wittrock, ~nd Richard Whitley, eds., Discourses on Society.
The Shaping of the Social Science Di.;ciplines (Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook XV)
(Dordrecht and Boston, 1991).
10. See L. Graham, W. Lepenies, and P. Weingart, eds., Functions and Uses of Disciplinary
Histories (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1983).
II. Representative examples include Peter Wagner, Sozialwissenschaften und Staat:
Frankreich, Italien, Deutschland 1870-1980 (Frankfurt and New York: Campus
Verlag, 1990); Dorothy Ross, The Origins of American Social Science (Cambridge:
Cambridge Univ. Press, 1991); and Donald N. Levine, Visions of the Sociological
Tradition (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1995).
12. For general overviews see Dominick LaCapra and Steven L. Kaplan, eds., Modern
European Intellectual History (Ithaca and London, 1982; Donald R. Kelley, "Horizons
of Intellectual History: Retrospect, Circumspect, Prospect," Journal of the History of
Ideas (1987), 143-169; Donald R. Kelley, "What is Happening to the History of
Ideas," Journal of the History of Ideas (1990), 3-25; John E. Toews, "Intellectual
History after the Linguistic Turn: The Autonomy of Meaning and the Irreducibility of
Experience," The American Historical Review 92 (4) (October, 1987), 879-907; Steven
Shapin, "History of Science and its Sociological Reconstructions," History of Science
20 (1982), 157-211; J. Golinski, "The Theory of Practice and the Practice of Theory.
Sociological Approaches in the History of Science," Isis 81 (1990), 492-505.
13. John G. A. Pocock, Virtue, Commerce and History (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ.
Press, 1985), p. 5. For Skinner's position, which is derived from Austin's notion of
speech acts, see Meaning and Context: Quentin Skinner and his Critics, ed. James Tully
(Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988).
14. John G. A. Pocock, "The concept of language and the metier d'historien: some con-
siderations on practice", in Anthony Pagden, ed., The Languages of Political Theory in
early-Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press), pp. 19-38. For a critique
of the contextualist approach see, for example, Mark Bevir, "The Errors of Linguistic
Contextualism," History and Theory 31 (3) (1992), 276-298.
15. Good examples include I. Hont and M. Ignatief, eds., Wealth and Virtue. The Shaping
of Political Economy in the Scottish Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ.
Press, 1983); K. Tribe, Governing the Economy. The Reformation of Economic
Discourse in Germany, 1750-1840 (Cambridge, U.K., 1988); Stephan Collini et aI.,
That Noble Science of Politics. A Study in 19th Century Intellectual History (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1983).
16. Mario Biagioli, Galileo, Courtier: The Practice of Science in the Culture of Absolutism
(Chicago: Chicago Univ. Press, 1993); Julian Martin, Francis Bacon, the State, and the
Reform of Natural Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1992); Steven
Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the
Experimental Life (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1985); Steven Shapin, A Social
History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seyenteenth-Century England (Chicago:
Chicago Univ. Press, 1994).
17. Lorraine Daston, "Marvelous Facts and Miraculous Evidence in Early Modern
Europe," Critical Inquiry 18 (1991), 93-124; idem, "Objectivity and the Escape from
Perspective," Social Studies of Science 22 (1992), 597-618. On probability and
statistics see Eric Brian, La mesure de l'Etat. Administrateurs et geometres au XVIIle
sii!Cle (Paris: Albin Michel, 1994); Lorraine Daston, Classical Probability in the
Enlightenment (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1988); Alain Desrosieres, Lapolitique
des grands nombres. Histoire de la raison statistique (Paris: Editions La Decouverte,
1993); Gerd Gigerenzer, ed., The Empire of Chance: How Probability Changed Science
and Everyday Life (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1989); Theodore M. Porter,
Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life (Princeton:
Princeton Press, 1995); and Norton Wise, ed., The Values of Precision (Princeton:
Princeton Univ. Press, 1995).
18. The new direction was already indicated by his criticism of structural history and his
rehabilitation of the "event" in L 'archeologie du savoir (1969).
19. These two books, Kritik und Krise (1959) and Preussen zwischen Reform und
Revolution (1967), were both path breaking studies that were largely ignored out-
side of Germany for many years. Kritik und Krise was translated into French only in
1979 and into English in 1988. Together with Habermas' Strukturwandel der
Offentlichkeit (1962), translated into French and English in respectively 1979 and
1989, it gained an important role in the recent debate on the rise of the public sphere
and the formation of public opinion. See, for example, Lynn Hunt, Politics, Culture
and Class in the French Revolution (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1984); Joan
Landes, Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution (Ithaca,
NY: Cornell Univ. Press, 1988); Joan Landes, "Jurgen Habermas and the Structural
Transformation of the Public Sphere: A Feminist Inquiry," Praxis International 12
(I) (1992), 106-127. See also Anthony J. La Vopa, "Conceiving a Public: Ideas and
Society in Eighteenth Century Europe," Journal of Modern History 64 (1992),
79-116; Dena Goodman, "Public Sphere and Private Life," History and Theory 31
(1992), 1-20; and Craig Calhoun, ed., Habermas and the Public Sphere (Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 1992).
20. See R. Koselleck, "RichtIinien fur das Lexicon politisch-sozialer Begriffe der Neuzeit,"
Archiv fur Begriffsgeschichte 11 (1967), 81-99. See also the Introduction to the
Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, vol. I (1972), pp. XVI-XVIII.
21. See Peter Hanns Reill, The German Enlightenment and the Rise of Historicism
(Berkeley, 1975).
22. See especially the essays collected in Vergangene Zukunft. Zur Semantik geschichtlicher
Zeiten (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1979). Keith Tribe has translated this into
English as Futures Past (Cambridge, 1985); see also his "The Geschichtliche
Grundbegriffe Project," Comparative Studies in Society and History 31 (1989), 180-184.
For the question of temporalization in the sciences see especially Wolf Lepenies, Das
Ende der Naturgeschichte. Wandel kultureller Selbstverstandlichkeiten in den
Wissenschaften des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1978).
23. For a more extensive statement see R. Koselleck, "Das achtzehnte Jahrhundert als
Beginn der Neuzeit," in Epochenschwelle und Epochenbewusstsein, herausgegeben von
R. Herzog und R. Koselleck (Munchen: W. Fink Verlag, 1987), pp. 269-282. The
significance of the Sattelzeit for the rise of historicism is far from being undisputed.
Scholars such as Donald Kelley, Julian Franklin, and John Pocock have argued that
this view obscures the work of particularly French legal scholars during the
Renaissance. See Zachary Sayre Schiffman, "Renaissance historicism reconsidered,"
History and Theory 24 (1985), 170--182.
24. In a recent statement Koselleck argues that the initial presuppositions of the project
have grown into an "intellectual straightjacket." See "Some reflections on the
temporal structure of conceptual change," in Willem Melching and Wyger Velema,
eds., Main Trends in Cultural History (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1994), pp. 7-16.
25. M. Riedel, "Gesellschaft, burgerliche," in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, vol. I (Stutt-
gart, 1972) pp. 672-725.
26. See Keith Michael Baker, "Enlightenment and the Institution of Society: Notes for a
Conceptual History," in Willem Melching and Wyger Velema, eds., Main Trends in
Cultural (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1994), pp. 95-120.
27. I. Veit-Brause, "A note on Begriffsgeschichte," History and Theory 20 (1980), pp.
61-67; P. B. M. Blaas, "Begripsgeschiedenis en historische semantiek", Theoretische
geschiedenis 7 (1980), 161-174. For the German debate on this issue see R. Koselleck,
ed., Historische Semantik und Begriffsgeschichte (Stuttgart: Klett/Cotta, 1979).
28. M. Richter, "Begriffsgeschichte and the History of Ideas", Journal of the History of
Ideas 48 (1987),247-263.
29. Melvin Richter, "Reconstructing the History of Political Languages: Pocock, Skinner,
and the Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe," History and Theory 24 (1990), 38-70. See also
Richter's recent collection The History of Political and Social Concepts: A Critical
Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
30. Melvin Richter, "Reconstructing the History of Political Languages," p. 45. See also
Melvin Richter, "Conceptual History (Begriffsgeschichte) and Political Theory,"
Political Theory 14 (4) (November, 1986),604-637. For the critical exchange between
Richter and Rayner see Jeremy Rayner, "On Begriffsgeschichte," Political Theory 16
(3) (August, 1988),496-501, and Melvin Richter, "Understanding Begriffsgeschichte:
A Rejoinder," Political Theory 17 (2) (May, 1989),296-301.
31. For a critical discussion concerning the philosophical assumptions underlying
Koselleck's project in respect to those of philosophical hermeneutics see his lecture in
the Old Aula of the University of Heidelberg and Gadamer's response on the event of
Gadamer's eighty-fifth birthday celebration, December 6, 1986. This was subsequently
published by the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences as Reinhart Koselleck, Hans-Georg
Gadamer, Hermeneutik und Historik (Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitatsverlag,
1987). Koselleck's contribution was entitled "Historik und Hermeneutik" and
Gadamer's response "Historik und Sprache - eine Antwort." This exchange makes
quite clear the degree to which Koselleck's historical inquiry is premised on the
validity of a kind of transcendental Katergorienlehre, a set of onto logically
transcendent dichotomies in some ways reminiscent of categories familiar from both
Heidegger and Schmitt which help structure the process of imputing meaning to
conceptual and historical occurrences.
32. See the different volumes of Gesellschaftsstruktur und Semantik (Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 1980-1981).
33. See, for example, S. J. Schmidt, Die Selbstorganisation des Sozialsystems Literatur im
18. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1989). Crucial for Luhmann's
analysis of functionally differentiated subsystems are mechanisms of self-organization.
On this notion see W. Krohn, G. Ktippers, and H. Nowotny, eds., Selforganization:
Portrait of a Scientific Revolution (Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook) (Dordrecht:
Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1990).
34. See Donald Winch, Adam Smith's Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1978);
Andrew S. Skinner, A System of Social Science (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1979);
Knud Haakonssen, The Science of a Legislator: The Natural Jurisprudence of David
Hume and Adam Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1981); Hans Medick,
Naturzustand und Naturgeschichte der bargerlichen Gesellschaft (Gottingen: Ruprecht
and Vanden hoek, 1981); Ronald L. Meek, Smith, Marx and after: Ten Essays in the
Development of Economic Thought (London: Chapman and Hall, 1977); and the recent
and perhaps more speculative Jerry Z. Muller, Adam Smith in his Time and Ours (New
York: The Free Press, 1993).
35. Donald Winch, Adam Smith's Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1978), p.
10.
36. John Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic
Tradition (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1975).
37. See also Christopher Fox, Roy Porter, and Robert Wokler, eds., Inventing Human
Science: Eighteenth Century Domains (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1995).
38. An interesting essay that touches upon the possibility of a truly universal civil society
in the age of the French Revolution is Norberto Bobbio, "Kant and the French
Revolution," in his The Age of Rights (Cambridge: The Polity Press, 1996), pp.
115-123.
39. See, for instance, Peter Wagner, Bjorn Wittrock, and Richard Whitley, eds.,
Discourses on Society: The Shaping of the Social Science Disciplines (Dordrecht:
Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991); Peter Wagner, Carol Weiss, Bjorn Wittrock, and
Hellmut Wollmann, eds., Social Sciences and Modern States: Cambridge, Cambridge
Univ. Press, 1991); Bjorn Wittrock and Peter Wagner, "Social Science and the
Building of the Early Welfare State: Toward a Comparison of Statist and Non-Statist
Western Societies," in Dietrich Rueschemeyer and Theda Skocpol, eds., States. Social
Knowledge, and the Origins of Modern Social Policies (Princeton: Princeton Univ.
Press, 1996), pp. 90-113; Bjorn Wittrock and Peter Wagner, "Policy Constitution
Through Discourse: Discourse Transfonnations and the Modern State in Central
Europe," in Douglas E. Ashford, ed., History and Context in Comparative Public
Policy (Pittsburgh, PA: Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 1992), pp. 227-246; Bjorn Wittrock
and Peter Wagner, "Social Science and State Developments: The Structuration of
Discourse in the Social Sciences," in Stephen Brooks and Alain Gagnon, eds., Social
Scientist, Public Policy and the State (New York: Praeger, 1990), pp. 113-137.
40. This process is examined in some detail in Sheldon Rothblatt and Bjorn Wittrock,
eds., The American and European University Since 1800: Historical and Sociological
Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993).
41. See, for example, Johan Heilbron, "The Tripartite Division of French Social Science",
in Peter Wagner, Bjorn Wittrock and Richard Whitley, .eds., Discourses on Society.
The Shaping of the Social Science Disciplines (Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook XV)
(Dordrecht and Boston, 1991), pp. 73-92. For an interesting comment along similar
lines see Immanuel Wallerstein, "Open the Social Sciences," Items 50 (I) (March,
1996), 1-7. See also Immanuel Wallerstein, Unthinking Social Science: The Limits of
Nineteenth-Century Paradigms (Cambridge: The Polity Press, 1991).
42. Keith Michael Baker, "Enlightenment and the Institution of Society: Notes for a
Conceptual History," in Willem Melching and Wyger Velema, eds., Main Trends in
Cultural History: Ten Essays (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1994), pp. 95-120.
43. Ibid., p. 112.
44. Pierre Manent, An Intellectual History of Liberalism (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press,
1994), p. 81 f.
45. Alexis de Tocqueville, Oeuvres, papiers et correspondence, tome XII (Paris: Gallimard,
1964), p. 30.
46. Reinhart Koselleck, Kritik und Krise. Ein Beitrag zur Pathogenese der biirgerlichen
Welt (Freiburg and Miinchen: Verlag Karl Alber, 1959), p. 2.
47. For an analysis of Schleiermacher in this respect see Thomas Pfau, "Immediacy and
Text: Friedrich Schleiennacher's Theory of Style and Interpretation," Journal of the
History of Ideas (1990), 51-73.
48. For an enjoyable recent review article which gives an overview of some of the lingering
effects of these debates concerning language and people in respect to the constitution
of a sense of an English or Anglo-Saxon identity and also provides discussion of the
longstanding competitive influence of the respective German and Danish early
nineteenth century scholars Jakob Grimm and Rasmus Rask, see Tom Shippey,
"Slaying, pillaging, burning, ravishing, and thus gratifying a laudable taste for
adventure," London Review of Books, 8 June 1995, pp. 16 ff.
49. The special issue of Political Studies 42 (1994), ed. John Dunn, is exemplary for its
historical sensitivity to the theme of "Contemporary Crisis of the Nation State?"
50. Robert Wokler, "Saint-Simon and the Passage from Political to Social Science," in
Anthony Pagden, ed., The Languages of Political Theory in Early Modern Europe,
(Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press), pp. 325-338.
THE ENLIGHTENMENT AND THE FRENCH
REVOLUTIONARY BIRTH PANGS OF MODERNITY
ROBERT WOKLER
University of Manchester
Conceptualizing the Enlightenment Project
It is as true of the human sciences as of the sciences of nature that, by

and large, only the most recent formulations of their overriding prin-
ciples are deemed worthy of scientific scrutiny. The rudiments of physi-
cal anthropology and then biology and linguistics around the end of the
eighteenth century, followed by sociology and social statistics in the
early nineteenth century, and economics and political science in the early
twentieth century, were characteristically sketched by pioneers whose
fresh perspectives were in each case designed to free themselves of the
excess baggage of their precursors. In virtually all disciplines, each major
step is portrayed as if it were a new beginning, marking a conceptual
revolution which relegates antecedent approaches to the defunct realm of
the history of ideas.
From the point of view of scientific discovery, nothing could be more
defunct than fossilized concepts which purport to explain human
character or behavior but reveal little more than their own age. When
Saint-Simon and Comte put forward their ideas of social physiology or
sociology, they supposed that they were laying the foundations of a new
science, more deeply rooted in an understanding of society'S structures,
mechanisms and organization than any of their precursors had previously
imagined. When Quetelet and other statisticians of the early to mid-
nineteenth century devised mathematical explanations to account for the
regularities of social phenomena in human populations, they articulated
notions of spontaneous natural law as distinct from jurisprudential
principles of societal order which had purportedly been prevalent before.
In the twentieth century, Graham Wallas, Charles Merriam and other
political scientists promoted new methodologies through which the forces
that were held to shape political institutions - public opinion, the for-
35
Modernity. 35-76.
© 1998 Kluwer AC(ldemic Publishers.
36 Robert Wokler
mati on of parties and eventually voting behavior - could be investigated

and measured without the encumbrance of mysterious philosophical
abstractions.' Namierite historians in England, Annales historians in
France and Marxist sociologists everywhere have decried the vacuous
concepts of the history of ideas, as vestiges of a disembodied and epi-
phenomenal W orId Spirit. Even the predominant traditions of intellectual
history today - German BegrifJsgeschichte and English contextualism -
insist upon the discontinuity between an historical understanding and the
scientific practice of a discipline, so as to ensure that the canons of current
research are not anachronistically superimposed upon the past.
Of all periods in modern intellectual history, much the most dis-
credited in the eyes of contemporary social scientists is the eighteenth-
century Enlightenment. The Enlightenment has been variously depicted
as superficial in entrusting the promotion of self-reliance or social pro-
gress to the forces of reason over religion; it has been denounced for
having naively sought to frame an understanding of moral and mental
phenomena in terms of objective natural laws modelled in the image of
Newtonian physics; it has been held in derision for supposing that
human nature was everywhere the same, governed by universally con-
stant appetites or infinitely malleable and hence capable of perfection; it
has been found vacuous because its speculative histories of the human
race or atomistic conceptions of human nature took no account of the
inescapably complex textures of social life.
Such objections to the Enlightenment are not all compatible, but
either collectively or separately they have come to color popular
perceptions of eighteenth-century intellectual history as well as criticisms
made by contemporary social scientists. With regard to our explanations
of human nature and society, the Enlightenment has to its detractors
come to seem the last pre-scientific age, as the fresh disciplines we cur-
rently pursue, whose collective birth may be said to mark its demise, sup-
plant its conjectures with real evidence. Modern notions of social science
thus not only reject methodologies of the history of ideas in general. In
conducting their empirical investigations of society today, contemporary
scientists identify their own approaches as departing, both historically
and conceptually, from the Enlightenment Project.
In the light of such putative disjunctions between eighteenth-century
modes of thought and modern social science, it is altogether remarkable
that so many other critics of the Enlightenment - sometimes even the
same critics - have also denounced that intellectual movement for having
engendered the pre-eminent political forces and social practices of
The Enlightenment and the French Revolutionary Birth Pangs of Modernity 37
modernity. For Jacob Talmon and Lester Crocker, the principal bene-
ficiaries of the Enlightenment have been the totalitarian democracies of
the twentieth century, whose vast schemes of social engineering are said
to have drawn their inspiration above all from eighteenth-century
notions of moral plasticity, perfectibility and the recasting of human
nature. For Alasdair MacIntyre, the Enlightenment's critical scepticism,
empty formalism and vacuous rationalism have cut modern societies
adrift from the moorings of shared beliefs, religious faith and communal
action on which their survival depends. For John Gray, our naive trust
in perpetual progress and in the universal rights of man inspired by
Enlightenment thought just obscures the insuperable cleavages between
nations and cultures which no spirit of cosmopolitanism can hope to
overcome. For Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer and Zygmunt
Bauman, even the horrors of the Holocaust may be understood as a
dreadful expression of the merely instrumental notions of scientific
rationality to which Enlightenment thinkers subscribed. 2 .
How is it possible that Enlightenment beliefs should have strayed so
far from the genuine truths of social science while at the same time
becoming so deeply imbedded within the structures of modern social life?
The contention that the Enlightenment Project at once failed in theory
but triumphed in practice amounts to an extraordinary indictment of the
very social sciences which are said to have superseded it, and that for at
least two major reasons. On the one hand, the claim implies an inversion
of the relation between abstract ideas and the social realities said to
underlie them, by virtue of its advocates' stipulation that modernity is in
fact fundamentally shaped by our perceptions of its nature. Even while
denying the significance of conceptual history in their empirical
investigations of social phenomena, interpreters of the moral universe we
inhabit have turned their own explanatory schemes inside out. In so far
as we identify the deepest structures of modernity within Enlightenment
philosophy, we have all become conceptual historians. Never has World
Spirit been so manifest in human history as in the current epoch, marked
by the social scientific community's disencumbrance of that illusion.
However much the eighteenth century may have failed to adopt its own
leading principles, by the common agreement of its critics we find
ourselves today trapped in the age of Enlightenment.
On the other hand, the spiritual triumph of Enlightenment ideas in
practice, if such an apotheosis has indeed occurred, undermines the theo-
retical plausibility of the very social sciences which are said to contradict
them. What can be the use of our truly empirical sciences of human
38 Robert Wokler
nature and society when it is conceded that modernity has been shaped
instead by the lofty abstractions of the Enlightenment Project? Why
should our funding councils and universities subsidize the piecemeal
investigations of our social researchers in the field when it is supposed
that they will there only uncover the manifold intimations of Enlighten-
ment thought? If ours is indeed the age of Enlightenment, whose theo-
retical principles have been unsheathed in the institutions which today
govern our lives, might we not gain a better understanding of modernity
by abandoning our social sciences and returning instead to the study of
philosophical history?
I do not myself subscribe to the belief that contemporary civilization
has been fundamentally shaped by Enlightenment principles, nor to the
view that such principles have failed because they have not been, or never
can be, universally adopted. I am convinced that critics of Enlighten-
ment thought over the past two hundred years have, by and large, not
understood that intellectual movement correctly, even though, unlike a
great number of better-informed specialists of eighteenth-century
doctrines, they have correctly identified the Enlightenment in terms of
certain widely shared principles, across diverse subjects. I regret that the
Enlightenment's detractors have been so undiscriminating in their treat-
ment of eighteenth-century thinkers as to fail to notice how much one
central figure of that age of intellectual ferment - Rousseau - offered a
more profound critique of some of the Enlightenment's most cherished
ideals and aspirations than any produced since his day. My comments
here, however, will only address these issues obliquely. In appraising
certain accounts of the ideological foundations of the modern world, I
shall instead attempt to disaggregate broad claims that have been put
forward about the political and scientific legacy of a so-called Enlighten-
ment Project. I mean to identify a particular period in European
intellectual and political history which, to my mind, came to exercise a
decisive impact upon what in the West has come to be understood as
genuinely modern society. I shall argue that in that period a number of
Enlightenment principles were not so much enacted as transfigured in
ways that made the practical realization of those principles, as they were
actually adopted, inconsistent with other, still more central, doctrines of
the Enlightenment. And I shall try to show that modernity'S debt to the
Enlightenment took at least one institutional form which betrayed that
legacy.
It will follow from my account that the most striking and persuasive
criticism of modernity can be drawn from within the Enlightenment
Project itself. I shall not mind if my remarks here may appear to

constitute a peculiarly Hegelian reading of the connection between the
Enlightenment and modernity by way of the French Revolution, except
that I regard the incipient institutions of the modern state which in the
course of the French Revolution came to contradict Enlightenment
ideals as corresponding in practice to nothing so much as the theoretical
image of the state elaborated in Hegel's own post-Enlightenment
political philosophy. My overriding objective will be to explain, as best I
can in the short space available, how both the invention of our modern
understanding of the social sciences, on the one hand, and the post-
Enlightenment establishment of the modern nation-state, on the other,
encapsulated doctrines which severed modernity from the Enlightenment
philosophy which is presumed to have inspired it. I shall be offering
illustrations not so much of the unity of political theory and practice in
the modern world as of their disengagement. In providing here some
brief remarks on how post-Enlightenment justifications of modernity
came to part company from their Enlightenment prefigurations, I hope
to sketch an account of certain links between principles and institutions
which bears some relation to both Enlightenment and Hegelian
conceptual history.
More than thirty years ago Reinhart Koselleck and Michel Foucault,
independently and in different ways, remarked upon the upheavals of the
intellectual map of Europe which they each described as having occurred
over a period of several decades around 1800. 3 Their respective notions
of a Sattelzeit or period of accelerated social and ideological change, on
the one hand, and of an epistemic metamorphosis across academic
disciplines, on the other, comprise perhaps the two most striking among
recent contributions to a very long tradition of speculation about the
nature and roots of modernity. Every school child who is taught that the
principal features of the modern world spring either from the French or
from the Industrial Revolution is presented with political or economic
images of the transformation of European society, which were prefigured
in literary, artistic or philosophical terms in the Italian Renaissance in
the mid-sixteenth century, in the French Querelle des anciens et des
modernes of the late seventeenth century, and in the international
republic of letters' Encyclopedie of the mid-eighteenth century.
In what might be called the perennial discourse of modernity, the
conceptual frameworks around the Protestant foundations of capitalism
as introduced by Weber, or of the force of will and subjectivity in civil
society and the state as explained by Hegel, or of egalitarian democracy
40 Robert Wokler
as portrayed by Tocqueville, or of the class structures of industrial

capitalism as depicted by Marx, have exercised far greater influence than
any schemes of conceptual change along lines mapped by Koselleck or
Foucault. But in a crucial sense, all these ideological frameworks for an
understanding of the spirit and tensions of modernity have been
abandoned by the very disciplines which modernity is said to have
engendered. For the great new science of society, or sociology, that was
developed in the nineteenth century came to be articulated in other ways,
expressing different priorities, which were also to inform the self-images
nurtured in the practice of diverse sciences of human behavior, including
psychology and politics. By relegating conceptual history to a secondary
and derivative role, our post-Enlightenment sciences of society have
deconceptualized the classical expressions of modernity itself.
In their focus upon the linguistic transformations and defining con-
cepts of modernity, Koselleck and Foucault have righted that inversion
and have returned with a vengeance to just those traditions of
philosophical history which had purportedly ended with the birth of our
social sciences in their genuinely modern form. From the perspectives
they adopt, the discourse of modernity has turned upon itself and
become a discourse about discourse. In the beginning was the word, and
the world which we inhabit has been manufactured in its image, freshly
ground in a crucible of linguistic change. The Sattelzeit delineated by
Koselleck and his associates in their massive Geschichtliche GrundbegrifJe
over the past twenty-four years encompasses the period from about 1750
to 1850,4 and while their work is predominantly addressed to German
intellectual and social history, it may also be read as a conceptual map of
the whole of modernity, whose dynamic forces are encapsulated in two
great monuments of human enterprise and endeavor at the beginning
and end of that period, the Encyclopedie and the Crystal Palace. It was
in the 1750s that the words perfectibilite and civilisation made their first
appearance in any European language,5 and it is from the 1750s that the
scientific, political and economic manufacture of modernity may be
conceptualized around such terms.
Foucault's scheme of the epistemic metamorphosis of classical into
modern civilization was intended, in Les Mots et les choses, to be con-
centrated in a shorter period of perhaps twenty or thirty years around
the end of the eighteenth century, in which he located the genesis of the
human sciences of biology, linguistics and economics by way of identi-
fying their newly conceived principles and fresh vocabularies. In sug-
gesting that 1795 was a pivotal year of that intellectual transformation,
Foucault anticipated the more detailed work of Georges Gusdorf, Sergio

Moravia, Emmet Kennedy, Martin Staum, Cheryl Welch, Brian Head
and others devoted to the ideologues of the 1790s,6 and while he seldom
turned his gaze upon the role of the French Revolution in his conceptual
history of modernity, he drew special attention to a short span of years
in which terms such as democrate, revolutionnaire and terroriste - as well
as ideologie itself - erupted into European political discourse in
conjunction with the events or doctrines which these new words defined.
In his subsequent writings on the trappings of sexuality and power in
the modern world, Foucault pursued the intimations of his work on the
potency of concepts, by identifying our prevailing forces of social control
fundamentally in terms of mental structures, the corrective disciplines of
our forms of punishment issuing from our taxonomic disciplines of
knowledge, our structures of pouvoir and patterns of savoir inescapably
joined. With Koselleck and Foucault together, the discourses of
modernity may appear to have supplanted sociology as the pre-eminent
social science of our time. For those of us who require holy writ, the
Bible of our civilization might as well be Printing and the Mind of Man.
In the remarks which follow, I shall comment on two subjects which,
to my own mind, lend soine substance to such discourses of modernity
but at the same time also place a number of their central tenets in doubt.
Recent research has identified the first printed use of the term science
sociale in the year 1789 and has indicated that a recognizably modern
conception of the nature of the social sciences was developed in the
course of the French Revolution, at first to conceptualize the ideological
programme which it was the Revolution's purported aim to achieve but,
subsequently, even more to account for its failures. Other research
addressed to doctrines of the state and the nation and to ideas of
representation which were formulated in the course of Revolutionary
debates between 1789 and 1794 has suggested that some of the defining
features of French government, in that crucial period of its invention
simultaneously in the realms of theory and practice, were conceived
within a framework that owed less to any indigenous tradition of French
political thought than to a seventeenth-century English doctrine of the
public personality of the state. 7
The particular configurations of both subjects within a few tem-
pestuous years of French history may be seen as lending some warrant to
the conceptual histories of modernity offered by both Koselleck and
Foucault, though for different reasons - supporting Foucault's depiction
of quite sudden and dramatic epistemic change around 1795, on the one
42 Robert Wokler
hand, and Koselleck's broader perspective on the interconnections

between intellectual, political and social history on the other. The same
point may of course be made negatively in each case, in that, with
respect to the idea of a social science and the construction of the state in
their modern forms, Koselleck's account of a century-long Sattelzeit
seems to grant insufficient priority to the immediate impact of the most
momentous cataclysm of modernity, whereas Foucault's sketch of the
metamorphosis of the human sciences appears to lack the requisite
political and institutional dimensions. The fundamental contrast between
civil society and the state, as set out by Hegel and then overturned by
Marx, also has some bearing on the presentation of my case here, insofar
as I mean to consider the contemporaneous but at bottom antagonistic
invention of fresh methods of interpreting society, on the one hand, and
creation of fresh institutions for the maintenance of political order, on
the other. The point on which I wish to place greatest stress, however, is
that these two subjects illuminate not only certain connections between
the Enlightenment and modernity but, even more importantly, certain
tensions between them which conceptual historians of all denominations
have characteristically failed to notice.
So that I may at least attempt to place both those connections and
those tensions under some scrutiny, I must first, however, dispose of the
argument, so often made by specialists of various disciplines of
eighteenth-century intellectual history, or of particular geographical
regions or circumscribed periods, that there never had been a coherent
Enlightenment Project at all, so that any attempt to explain modernity
with reference to it must be pure fabrication. Alternatively, that thesis
may be advanced as well with regard to the notion of modernity. From
either or both perspectives, it is claimed that the task of genuine
historians must be to break down such global concepts, to explain
diversity and conflict, to situate ideas only in the specific contexts in
which they were manufactured, in all their rich particularity and texture.
The truth of such propositions is of course undeniable, and yet
specialists who invoke them as a matter of principle in order to discount
conceptual history altogether often do disservice to their own fields of
research. Across a variety of disciplines in eighteenth-century thought,
there lie questions fit for historical investigation about the common
presuppositions of subjects we now see as unrelated only because we no
longer share the perspectives of authors whose meaning we seek to
explain. If we insist upon fragmenting eighteenth-century intellectual
history because we are convinced that our current disciplines are marked
by impermeable boundaries, we risk parting company from the very

objects of our scrutiny. In our commendable pursuit of local knowledge
gained from surveys of the Enlightenment Project's manifold dialects
and regional differences, 8 we ought not to lose sight of the international
dimensions of what was widely perceived, already in the eighteenth
century, by its subscribers and enemies alike, to be a great intellectual
movement orchestrated out of Paris, Edinburgh, Naples, Philadelphia
and Geneva, with an Eastern flank in Konigsberg and bustling outposts
in publishing houses, literary salons, scientific academies and
corresponding societies scattered over Europe and America. If through-
out much of his life Rousseau took issue with an interdisciplinary and
cosmopolitan Enlightenment Project after having initially contributed to
it, I cannot see why we must deny ourselves any grasp of his own
interpretation of its nature. At any rate, specialist historians of
eighteenth-century thought can have scant impact in philosophers' and
conceptual historians' current controversies about the Enlightenment
Project if, from the wings, they just shout that there never was one.
Better to confront the critics of the Enlightenment Project with evidence
of their mistakes than to regard all their loose talk as beneath contempt.
Inventing Social Science
When the abbe Sieyes introduced the expression la science sociale in the
initial issue of his most famous pamphlet, Qu'est-ce que fe tiers-etat?,9 he
did not herald this neologism as signifying a new science of society,
different in its approach from all previous disciplines. The epistemic
metamorphosis of the concept was no thunderbolt which, like the
goddess Athena, burst from Zeus's head. It was to follow rather than
accompany the first appearance of the words, and Sieyes himself thought
so little of them that in subsequent editions of this most popular of all
French Revolutionary pamphlets he replaced them with the expression,
fa science de f'ordre social. The meaning of the words he employed
seemed plain enough to him and needed no elaborate explanation. They
simply referred to the principles of social order which France's Third
Estate, representing the nation as a whole, sought to realize in practice,
divorced from all particular or factional interests. Reflecting on his own
work in a conversation with Etienne Dumont a few months after the
publication of Qu 'est-ce que Ie tiers-etat?, Sieyes remarked that politics
was a science he believed he had already completed. 1O He might have
44 Robert Wok1er
said the same of social science, for he imagined that, with his
encouragement, the political system of France would be empowered to
put into practice the science of society he had himself set out in theory,
having elaborated it just so that it could be publicly enacted and thereby
made real.
Subsequent appearances of the term in its earliest articulations have
been traced to Pierre-Louis Lacretelle's De l'etablissement des connois-
sances humaines of 1791, to a pamphlet by Dominique-Joseph Garat
addressed to Condorcet in December of that year, and to Condorcet's
own Projet de decret sur I'organisation sociale of January 1792. It is very
likely that the words la science sociale gained a certain currency in the
fertile political literature of the period from 1789 to 1792 and that other
instances of their use in those years have still to be uncovered. But with
respect to the expression's already ascertained pioneering examples,
perhaps two points in particular may be noted. First, it should be
remarked that everyone of these authors of the earliest recorded uses of
the term was a member of the short-lived Societe de 1789 - a club
formed to commemorate the launch of the Revolution and to ensure the
success of its reconstruction of French society - which was dissolved in
1791 after its membership had splintered into just such sectarian groups,
representing different interests of the nation, which Sieyes had sought to
prevent. ll
The second point to note about these earliest expressions of the term
is its authors' more or less indiscriminate conjunction of la science
sociale with other human sciences, such as fa morale and fa politique, in
the terminology of Lacretrelle, or even with I'art social, in the language
of Condorcet, the aim of which, as he put it in the prospectus of the
Societe de 1789 that he drafted, was to promote political stability
through constitutional reform, based upon the prevailing sciences
morales et politiques. In its first printed articulations in the most politi-
cally explosive period at the dawn of the establishment of the modern
state, fa science sociale was introduced, quite innocuously, as a term
roughly equivalent to politics in general. To purloin a remark (albeit
with regard to the philosophy of Montesquieu) by Destutt de Tracy,
himself the inventor of the term ideologie in the year 1796, it may be said
that in the course of the French Revolution's first endeavors to establish
a new order, social science meant much the same as the new politics. l2
After the rise and fall of the Jacobins and the passing of their Terror,
the new term, science sociale, was to undergo the epistemic break or
metamorphosis proclaimed by Foucault on behalf of all the human
sciences, precisely in 1795, the year of the decalage, the great rupture or
conceptual guillotine, as if men's minds could only be changed after their
heads had already been severed. In that year the Convention established
the Institut national des sciences et des arts, and within it the Classe des
sciences morales et politiques, one of whose six sections was called Science
sociale, et legislation. The stipulated conjunction of social science with
legislation in this name, and the election of Sieyes, Garat and Cabanis to
other sections of the Classe des sciences morales et politiques considered as
a whole, might appear to make Foucault's notion of an epistemic
metamorphosis with regard to the words science sociale just a tame sequel
to the first performance, articulated by at least the survivors of a cast of
already familiar characters. After 1795, however, the term science sociale
came progressively to acquire a fresh meaning, all the more explosive for
its divorce from, rather than conjunction with, politics and legislation.
From the time of Foucault's annus mirabilis of the human sciences in
general, social science in particular came to acquire the meanings now
associated with it as the central science of modernity.
That transformation of a fresh expression into a new concept was
made possible by the intellectual predominance within the Classe des
sciences morales et politiques of another section devoted to the analysis
of sensations and ideas, the specially recognized domain of the so-called
ideologues, led by de Tracy and Cabanis, until the dissolution of the
entire Classe in 1803 by the First Consul, Napoleon Bonaparte, who had
his own way of effecting epistemic change. Separately and collectively,
the ideologues attempted to delineate a new science of human nature
which was more deeply rooted in the psychology of the human mind and
the physiology of the human body than any conception of la science
sociale as the art of politics could ever be. They had learned the dreadful
lessons of the Terror and, following the Constitution of the year 1795,
they were less disposed than their precursors had been to proclaim the
dangerously egalitarian doctrine of the natural rights of man, preferring
instead to defend such rights as mankind could only enjoy in society.
Distrustful of the critical character of the revolutionary programmes
which had inspired the establishment of the Societe de 1789, they were
convinced that the problems of social disorder and derangement which
the Revolution itself had generated were as striking as the despotism of
the ancien regime had appeared to the aspiring legislators of the National
Assembly. Wholesale constitutional reform had proved a remedy just as
harmful as the disease, in part because it was too drastic, in part too
superficial, engendering political violence without producing social
46 Robert Wokler
change. While they were men of predominantly liberal temperament

whose outlook remained, by and large, as secular as was the anti-
clericalism of their precursors, their new conception of the science of
society was more historical, more preservative, more solidly situated,
they supposed, in the concrete world of real experience.
Perhaps above all, the ideologues sought to explain mental and moral
phenomena scientifically by retracing them to their physical roots. One
of their central figures, Volney, attempted in this way to account for the
production of cultural institutions, including political systems and
religious beliefs, in connection with the physical geography that shaped
the manner in which diverse populations lived. In his Rapports du
physique et du moral, first delivered as a set of readings to the Classe des
sciences morales et politiques, Cabanis himself expounded a doctrine of la
science de l'homme, which he conceived to be a synthesis of physiology,
morals and the science of ideas. If the ideologues had produced their
writings in the twentieth century, they would have been warmly received
as fellow travellers of the contemporary school of the French Annales;
already in the eighteenth century theirs was a social science of menta-
lites. 13 Unlike Condorcet and Sieyes they could never have confused the
nature of that science with the art of politics.
There were no doubt other factors as well as their distrust of politics
and legislation which made the ideologues conspicuously less incendiary
than had been the inventors of an acutely critical notion of la science
sociale. It may even be the case that their membership of the Classe des
sciences morales et politiques, which Keith Baker has described as the
embodiment of Condorcet's dream of a social sciences academy,14 lent a
more conservative character to the discipline than had been conceived by
their patron saint, just on account of its institutionalization in an
academic setting made possible by patronage of a different kind. In
adopting holisitic methodologies of social explanation unlike those that
had figured in the notions of Condorcet and Sieyes, at any rate, they
parted company from their ideological precursors and could even appear
to have made common cause with a number of profoundly reactionary
critics of the whole French Revolution, including Bonald and de
Maistre, who likewise supposed, and indeed stressed even more, that the
political manipulation of French society had fractured it. In France after
1795, the idea of a genuine social science, or science de la societe, as
Bonald sometimes termed it, could be appropriated by romantic con-
servatives no less than by progressive liberals or socialists. 15 In every
case, however, it would exclude the political tampering of naively
enthusiastic legislators and metaphysicians, now identified in the same

rogues' gallery as the clerics and despots reviled by the philosophes.
In large measure modelled upon the ideologues' attempt to sketch a
new science de l'homme, the first great synthesis of a post-French
Revolutionary science of society was to be the scheme elaborated by
Saint-Simon in several writings of the early nineteenth century,
culminating in his Introduction aux travaux scientifiques du XIXe siecle of
1807-1808 and his Memoire sur la science de l'homme of 1813. While
Saint-Simon perceived himself as a disciple of the Enlightenment,
inspired in his revolutionary ardor by its critical spirit, its commitment
to science and its Encyclopedie, he also found himself drawn to the
philosophical conservatism of Bonald and acknowledged a special debt
to the physiologist, Jean Burdin, the author of a Cours d'etudes medicales
ou exposition de la structure de l'homme of 1803. Through Burdin's
influence he acquired the belief, to which he was to subscribe for the rest
of his life, that physiology was the chief of all human sciences, and in his
Memoire sur la science de l'homme he put a case for a positive science of
human nature and society which had as its aim the synthesis of the
anatomy of Vicq-d'Azyr, the physiology of Bichat, the psychology of
Cabanis and the philosophical history of Condorcet.
That science de l'organisation sociale, as he sometimes termed it, was
to lead Saint-Simon to inspect the internal constitution and morphology
of the social body in a fresh idiom, different from the perspectives
adopted by the philosophes of the Enlightenment he admired, including
even Montesquieu, who above all other major eighteenth-century think-
ers came closest to sharing his conception of a social science. In the
course of the nineteenth century, through the influence of Saint-Simon's
principal disciple, Comte, this new positive science of society, soon to be
known by the word Comte invented - sociologie - was to become the
pre-eminent science of modernity itself. It would be the science of society
conceived in terms of its organization, its infrastructure and internal
functions. To ensure society's proper order, it would require, not the
constitutions of legislators, but regulation by adminstrators and en-
gineers. In place of the political power sought on behalf of the public
good by the first social scientists, after its epistemic metamorphosis the
new science of society would promote social hygiene. Rather than aiming
to achieve the enfranchisement of all citizens, it would be designed to
fulfil the prognosis of Pope's couplet from An Essay on Man:
For Forms of Government let fools contest;
Whate'er is best administer'd is best. 16
48 Robert Wokler
Manufacturing the Nation-State
No less than modern social science, the modern state is also an invention
of the French Revolution, in this case bred not out of Thermidor but
from the National Assembly of 1789, whose destruction of the ancien
regime heralds the self-creation of modernity in its political form. In a
notable series of writings, Quentin Skinner has traced the origins of our
conception of the state to transfigurations of the language of status, or
the condition of the members of a civitas, in fifteenth- and sixteenth-
century Europe into the modern terminology of etat or state to signify
the civitas as a whole.17 The development of such new terminology and
the institutions of government which it articulates are of profound
importance to an understanding of the modern state, as are the theories
of sovereignty of Bodin and most especially Hobbes in the late sixteenth
and mid-seventeenth century, which encapsulate some of the central
features of states today as ultimate repositories of political judgment and
founts of all authority, exercising uncontested rule within defined
territorial limits. Foucault himself, in addressing what he took to be a
shift in the art of government from control over lands to control over the
conduct of subjects, also came to hold the view, albeit from a quite
different perspective, that the character of the modern state began to
crystallize around the theme of its own rationality - its raison d'etat -
towards the end of the sixteenth century.18
But however much prefigured by Hobbes's doctrines of sovereignty
and representation in particular, the modern state required for its
formation a principle which is absent from the political philosophies of
both Bodin and Hobbes, and which is missing as well from the vast
number of tracts on the practice of government that were produced even
earlier in the Renaissance. In addition to superimposing undivided rule
upon its subjects, the genuinely modern state further requires that those
who fall under its authority be united themselves - that they form one
people, one nation, morally bound together by a common identity. With
some notable exceptions, the modern state is of its essence a nation-state,
in which nationality is defined politically and political power is held to
express the nation's will. Hobbes had conceived a need for a unitary
sovereign in his depiction of the artificial personality of the state, but he
had not supposed that the multitude of subjects which authorized that
power could be identified as having a collective character of its own.
Joined together with his conception of the unity of the representer, as
outlined in the sixteenth chapter of his Leviathan, the modern state
generally requires that the represented be a moral person as well,

national unity going hand in hand with the political unity of the state. 19
While it speaks with only one voice in the manner imputed to absolutist
monarchy, the modern nation-state cannot take the form of a
monarchical civitas along any lines set forth by Bodin or Hobbes. It is
instead, as it has been known since the late eighteenth century, a
democratic republic.
That expression, employed by Paine and others to explain how
Athenian democracy could be writ large by way of the people's
representation in an assembly which they elect, has never corresponded
properly, however, to the constitution of the United States of America
which it purportedly described. In the course of their history, the people
of America have not comprised a single nation, and in many respects, by
design as well as on account of civil war, their government has not even
been that of a single state. So far from having been incorporated in the
federal constitution of the United States, the idea of democracy was held
by its founding fathers - Madison most conspicuously among them - to
be a dangerously despotic notion. The political authors of the first
republic of the New World drew up their system in such a way as to
ensure that it would be divided internally between the separate states and
the different branches of government, so as to substitute indirect forms
of authority for any democratic assembly of the people as a whole.
Political modernity, in so far as it is marked by the advent of the nation-
state, was to begin not in the United States of America but in revolution-
ary France. 2o
In neglecting the most immediately pertinent political dimensions of
modernity, Foucault managed to obscure the best reason for tracing its
epistemic metamorphosis to the pivotal year of 1795. But he also left too
vague his dating of modernity as a whole, since, if I may here invert the
chronology of Bishop Ussher's account of universal history since
Genesis, modernity was endowed by its creator with its political form on
17 June 1789. Between modernity's explosive birth and the fall of the
Bastille, that is to say, the human race must have enjoyed four weeks of
innocence. It might be supposed that conceptual historians are
characteristically imprecise about dates, but Hegel's grasp of the chrono-
logy of political modernity was. perfectly correct, and for almost two
hundred years the section devoted to "Absolute Freedom and Terror" in
his Phiinomen%gie des Geistes has comprised the most accurate reading
of its earliest stages. . . . . .-
On 17 June 1789, the deputies of the Estates General, whieh had been
50 Robert Wokler
convoked the previous autumn by King Louis XVI, resolved that they
were no longer assembled at the monarch's behest but were rather agents
of the national will (Ie VlEU national), entrusted with the task of represent-
ing the sovereignty of the people of France. The three estates thereby
constituted themselves as a single Assemb!ee nationale,2! bearing sole
authority to interpret the people's general will. It is in this way that
political modernity was born, with a unicameral political system cor-
responding to a unitary will, a unified state speaking on behalf of an
undifferentiated nation.
Since the motion that thus generated the National Assembly had been
put - initially to the delegates of the Third Estate alone - by the abbe
Sieyes, it may be said that the inventor of the term science sociale is also
the father of the modern nation-state. Although the words souverainete
and etat were seldom evoked in his writings, he had a better grasp of
their meaning, as articulated in the political philosophy of Hobbes, than
any other public figure of the French Revolution, and he was convinced
of the indispensability of their application, in Hobbes's fashion, to the
first genuinely self-governing populace of the modern age. Allowing for
mankind's constant temptation to resist parental guidance, it therefore
appears that Sieyes, on two counts, stands to the whole of modernity as
does God to his Creation. Sieyes indeed strove harder than God had
done to ensure that his handiwork flourished, since over the next several
years after modernity had been born he was to be its nursemaid and
counsellor as well. No one has contributed more to shaping the modern
world's political discourse and the character of its nation-state in
particular.
Hegel, who had witnessed modernity's birth and was to devote much
of his life to portraying its childhood, came eventually to reflect upon
Sieyes' paternity of modernity, as it were, in his essay, Uber die englische
Reformbill, of 1831, where he remarked that Sieyes had been able to
extract out of his own papers the plan which was to give France the
constitution it came to enjoy.22 In the language which he had employed
earlier in his Phanomenologie of 1807, he described this birthday of
modernity, in his fashion, as the undivided substance of absolute
freedom ascending the throne of the world without there being any
power able to resist it. 23
In pursuit of the reasoning which had led to the formation of the
National Assembly, it next followed from its members' debates of late
August and early September 1789 that the King of France must be
denied an absolute veto over its legislation, principally on the grounds
that there could be no sovereign above the people's representatives. Both

Robespierre and Sieyes argued forcefully in the same debates that the
King could not even be permitted a suspensive veto, since the unity of
the nation prohibited any executive constraint over its legislative will,
while the King's particular will could not be elevated above the rest. The
advocates of a suspensive veto, on the other hand, either wished, as
monarchists, that the King should retain a residual power in a more
mixed constitution, or, as democrats, that he might hold the Assembly's
power in check on behalf of the people of France.
Their triumph of 15 September 1789 over the opponents of any royal
veto was three years later to ensure the final destruction of both the
monarchy and the Legislative Assembly, which in October 1791
succeeded the National Assembly. For having been granted a suspensive
veto but at the same time denied thereby the right to represent the
nation, the King was to find his office preserved in name only, cut off
from the populace to which he might have appealed against the state.
When his suspensive veto came to be exercised on behalf of just those
forces which had opposed the Revolution altogether, the people of
France were able to see the fracture of their constitution that had been
manufactured at its birth, and in a particularly trenchant way they came
to recognize the weakness of the authority of their state. In the late
summer of 1792, with the King and the Legislative Assembly in conflict,
the nation in effect brought them down together. As Hegel accordingly
remarked in his Phiinomenologie, all social groups or classes which are
the spiritual spheres into which the whole is articulated are abolished. 24
Around the time of its establishment along lines envisaged in Sieyes'
plan, the National Assembly, seeking to make its identity clear,
deliberated not only about the powers of the King but also about the
powers of the people. Both in the spring of 1789 and again at the end of
July, Sieyes argued successfully that the people of France must be denied
any binding mandate, or mandat imperatif, over their own delegates,
since such a mandate would deprive the people's representatives of their
freedom and would accordingly substitute the multifarious particular
wills of scattered citizens for the collective will of the nation as a whole.
The act of creation of the National Assembly which Sieyes had
sponsored declared that the Assembly was one and indivisible. As the
father of modernity insisted, if the general will was to speak with one
voice in a unitary nation-state, it could no more be accountable to the
people at large than to a king.
At the heart of Sieyes' conception of modernity lay an idea of
52 Robert Wokler
representation which in his eyes was to constitute the most central

feature of the French state. The modern age in its political form, which
he termed l'ordre representatif, depended for its prosperity upon a system
of state management which adopted the same principle of the division of
labor as was necessary for a modern economy. This system entailed that
the people must entrust authority to their representatives rather than
seek its exercise directly by themselves, their delegates articulating their
interests on their behalf while they accordingly remain silent. In thus
distinguishing the effective agents of state power from its ultimate
originators, Sieyes merely pursued the logic of his own differentiation of
active from passive citizens, whose separate identification for a brief
period under the French Constitution of 1791 was to prove one of the
crowning achievements of his career as the first legislator of modern
France. 25 In the light of his doctrine of representation, it was accordingly
plain to Sieyes that the people as well as the King must be barred from
seeking control over the National Assembly, since any diminution of its
authority from an external source would constitute a danger to the
expression of the general will.
There could be no confusion in France between representation and
democracy such as inspired Paine and others to imagine that the hybrid
form of government established in America had nourished a classical
principle of self-rule in a large state. For Sieyes, who sometimes spoke of
direct democracy as a form of democratie brute, it would be tragic for the
first genuinely modern state of human history to make a retrograde step.
In establishing a political system that was without precedent, France
could not hesitate between ancient and modern principles of government.
Despite his endorsement of other constitutional safeguards against the
sovereign assembly's abuse of its powers, Sieyes did not permit any
allegiance to Montesquieu with respect to such matters to overcome his
mistrust of Rousseau; he was above all adamant that the people
themselves, lacking discipline, must be deprived of such means as would
put public order at risk. The inventor of the term science sociale was
convinced that democracy was no more fit for modernity than was the
mixed constitution that would issue from the preservation of a royal veto.
No plebiscite or other vestige of direct democracy could be tolerated by
the sole representative of the entire nation. Sovereignty thereby passed
from the nation's multifarious fragments to the people's delegates
constituted as one body, the populace ceasing to have any political
identity except as articulated through its representatives, who by
procuration were granted authority to speak for the electorate as a whole.
While the conception of the modern state put forward by Sieyes thus
required that both the King, on the one hand, and the people, on the
other, should be marginalized from the government of France, the
implementation of his plan did not proceed as smoothly as he might
have hoped. Apart from the King's disinclination to yield all his powers
to an assembly which he had originally called into being himself, the
people had their revolutionary champions as well. The Jacobins, in
particular, regarded Sieyes' distinction between active and passive
citizenship as anathema and, opposing his principle of the indivisibility
of the general will as articulated by the nation's representatives, they
sought to return directly to the people, in their districts and through
their communes, the indivisible sovereignty of the whole nation which
had been expropriated by their independently minded political delegates.
No less than Condorcet, among the Legislative Assembly's internal
critics, the Jacobins, from their Club and from the Commune of Paris,
contended throughout 1791 and 1792 that the people must be
empowered to exercise their rights as citizens, even if in defiance of laws
that would silence them.
The Jacobin notion of sovereignty, conceived as residing with the
people as a whole, thus seemed to contradict the logic of modernity
pursued by Sieyes and his associates, in so far as the Jacobins portrayed
themselves as standing for the people rather than for the nation that had
been substituted for them. The case which Sieyes assembled on behalf of
representation against democracy seemed to them a peculiarly modern
form of despotism. In this respect, it may be said that Robespierre and
Saint-Just embraced the idea of popular sovereignty not less but more than
did Sieyes, who in fact found the term almost as uncongenial as Locke had
done a century earlier. As opposed to the political idea of the sovereignty
of the nation, which to them signified no more than the sovereignty of the
state, the Jacobins subscribed to a belief in the social sovereignty of the
nation conceived as the sovereignty of the people in general.
But the Jacobins' contradiction of Sieyes' logic of modernity was in a
crucial sense illusory, since the nation which they envisaged to be com-
prised of all its people was to prove as monolithic as Sieyes' conception
of a nation represented by the state. When the Jacobins came to power
within the Convention in the autumn of 1793, they behaved as Sieyes
and his associates had done earlier, but in reverse - that is, they at-
tempted to root out the people's enemies within the state, just as Sieyes
had sought to silence the enemies of the state within the nation. The
right of initiative of all citizens through direct elections and by way of
54 Robert Wokler
referenda, such as had been proposed by Condorcet at the beginning of

the year, was tempered by layers of indirect suffrage and obstructions to
collective action which left the people in their sections and communes
with only a tenuous and residual right of veto, when the Constitution of
1793 came to be enacted after the Girondins' fall. In attempting to
render the citizen population of France active so that the people's
delegates could be accountable to and even decomissioned by their true
sovereign, the lacobins were obliged to cleanse the nation of its internal
differences, closing the Catholic Churches, for instance, and forcing the
Commune of Paris, from which they had drawn so much of their own
strength, to surrender its powers.
For the people to act as a collective grand jury of their government,
they must also speak with one voice. Having supported the rights of
primary assemblies against the state, the lacobins came within the
Convention to oppose assemblies which betrayed the nation. Pure
democracy was to prove as incompatible in practice with Robespierre's
populism as it was alien to Sieyes' notion of representative government,
so that in 1793, no less than in 1789, when these two enemies had last
been in agreement in their opposition to the royal veto, they could once
again be of one mind. The Terror of the lacobins was to follow directly
from their idea of the sublime unity of the nation, which required a lofty
purity of public spirit that made the vulgar purity of democracy seem an
uncouth substitute for virtue. Popular sovereignty was not only to be
given voice but actually created by the nation's genuine representatives.
The greatest enemy of the people for whom they stood, and who had still
to be manufactured in the image of what they might become, were all the
fractious people cast in recalcitrant molds resistant to such change, who
thereby stood in the way of the agents of the people of the future. As
Hegel remarks by way of bringing the passage on "Absolute Freedom
and Terror" in his Phiinomen%gie to a climax, in its abstract existence
of unmediated pure negation, the sole work of freedom is therefore
death, a death without inner significance, the coldest and meanest of
deaths, like cutting off the head of a cabbage. 26
The Hegelian Misrepresentation of Rousseau
The history of the early development of this political discourse of

modernity, and of the French Revolutionary assemblies and debates in
which its principles were articulated and transformed, has been
recounted several times before, most thoroughly, to my mind, by Patrice

Gueniffey and Lucien JaumeY Paul Bastid, Murray Forsyth, Pasquale
Pasquino, Jean-Denis Bredin, Keith Baker, Antoine de Baecque, William
Sewell and others have stressed the special significance of Sieyes'
contribution, and in a notable recent essay, Istvan Hont, placing further
emphasis upon Sieyes' doctrine, locates it at the heart of a long and
complex debate, over several centuries, about the nature of the state in
general and the character of the modern nation-state in particular. 28 I
have here, however, tried to flesh out what I believe to be Hegel's
reading of the French Revolutionary birth of political modernity, and
that for several reasons: First, because I believe that Hegel's conception
of the Terror as joined umbilically to the fcetus of the National Assembly
in the act of its creation offers an exceptionally imaginative account of
the connection between political theory and political practice, even of the
transfiguration of philosophy into violence; second, because it forms one
of the most remarkable interpretations ever proposed of the genesis of
modernity as a whole; third, because it provides a conceptual history of
the political form which Hegel believed modernity had taken that bears
comparison with the schemes of Koselleck and Foucault, albeit in a
dramatically different idiom; and fourth, because it portrays the French
Revolution as the political offspring or afterbirth of the Enlightenment.
Hegel perfectly well understood Sieyes' role as nursemaid and chief
counsellor of the French Revolution, but as is plain most of all from his
Philosophie des Rechts and his Vorlesungen uber die Geschichte der
Philosophie, he believed that the Revolution's spiritual father was not
Sieyes himself but Rousseau, who in the Contrat social had articulated
the idea of absolute freedom which was to be given political embodiment
in the National Assembly and was subsequently to be unsheathed in the
Terror. I hold that belief to be entirely without foundation, and to the
extent that it informs Hegel's conceptual history of modernity, I regard
its falsity as undermining his whole case for joining the French
Revolution to the Enlightenment. 29 Of course Hegel had no doubt that
Rousseau's attachment to the republics of antiquity and his contempt for
the trappings of civilization bore witness to his fundamental antagonism
towards Enlightenment ideals of human progress. But in prescribing a
notion of liberty that was at once absolute and pure, Rousseau was in
Hegel's eyes the author of a philosophy which was no less abstract than
Kant's, and which, as a blueprint for political change, was to prove the
most dangerous of all the monolithic schemes of the Enlightenment.
Koselleck's account of the conceptual origins of the French Revolution
56 Robert Wokler
in his Kritik und Krise is similarly built round an extravagant portrayal

of the impact of Rousseau's insidious philosophy, deemed to have
unleashed the permanent revolution and permanent dictatorship of the
modern totalitarian state. 30
According to Hegel, Rousseau's great achievement had been to put
forward the idea of will as the state's fundamental principle. In conceiving
his notion of the will only in terms of its individuality, or Einzelheit,
however, he had in his characteristically shallow fashion portrayed the
union of individuals within the state as a mere contract of particulars,
whose indeterminacy and arbitrariness made impossible the truly concrete
union of wills upon which the establishment of a genuine political
community depends. Having constructed his notion of the volonte
generale as a compound formed out of individuals' capriciousness,
Rousseau had failed to see that the universal or general will, the
allgemeine Wille, of the state depends upon cooperative obedience to its
rules rather than on any idea of contractual association designed to leave
individuals as free as they were before. In attempting to invest Rousseau's
abstractions with political power, the revolutionaries of France overthrew
the constitution of their state, because it stood in the way of the fulfilment
of their principles. The Reign of Terror, Hegel claims in his Philosophie
des Rechts, was the destructive and fanatical form which had been taken
by Rousseau's abstract idea of absolute freedom, when in practice it
confronted institutions incompatible with its own self-realization.
Through the language he employs in his conceptual history of
modernity, Hegel's reading of the revolutionary influence of Rousseau
might appear to correspond with other images that had been drawn by
. so many of Rousseau's revolutionary admirers and critics alike in just
those debates that were to inform the account of absolute freedom and
terror which is offered in the Phiinomenologie. As early as 1791, Louis
Sebastien Mercier had produced a work whose very title encapsulates a
belief that was already widespread at the time, Rousseau, considere
comme l'un des premiers auteurs de la Revolution. After the fall of
Robespierre in 1794, Rousseau's remains were transferred from their
grave at Ermenonville and brought to the Pantheon in Paris, where Ie
citoyen de Geneve could forever be acclaimed as a hero of the French
nation. More than three years earlier, Edmund Burke had denounced
Rousseau as the "insane Socrates" of the National Assembly,3! and
throughout the last decade of the eighteenth century the Contrat social
would indeed come to be esteemed as the Revolution's holy writ, fusing
its Ten Commandments and its Sermon on the Mount in a blueprint for
a new social order conceived by the patron saint of the First Republic of
France three decades before its actual Creation.
But neither Hegel's reading of Rousseau, nor his conceptual history of
the National Assembly's prefiguration of the Terror in its act of union,
bears any relation to France's own revolutionary canonization of its
spiritual legislator. The interpretation of Rousseau's revolutionary
significance offered by Hegel, later taken up by Marx, is based entirely
upon Hegel's understanding of what he regarded as a defining feature of
the age of modernity, the advent of burgerliche Gesellschaft, that is, the
realm of civil society, which he describes, in his Philosophie des Rechts,
as an association of self-sufficient individuals whose common interests
are pursued by contract and through legal institutions only.32 Hegel was
contemptuous of all political thinkers, including Rousseau, who labored
under the misapprehension that the state could be, or might ever have
been, established by contract. It was within civil society alone, and not
the state, as he conceived it, that individuals, the bearers of natural
liberty, remain as free after making their common agreements as before.
According to Hegel, Rousseau's failure, and that of the revolutionaries
he inspired after him, had quite simply been due to the fact that they had
all attempted to construct the state in the image of civil society and had
neglected to transcend it so as to enter the true realm of communal
action, described as Sittlichkeit, or ethical life, in the Philosophie des
Rechts. Rousseau had merely abstracted homo (Economicus, the indi-
vidual in a civil society or market economy, from his concrete political
relations and then had falsely supposed that by contract such a person
could come together with others like himself to form a civil association
which had as its aim the preservation of each person's natural freedom.
Hegel, following Fichte before him, never noticed that Rousseau's
account of the volonte generale pertained specifically to a collective will,
resembling his own notion of the allgemeine Wille, rather than to a
compound of particulars, which would have been merely the volonte de
tous. He was not aware that Rousseau's vision of the moral personality
of the state, as outlined in the Contrat social, entailed much the same
dimensions of political solidarity and self-recognition as part of a greater
whole that were embraced by his account of ethical life. He did not per-
ceive that Rousseau shared with him a notion of community that
transcended the arbitrariness of the individual will in civil society.
Still less was Hegel attentive to Rousseau's critique of the modern
idea of representation - to his insistence that citizens could only be truly
free if they were themselves engaged in legislation, since the substitution
58 Robert Wokler
of one's will by delegates acting on one's behalf was nothing other than
despotism. Even while upholding a commitment to civil liberty of a kind
which could not be enjoyed except by citizens partaking of their state's
corporate identity, Rousseau insisted upon each person's genuine
autonomy, or self-direction, which Hegel wrongly assumed to mean the
maintenance of natural liberty, thereby neglecting Rousseau's belief that
liberty must always exclude dependence on others, prohibiting the
representation of individuals' freedom of choice. Rousseau was con-
vinced, as Hegel was not, any more than Sieyes had been, that to express
the general will citizens must deliberate together and then heed their own
counsel; they could not just vote for spokesmen who, as their proxies,
would determine the nation's laws. In large states, as Rousseau recog-
nized in both his Contrat social and Gouvernement de P%gne, there
must be means whereby the true sovereign could exercise its will even
when assemblies were entitled, over prescribed periods and subject to
general ratification, to speak with the consent of the people as a whole.
There must in such circumstances be plebiscites, he believed, such as had
been enjoyed by the people of the Republic of Rome, entitled to dispense
with their tribunes at will, for in the presence of the represented, as
Rousseau put it, there could be no representation. 33
For all his misgivings about democracy as a form of government,
Rousseau believed more passionately than any other eighteenth-century
thinker in the idea of popular or democratic sovereignty. It was
principally this doctrine, which was presumed to have been inscribed in
all the Declarations of the Rights of Man and all the constitutions of the
revolutionary years, that ensured Rousseau's renown as the patron saint
of a regenerated France. But the doctrine was upheld by him in its pure
form, embracing the people as a whole,34 while the purity of purpose
sought by Sieyes, Robespierre and their associates with respect to the
sovereignty of the nation was always of another, contradictory, sort. As
is perhaps plainest from his Gouvernement de Pologne, Rousseau
subscribed to just that notion of a mandat imperatifwhich in the modern
world most closely approximated the full legislative authority of citizens
acting collectively, such as he understood to have prevailed in the free
republics of antiquity. He was a democrat against representation, he
stood for the direct and unmediated sovereignty of the people against all
forms of delegated power, and not once in the course of a revolution said
to have been framed by his ideas did the advocates of his philosophy - in
the National Assembly, the Commune of Paris, the Jacobin Club or the
Club of the Cordeliers - come to prevail.
Hegel's conceptual history of modernity, within which Rousseau's idea

of absolute liberty is portrayed as having engendered both the National
Assembly and the Terror, was thus only made possible by the category
mistake of his confusing Rousseau's political doctrine with the
philosophies of both Sieyes, whom he supposed to have put Rousseauism
into practice, and Robespierre, whom he regarded as having brought
Rousseauism to its dreadful climax. The father of modernity was of
course no more likely to assume responsibility for the Terror than was
God ever inclined to accept blame for original sin. Sieyes was never
persuaded by Hegel's reading of the French Revolution and always
remained convinced that the Terror had actually sprung from the betrayal
of his own ideas on the part of populists who could not abide the principle
of indirect sovereignty which his theory of representation prescribed.
From his point of view, a form of Rousseauism had indeed been
responsible for the Terror, in dissolving all his achievements in the
National Assembly through its successful implementation of just that
brutish form of direct democracy which was unfit for the modern world.
The inappropriateness of democracy for modernity was as striking to
Sieyes as was the unsuitability of modernity for democracy in the eyes of
Rousseau. With regard to his grasp of the meaning of Rousseau's
political philosophy, Sieyes was as clear as was Hegel obscure. Perhaps it
was because he was not himself a conceptual historian of modernity but
only its father that his reading of the texts of other authors was
sometimes less blind than that of modernity's scribe. Most of the
features of Rousseau's political philosophy which Hegel had overlooked,
Sieyes recognized, and he devoted much of his career to combating those
democrats of the National Assembly who espoused them. As against
Rousseau's democratic notion of sovereignty he turned instead to that
of Hobbes, even to the extent of preferring a monarchical over a
republican regime if polyarchy was to be averted. Rousseau's followers
in the National Assembly had no understanding of the system of
representation required in a modern state, he supposed, but at least a
sketch of it could be drawn from the sixteenth chapter of Hobbes's
Leviathan. 35 The lacobins likewise, in their advocacy of one nation,
proved as little democratic as was Sieyes in upholding the integrity of
one state.
Yet even before the genuinely modern nation-state came to be
manufactured by Sieyes, Rousseau was convinced that the world had
already suffered more of modernity than it could bear. When he
contemplated much the same future that Sieyes was to call into being, it
60 Robert Wokler
filled him with dread. In the third book of Emile, as if to anticipate

Koselleck, he remarked that "we are approaching a state of crisis and the
age of revolutions ... I hold it impossible that the great monarchies of
Europe still have long to survive."36 He had perceived already, from the
abuse of their popular mandates by the legislative assemblies of both
England and his native Geneva, that when the people's will is repre-
sented, absolute right was corrupted into unfettered power. He had
foreseen the terror as vividly as Hegel described it. "Where force alone
reigns", he had remarked in his Lettres de la montagne, "the state is
dissolved ... that is how all democratic states finally perish."37
Modernity's Jettisoned Heritage
Where, then, does this scenario, focused upon the French Revolution,
leave the conceptual history of modernity with respect to its imputed
origins in the Enlightenment? The pioneers of modern social science
around the year 1795 plainly owe a debt to certain eighteenth-century
thinkers and traditions of thought. Sieyes, as well as many of the
ideologues whose use of the term science sociale differed from his own,
drew inspiration from the sensationsalist philosophy of Condillac and
especially from his sketches, in his Traite des sensations and Traite des
systemes, of a unified science of human nature which would be free of
the metaphysical abstractions associated with seventeenth-century
notions of the soul. By way of Condillac, they also owed a more distant
debt to Locke's epistemology; and they agreed with Maupertuis, La
Mettrie and d'Holbach, among Condillac's contemporaries, that the
moral attributes of human nature could be explained with reference to
man's physical constitution alone, and with Helvetius that the central
task of a system of education was to shape the pliant clay of human
nature. In their physiological conception of a social science the
ideologues owed a certain debt to Bordeu and Barthez, indirectly perhaps
even to Haller, taking particular stock of such features of the Mont-
pellier school of physiology as had inspired Diderot's writings on the
subject and were to come to the notice of Saint-Simon mainly by way of
Burdin and Bichat.
Above all, perhaps, they were spiritual descendants of Montesquieu's
Esprit des lois, in its attempt to formulate what might be termed deep
structural explanations of human behavior, interpreting laws in terms of
manners and mores, and even religions by way of mental dispositions
which reflected the influence of climate and other external factors upon
the nerve fibers of the body. Most of the ideological and scientific
sources of French Revolutionary social science were themselves French,
but at least in his theory of the political division of labor, Sieyes believed
that he had followed and even anticipated Adam Smith,38 who may
therefore be described, as he has always been known in Japan, as the
godfather of modernity, just as Voltaire was the godfather of the
Enligh tenmen t.
Foucault was in a fundamental sense mistaken to suppose that the
human sciences were first invented around 1795, since the epistemic
metamorphosis he traces to that period of European intellectual history
actually had a longer term of gestation throughout the eighteenth
century than he allows. In its materialist philosophy it may indeed be
said to have issued, through the Enlightenment, from some central
elements of seventeenth-century Cartesian science itself. But to describe
that· metamorphosis, in Foucault's manner, as the invention of the
human sciences does a great injustice to other themes and traditions of
eighteenth-century thought, including Hume's perspective, which aimed
at establishing a science of human nature on different foundations,
equally concerned with the internal operations of the mind, but drawn
from a conceptual framework of natural philosophy or physics rather
than physiology.
It could even be argued with some plausibility that the human
sciences were not so much invented around 1795 as superseded then by
fresh scientific schemes which had as their defining characteristic the
elimination from their accounts of a specifically human element.
Mirabeau's La science ou les droits et les devoirs de l'homme, or
Filangieri's La scienza della legislazione or Ferguson's Principles of
Moral and Political Science, for instance - each published or compiled
before the French Revolution - placed special emphasis upon notions of
human action and the human will, upon what it is that persons have a
mind to do, and how they ought to behave, in the light of such truths as
could be established about man's nature. Among the more striking
features of the new sciences of society which Foucault's conceptual
history of the modern age portrays is the removal of politics from
explanations of human nature - the elimination of the spheres of
legislation and political action from la science sociale and their
rediscription as abstract, utopian, metaphysical and, after the Terror,
dangerous to know. Nothing was to prove so destructive of that central
feature of the Enlightenment Project which throughout the latter half of
62 Robert Wokler
the eighteenth century was conceived as a science of legislation for the

promotion of human happiness than the birth, by Ccesarean section
plucked from the womb of the old society, of genuinely modern social
science. The proponents of the fresh disciplines that arose from around
1795 were far less committed than their predecessors to changing the
world. They sought instead, by interpreting its internal functions, to pre-
serve it.
While a comprehensive history of the early development of our
modern notions of social science can only be pieced together from de-
tailed accounts of its various disciplines, there should be little doubt that
the advent of the nation-state, in its manufacture by the father of
modernity and his successors, has not fulfilled the Enlightenment Project
but, on the contrary, brought it to an untimely end. Over the past thirty
years, Jiirgen Habermas - perhaps the best-known enthusiast of En-
lightenment principles among contemporary social theorists - has argued
valiantly on their behalf and against their detractors, in promoting
eighteenth-century ideals of rational and critical discourse in a biirger-
liche Offentlichkeit, or bourgeois public sphere, comprised of citizens
committed to the pursuit of indefinite social progress through all the
richly texured mediums of self-emancipation.
Yet although the Enlightenment Project itself is in no way to blame
for modernity's failure, the demise of all that Habermas holds dear was
already sown in the establishment of the nation-state under the guidance
of Sieyes, who contrived in advance to cut off Habermas's fondest hopes
as if, instead of seeds that should be nurtured, they formed, in Hegel's
terminology, the useless head of a cabbage. For as has been noted by
communitarian critics of modernity of all denominations from Leo
Strauss to Sheldon Wolin and beyond, the establishment of the nation-
state has been marked throughout its history by the depoliticization of
its subjects and the destruction of the public sphere of their engagement
with one another as citizens,39 accelerating a process decried, in the
Enlightenment itself with reference to the state, even before it had be-
come a nation-state, not least by Rousseau.
Unless it is the legal despotism of Le Mercier de la Riviere, not a
single major scheme of government conceived by Enlightenment thinkers
- not classical republicanism or its modern derivatives meant for large
states, not enlightened monarchy, nor democracy, nor the re-establish-
ment of the ancient constitution, nor the mixed constitution, nor the
separation of powers - has come to prevail anywhere in the epoch sired
by the father of modernity.40 Most commentators on the philosophical
foundations of the modern age of course ascribe seminal influence not to

Sieyes but to Kant, mainly in the light of his portrayal of autonomous
human agency, freed from the shackles of classical metaphysics, religious
dogma and historical tradition. 41 After initially describing Kant's
arousal of philosophy from its dogmatic slumber as a soporific
awakening which only lulled it into fresh anthropological sleep, Foucault
himself came to reassess the impact of the Kantian ethic upon modernity
as critical and liberating, if not the harbinger of universally acceptable
rules of conduct. 42
But in heralding the liberation of the self from all externally imposed
authority, Kant excluded the domain of politics, whose most character-
istically modern institutions in particular have embraced new images of
personal identity and have given rise to fresh constraints upon the
exercise of individual choice which are thoroughly incompatible with the
ideals of moral independence that he espoused himself. Though he
greatly welcomed the French Revolution, and in particular its republican
zeal, Kant maintained a lofty optimism about its ultimate achievement
on behalf of the whole human race that left little room for engagement
as a protagonist of any of its immediate aims. A life-long sense of
prudence and political circumspection no doubt also forbade the invo-
cation of the modernist principles of his ethics as wholesale grounds for
opposition to the modern state.
Yet Locke, near the end of the seventeenth century, and Rousseau
and other liberally minded thinkers of the eighteenth century before
Kant, had already denounced the Hobbesian account of sovereignty as a
form of voluntary subjection, in consequence of which the people were
deemed to be bound by an artificial power of their own making. It
extracted slavery from liberty, claimed Rousseau in particular, driving
the consentors to the Leviathan's rule into chains which they believed
would make them free. Since political power is by its very nature un-
democratic, perhaps the principal ideological achievement of social
contract theory in the two centuries in which it flourished in European
political thought was its success in portraying the legitimation of state
power back to front, as if it were ultimately enacted by the authorization
of the governed, so that popular choice could be made to appear to have
supplanted either God or nature as the real originator of the state.
The mandat imperatij was in the eighteenth century designed to
preserve an essential element of democracy within a system of
representation whose centripetal force progressively tore it free of any
popular control. In the course of the French Revolution democracy's
64 Robert Wokler
advocates were accordingly defeated, as they would be again in the Paris

Commune of 1871. By and large, such defeats, which had several
precedents in the history of the Roman Republic, were predictable, and
so too would be the later triumph of the Leninist conception of a
communist party vanguard of the proletariat over the democratically
inspired criticism of Leon Trotsky and Rosa Luxemburg.
The utter inappropriateness of democracy for the modern age had
been perfectly plain to Sieyes, and it is a measure of the impact of the
father of modernity upon the social sciences we have inherited from the
end of the age of Enlightenment that political scientists of the twentieth
century, following Roberto Michels and Joseph Schumpeter, have
shared Sieyes' objections to pure democracy and have merely pursued
them a few steps further. For in portraying the establishment of rule by
competing elites as genuine democracy - that is, as the only sense of
democracy that has any real meaning - they have adopted the
representative alternative to democracy which Sieyes bequeathed to the
modern age and have granted to it the name of its opposite. 43 Almost
every state throughout the world now describes itself as democratic in
just this way.
Classical republicanism, on the other hand, can in some sense be said
to have survived the French Revolution not just in name but in fact, for
although modernity is inescapably hostile to it as well, it has managed to
make fitful appearances at least in the only form our governments
occasionally tolerate, that is, as socialism. With respect to its ideals of
collective and civic identity, classical republicanism of course may itself
be described as a forebear of modern nationalism and even of the
nation-state. Yet since the French Revolution, most of its adherents,
when they have upheld their principles, have remained sufficiently
populist, sometimes even sufficiently egalitarian, to resist the hegemony
of contemporary governments. So long as the nation-state continues to
flourish, nevertheless, it may be safely asumed that modern republica-
nism, or socialism, will occupy in the political realm a place such as is
filled by the polar bear in the natural world, as a species which has a
splendid history but has become endangered, almost vestigial, now that
it can no longer roam free.
If all this was in a fundamental sense predictable and in no way
contrary to the plan of modernity mapped by its father, what could not
have been foreseen by anyone in the Enlightenment or in the course of the
French Revolution was the price that modern civilization would be
obliged to pay for its establishment of the nation-state. In opposing the
democratic mandat imperatifin the National Assembly, Sieyes recognized

the threat to the expression of the nation's general will which might be
constituted by the people. It was of the essence of his plan that the nation
in assembly spoke for all the people and must never be silenced by the
people themselves. Over the past two hundred years the nation-state has
characteristically achieved that end because it represents the people,
standing before them not just as monarchs had done earlier, as the
embodiment of their collective will, but rather by assuming their very
identity, bearing the personality of the people themselves. While a small
number of genuinely multinational states have in that period been
established as well and continue to flourish, the majority of peoples
everywhere now comprise nations which, by way of their representatives,
are politically incorporated as states. All peoples that have identities form
nation-states. What Sieyes did not foresee was that in the age of
modernity heralded by his political philosophy, a people might not
survive unless it constituted a nation-state. In the age of modernity, it has
proved possible for the nation-state to become the enemy of the people.
To the Hobbesian theory of representation, the nation-state adds the
dimension of the comprehensive unity of the people, the representer and
represented together forming an indissoluble whole, the state now
identical with the nation, the nation bonded to the state, each
understood through the other. As Hannah Arendt rightly noted in her
Origins of Totalitarianism, it has been a characteristic feature of the
nation-state since the French Revolution that the rights of man and the
rights of the citizen are the same. 44 By giving real substance and proper
sanction to the various declarations of the rights of man within the
framework of its own first constitutions, the French revolutionary
nation-state invented by Sieyes joined the rights of man to the
sovereignty of the nation. 45 It defined the rights of man in such a way
that only the state could enforce them and only members of the nation
could enjoy them.
So far from putting into practice the universal rights of man long
advocated by proponents of cosmopolitan enlightenment, the modern
nation-state was to ensure that henceforth only persons comprising
nations which formed states could have rights. In such modern states as
are not genuine nation-states, human rights may still have some
purchase. In the United States, in particular, where citizens have no
single national identity, courts of law are generally so sympathetic to the
exercise of human rights, and so generous in their recompense when they
judge that such rights have been breached, that lawyers seldom charge
66 Robert Wokler
their clients in advance for their services. But the history of modernity
since the French Revolution has characteristically been marked by the
abuse of human rights on the part of nation-states which alone have the
authority to determine the scope of those rights and their validity.
Not only individuals but whole peoples which comprise nations
without states have found themselves comprehensively shorn of their
rights. At the heart of the Enlightenment Project, which its advocates
perceived as putting an end to the age of privilege, was their recognition
of the common humanity of all persons. For Kant, who in Konigsberg
came from practically nowhere and went nowhere else at all, to be
enlightened meant to be intolerant of injustice everywhere, to pay
indiscriminate respect to each individual, to be committed to universal
justice, to be morally indifferent to difference,46 even while obedient to
civil authority. But in the age of the nation-state, it is otherwise. Thanks
ultimately to the father of modernity, ours is the age of the passport, the
permit, the right of entry to each state or right of exit from it which is
enjoyed by citizens that bear its nationality alone. For persons who are
not accredited as belonging to a nation-state in the world of modernity,
there are few passports and still fewer visas. To be without a passport or
visa in the modern world is to have no right of exit or entry anywhere,
and to be without a right of exit or entry is to risk a rite of passage to the
grave. That above all is the legacy bequeathed to us from the political
inception of the modern age on 17 June 1789. It was then that the
metempsychosis of modernity began, when we took the first steps of the
Mephisto Waltz of our transfiguration, when we started to manufacture
Frankenstein's monster from Pygmalion's statue. 47
Notes
I. Notable introductions to these themes, and to the already vast and ever expanding
literature about them, can be found in the contributions to this volume of Eric Brian,
Randall Collins and Michael Donnelly; and in Discourses on Society, eds. Peter
Wagner, Bjorn Wittrock and Richard Whitley, Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook,
1991, most particularly in the essays there by John Gunnell ("Political Science as an
Emerging Discipline in the U.S.," pp. 123-162) and Malcolm Vout ("Oxford and the
Emergence of Political Science in England, 1945-1960", pp. 163-191).
2. See Jacob Talmon, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy (London: Seeker and
Warburg, 1952); Lester Crocker, Nature and Culture: Ethical Thought in the French
Enlightenment (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1963); Alasdair MacIntyre, After
Virtue (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981); John Gray,
Enlightenment's Wake: Politics and Culture at the Close of the Modern Age (London:
Routledge, 1995); Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialektik der Aujklarung
(Amsterdam: Querido, 1947); and Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust
(Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989).
3. For Koselleck's account of such changes, see especially his Kritik und Krise (Freiburg:
Karl Alber, 1959) and his collection of essays dating from 1965 to 1977, Vergangene
ZukunJt. Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten (Frankfurt: Surhkamp, 1979). He
frequently objects that he has been misunderstood, however, and in seminars and
private discussions over many years he has suggested that he never had in mind any
generalized notion of a Sattelzeit at all. For Foucault's perspective on the conceptual
metamorphoses of the same period, see Les Mots et les choses (Paris: Gallimard,
1966). The central themes of these texts are usefully summarized by Keith Tribe, in the
introduction to his translation of Vergangene Zukunft, under the title, Futures Past
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985), on the one hand; and by Pamela Major-Poetzl, in
Michel Foucault's Archeology of Western Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1983), on the other.
4. The seven volumes of the Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta,
1972-1992) have been edited by the late Otto Bruner and Werner Conze as well as
Koselleck, but it is Koselleck in particular who has been the work's principal guiding
spirit since its inception. On the general methodology of Begriffsgeschichte in the
manner in which he has pursued it, see especially ed. Koselleck, Historische Semantik
und Begriflsgeschichte (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1979); and Melvin Richter, "Begriffs-
geschichte and the History of Ideas," Journal of the History of Ideas 48 (1987),
247-263, and The History of Political and Social Concepts: A Critical Introduction
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). For an account of how the late
eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Sattelzeit, or pivotal period, of linguistic,
political and social change in Germany, as he conceived it, marks the advent of a new
epoch in its history and thus informs the structure of the Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe
as an historical lexicon, see Koselleck's own introduction to vol. I, especially pp.
xiv-xvi. In several of the essays of his Vergangene Zukunft, Koselleck stresses the
importance of the emergence of new words, and of changing linguistic fashion, as
encapsulating a perceptible ideological shift to a neue Zeit or even Neuzeit of
modernity, for instance in the terminological displacement of Historie by Geschichte in
German historical writing and discourse from around 1750. But just on account of
their political and social ramifications, the pivotal linguistic and conceptual changes
which he depicts do not lend themselves to compression or precise dating within a
short span of years. The Sattelzeit of modernity traced in his writings sometimes
appears to embrace the period from around 1770 to 1800 or 1830 rather than from
1750 to 1850, and occasionally it seems to have been initiated as early as 1700. In Das
Zeitalter der europaischen Revolution (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1969), a work produced
collectively by Koselleck with Louis Bergeron and Fran90is Furet, the period
portrayed as forming the nexus of Europe's modern political and social history
extends from 1780 to 1848.
5. The first known appearance in print of the word perfectibilite is in Rousseau's
Discours sur l'inegalite of 1755. On the earliest uses of the word civilisation around the
same time, see especially Jean Starobinski, "Le mot civilisation," originally published
in Le Temps de la reflexion in 1983, reprinted in his collection of essays, Le remMe
dans Ie mal (Paris: Gallimard, 1989).
6. With respect to the pivotal significance, for Foucault, of the year 1795, see Les Mots et
68 Robert Wokler
les choses, pp. 238 and 263. In Power/Knowledge, explaining his notion of historical
discontinuity, he contends that "the great biological image of a progressive maturation
of science ... does not seem to me to be pertinent to history." Pointing to medicine's
"gradual transformation, within a period of twenty-five or thirty years," around the
end of the eighteenth century, he remarks that there were not just new discoveries:
"There is a whole new 'regime' in discourse and forms of knowledge. And all this
happens in the space of a few years," ed. Paul Rabinow, The Foucault Reader
(London: Penguin, 1984), p. 54. See also Foucault's more general delineation of an age
of Enlightenment, again associated predominantly with the last decades of the
eighteenth century, and including not only new regimes of science but also the
establishment of capitalism and a new political order, in "Qu'est ce que la critique?
[Critique et Aujklarung)," Bulletin de la Societe fran~aise de philosophie 84 (1990),
35-63. With respect to the doctrines of the ideologues, dating as well from the 1790s,
see especially vol. VIII (La Conscience revolutionnaire: Les ideologues), published in
1978, of Gusdorf, Les Sciences humaines et la pensee occidentale, 8 vols. (Paris: Payot,
1966-1978); Moravia, II pensiero degli ideologues: scienza e filosofia in Francia
(1780-1815) (Firenze: La Nuova Italia, 1974); Kennedy, A Philosophe in the Age of
Revolution: Destutt de Tracy and the Origins of "Ideology" (Philadelphia: American
Philosophical Society, 1978); Staum, Cabanis and Medical Philosophy in the French
Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980); Welch, Liberty and Utility:
The French Ideologues and the Transformation of Liberalism (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1984); and Head, Ideology and Social Science: Destutt de Tracy and
French Liberalism (Dordrecht: Nijhoff, 1985). All recent commentators on this subject
owe a debt to the seminal work of Fran<;ois Picavet, Les Ideologues (Paris: F. Alcan,
1891 ).
7. See especially the writings of Baker, Forsyth, Head and Hont cited in notes 9, II, 14,
28 and 35 below.
8. See, for instance, Gladys Bryson, Man and Society: The Scottish Inquiry of the
Eighteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1945); ed. Katherine Faull,
Anthropology and the German Enlightenment (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press,
1995); eds. Roy Porter and Mikulas Teich, The Enlightenment in National Context
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); and John Redwood, Reason, Ridicule
and Religion: The Age of Enlightenment in England, 1660-1750 (London: Thames and
Hudson, 1976).
9. See Sieyes, Qu'est que Ie tiers-etat?, ed. Robert Zappieri (Geneva: Droz, 1970), p. 151.
In all subsequent editions, for la science sociale Sieyes substituted the expression la
science de l'ordre social. His inaugural use of the term is noted by Brian Head in "The
Origins of 'La Science sociale' in France, 1770-1800," Australian Journal of French
Studies 19 (1982), 115-132.
10. See the Bibliotheque pubJique et universitaire de Geneve, ms. Dumont 45, fo. 19.
Dumont reports of Sieyes that he hardly sees anyone else in the world but himself: "II
auroit voulu trouver une douzaine de personnes qui voulussent approfondir avec lui
I'art social, c'est a dire qu'illui falloit des Apotres, car il a dit en propres termes que la
politique etoit une science qu'il croyoit avoir achevee." The passage is cited by J.
Benetruy in L'Atelier de Mirabeau: quatre proscrits genevois (Paris: Picard, 1962), p.
399.
II. For these earliest recorded references to the term science sociale, see especially Keith
Baker, "The Early History of the Term 'Social Science'," Annals of Science 20 (1964),
211-226; Baker, Condorcet: From Natural Philosophy to Social Mathematics (Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 1975), pp. 391-395; Head, "The Origins of 'La Science
sociale' in France"; and my "Saint-Simon and the Passage from Political to Social
Science," in ed. Anthony Pagden, The Languages of Political Theory in Early-Modern
Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 325-338. On the term's
English adaptation from the French in early nineteenth-century socialist writings, in
the first instance apparently by William Thompson in 1824, see Gregory Claeys,
"'Individualism,' 'Socialism,' and 'Social Science,''' Journal of the History of Ideas 47
(1986), 81-93. On the history of the Societe de 1789, see Augustin Challamel, Les
Clubs contre-revolutionnaires (Paris: Cerf, 1895), and Baker, "Politics and Social
Science in Eighteenth-Century France: 'the Societe de 1789'," in ed. J. F. Bosher,
French Government and Society, 1500-1850 (London: Athlone Press. 1973), pp.
208-230.
12. See de Tracy, Commentaire sur l'''Esprit des lois" de Montesquieu (Paris: Delaunay,
1819), p. vii.
13. The suggestion that Volney in particular anticipated the Annales school, by virtue of
the global historical approach he adopted in his Lerons d'histoire (delivered at the
Ecole normale in 1795 and first published in 1800), has been made by Staum in a
notable discussion of the ideologues' influence upon the French educational curriculum
in the period 1795-1802 (see his "Human, Not Secular Sciences: Ideology in the
Central Schools," Historical Reflections 12 (1985), 72). On the influence especially of
the Classe des sciences morales et politiques, but also of other classes of the 1nstitut
national over the same period, see also Jules Simon, Une Academie sous Ie Directoire
(Paris: Calmann Levy, 1885); Staum, "The Class of Moral and Political Sciences,
1795-1803," French Historical Studies 11 (1980), 371-397; "Images of Paternal Power:
Intellectuals and Social Change in the French National Institute," Canadian Journal of
History 17 (1982), 425-444; "The Enlightenment Transformed: The Institute Prize
Contests," Eighteenth-Century Studies 19 (1985-1986), 153-179; "The Institute
Historians: Enlightenment and Conservatism," Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of
the Western Society for French History 13 (1986), 122-130; "Individual Rights and
Social Control: Political Science in the French Institute," Journal of the History of
Ideas 48 (1987), 411-430; "Human Geography in the French Institute," The Journal of
the History of the Behavioral Sciences 23 (1987),332-340; "The Public Relations of the
Second Class of the Institute in the Revolutionary Era, 1795-1803," Proceedings of the
Annual Meeting of the Western Society for French History 16 (1989), 212-222;
"'Analysis of Sensations and Ideas' in the French National Institute (1795-1803),"
Canadian Journal of History 26 (1991), 393-413; and Minerva's Message: Stabilizing
the French Revolution (Montreal: McGill-Queen's Press, forthcoming).
14. See Baker, Condorcet, especially pp. 302, 371-372 and 388-390. Simon, in Une
Academie sous Ie Directoire, stresses that the establishment of a Classe des sciences
morales et politiques had been a deeply cherished ideal of Mirabeau and Talleyrand as
well as Condorcet.
IS. Diverse treatments of this theme can be found in Pierre Ansart, La Sociologie de Saint-
Simon (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1970); Robert Carlisle, The Proffered
Crown: Saint-Simonian ism and the Doctrine of Hope (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1987); Henri Gouhier, La Jeunesse d'Auguste Comte et la formation
du positivisme, 3 vols (Paris: Vrin, 1933-1941); Frank Manuel, The Prophets of Paris
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962); W. Jay Reedy, "The Historical
70 Robert Wokler
Imaginary of Social Science in Post Revolutionary France: Bonald, Saint-Simon,

Comte," History of the Human Sciences 7 (1994), 1-26; Steven Seidman, Liberalism
and the Origins of European Social Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983); and Robert
Spaemann, Der Ursprung der Soziologie aus dem Geist der Restauration (Munchen:
Kosel, 1959).
16. Pope, An Essay on Man, Epistle III, lines 303-304. Much of what comprises the
second section of this essay, as well as some material from the fifth section, is
developed from my "Saint-Simon and the passage from political to social science." See
also Baker, "Closing the French Revolution: Saint-Simon and Comte," in eds. Furet
and Mona Ozouf, The Transformation of Political Culture, forming vol. 3 of eds. Furet
et aI., The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political Culture, 1789-1848
(Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1987-1989), pp. 323-339.
17. See the conclusion to Skinner's Foundations of Modern Political Thought (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1978), ii. 349-358, and his essay on "The State," in eds.
Terence Ball, James Farr and Russell Hanson, Political Innovation and Conceptual
Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 90-131.
18. See the summary of Foucault's lectures on "Securite, territoire et population", offered
at the College de France in 1977-1978, in his Resume des cours. 1970-1982 (Paris:
lulliard, 1989), pp. 99-106. His treatment of the subject first appeared in print in an
Italian translation in the journal Aut... aut in 1978, and then in English as
"Governmentality," in ideology and Consciousness 6 (1979), 5-21; this essay is
reprinted in eds. Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon and Peter Miller The Foucault
Effect: Studies in Governmentality (London: Harvester, 1991), pp. 87-104.
19. In a sense, the establishment of the nation-state, which I here trace to the French
Revolution, may be said to superimpose a modern framework of the exercise of
sovereign power upon certain ancient and medieval conceptions of national and
communal identity in the rei public(£ status of citizens joined together by a common
purpose. Such control over persons as was exercised by the increasingly monolithic
states of early modern Europe did not supersede their control over territories but
reinforced it, while the genuinely modern nation-state came apparently to embrace the
language of status twice over, in the personification of the body politic as a whole and
in the ascription of a corporate personality to all its true members.
20. For comparisons of modern republicanism in eighteenth-century America and France,
see especially R. R. Palmer, The Age of the Democratic Revolution: A Political History
of Europe and America, 1760-1800, 2 vols (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1959-1964), and Patrice Higonnet, Sister Republics: The Origins of French and
American Republicanism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988).
21. By a vote of 491 to 90.
22. See Hegel, Ober die englische Reformbill, first published in the Allgemeine preuj3ische
Staatzeitung, in his Politischen Schriften. Nachwort von Jurgen Habermas (Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp, 1966), p. 310. This text is included in an English translation, by T. M.
Knox, of Hegel's Political Writings, ed. Z. A. Pelczynski (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1964), where the passage about Sieyes figures on p. 322. It must be noted that Hegel
here refers, not to Sieyes' role in establishing the National Assembly in 1789, but to his
authorship of the constitution of the year VIII, which he drafted as provisional consul
a decade later, following the bloodless coup d'etat of the eighteenth Brumaire of
Napoleon Bonaparte that marked the transition of France's revolutionary government
from the Directoire to the Consulat. As First Consul, Bonaparte altered Sieyes' scheme
to suit his own advantage and ambition.

23. See Hegel, Phanomenologie des Geistes, eds. Wolfgang Bonsiepen and Reinhard
Heede, in Hegel's Gesammelte Werke, published by the Rheinisch-Westfiilischen
Akademie der Wissenschaten (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1968-), vol. IX, p. 315, lines
14-15 and 27-28. In the English translation by A.V. Miller of Hegel's Phenomenology
of Spirit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), see §§ 584 and 585, pp. 356-357.
24. See Hegel, Phanomenologie des Geistes, pp. 317-318, lines 33-40 and 1-2, and p. 319,
lines 4-11; Phenomenology of Spirit, §§ 585 and 588, pp. 357 and 358-359.
25. See William Sewell, Jr, "Le citoyenlla citoyenne: Activity, Passivity, and the
Revolutionary Concept of Citizenship," in The Political Culture of the French
Revolution, forming vol. 2 of The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern
Political Culture, pp. 105-123. In Sieyes' philosophy, active citizens were, by and large,
stakeholders or taxpayers, whereas women, children, domestic servants and foreigners
were deemed to be passive citizens.
26. See Hegel, Phanomenologie des Geistes, p. 320, lines 9-13; Phenomenology of Spirit, §
590, p. 360. Hegel's text reads as follows: "Das einzige Werk und That der allgemeinen
Freyheit ist daher der Tod, und zwar ein Tot, der keinen innern Umfang und
Erfiillung hat, denn was negirt wird, ist der unerfiillte Punkt des absolutfreyen Selbsts;
er ist also der kalteste, platteste Tod, ohne mehr Bedeutung, als das Durchhauen eines
Kohlhaupts oder ein Schluck Wassers."
27. See especially Gueniffey, "Les assemblees et la representation," in ed. Colin Lucas,
The Political Culture of the French Revolution, pp. 233-257; Gueniffey, Le Nombre et
la raison (Paris: Editions de l'ecole des hautes etudes en sciences sociales, 1993); and
Jaume, Le Discours jacobin et la democratie (Paris: Fayard, 1989). Pierre
Rosanvallon's Le Sacre du citoyen (Paris: Gallimard, 1992), in large measure devoted
to the theory and practice of citizenship in the course of the French Revolution, traces
the progressive establishment of universal suffrage in France since 1789.
28. See, in particular, Bastid, Sieyes et sa pensee (Paris: Hachette, 1939); Forsyth, Reason
and Revolution: The Political Thought of the Abbe Sieyes (Leicester: Leicester
University Press, 1987); Pasquino, "Emmanuel Sieyes, Benjamin Constant et Ie
'Gouvernement des Modernes,'" Revue fran~aise de science politique 37 (1987),
214-228; Bredin, Sieyes: La cM de la Revolution fran~aise (Paris: Editions de Fallois,
1988); Baker, "Sieyes," in eds. Furet and Ozouf, Dictionnaire critique de la Revolution
fran~aise (Paris: Fiammarion, 1988), pp. 334-345, and Inventing the French Revolution
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Antoine de Baecque, Le Corps de
l'histoire: Metaphores et politique (1770-1800) (Paris: Calmann-Uvy, 1993); William
H. Sewell, Jr., A Rhetoric of Bourgeois Revolution: The Abbe Sieyes and "What is the
Third Estate?" (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994); and Istvan Hont, "The
Permanent Crisis of a Divided Mankind: 'Contemporary Crisis of the Nation State' in
Historical Perspective," in Political Studies (1994), special issue on Contemporary
Crisis of the Nation State?, ed. John Dunn, pp. 166-231.
29. In the version of his lectures, dating from 1819-1820, that were to form his Grundlinien
der Philosophie des Rechts, Hegel put forward, in starker terms than in any other
passage of his writings, a critique of what he took to be Rousseau's individualist
notion of the will in so far as it distorted the very foundations of the state. As
transcribed by an anonymous student, the passage, which corresponds to § 258 of the
standard edition of this work, reads as follows: "Rousseau hat in neuern Zeiten die
soeben erwahnte Ansicht vorzuglich durchgefiihrt...Rousseau hat das grosse Verdienst
72 Robert Wokler
gehabt, dass, indem er den Willen der Einzelnen zum Prinzip des Staats gemacht, hat,
er damit einen Gedanken, und zwar den Gedanken des Willens, zum Prinzip gemacht
hat ... Rousseau hat so tiberhaupt den Grund gelegt, dass tiber den Staat gedacht
worden ist. .. Das Schiefe an Rousseaus Theorie ist, dass er nicht den Willen als solchen
als Grundlage des Staats gefasst hat, sondern den Willen als einzelnen in seiner
Punktualisierung ... Rousseau hat also einerseits dem wahrhaften Denken tiber den
Staat den Impuls gegeben, auf der andern Seite hat er aber die Verwirrung
hereingefiihrt, dass die Einzelne als dass Erste betrachtet Wurde und nicht das
Allgemeine" (Hegel, Philosophie des Rechts. Die Vorlesung von 181911820 in einer
Nachschrift, ed. Dieter Henrich (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1983), pp. 212-213).
"Consequently," continues the more familiar format of 1821 in its most recent
translation by H. B. Nisbet, "when these abstractions were invested with power, they
afforded the tremendous spectacle, for the first time we know of in human history, of
the overthrow of all existing and given conditions within an actual major state and the
revision of its constitution from first principles ... These ... abstractions divorced from
the Idea ... turned the attempt into the most terrible and drastic event." According to
Hegel, therefore, the French Revolution was fundamentally shaped from "false
theories ... which originated largely with Rousseau" and was drawn above all from the
"attempts to put these theories into practice" (Hegel, Elements oj the Philosophy oj
Right ed. Allen Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 277, 279).
For detailed accounts of Hegel's reading of Rousseau, see especially eds. Hans
Friedrich Fulda and Rolf-Peter Horstmann, Rousseau, die Revolution und der junge
Hegel (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1991), Pierre Methais, "Contrat et volonte generale
selon Hegel et Rousseau," in ed. Jacques d'Hondt, Hegel et Ie siecle des lumieres
(Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1974), and my "Hegel's Rousseau: The
general will and civil society," in ed. Sven-Eric Liedman, 'Deutscher Idealismus,'
Arachne (1993), viii. 7-45. On Hegel's more general interpretation of the conceptual
origins of the French Revolution, see also Luc Ferry, "Hegel," in eds. Furet and
Ozouf, Dictionnaire historique de la Revolution Jranraise, pp. 974-977; Furet, Marx et
la Revolution franraise (Paris: Flammarion, 1986), pp. 18-25 and 78-84; Lewis
Hinchman, Hegel's Critique oj the Enlightenment (Gainesville: University of Florida
Press, 1984), pp. 141-154, Joachim Ritter, Hegel und die Jranzosische Revolution
(Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1965); and my "Contextualizing Hegel's Phenomenology of the
French Revolution and the Terror," (Political Theory, forthcoming).
30. See Koselleck, Kritik und Krise, especially pp. 133-142. "Ohne es zu ahnen, hat Rous-
seau die permanente Revolution auf der Suche nach dem wahren Staat enfesselt," he
remarks (p. 136). "Bei Rousseau wird es offenbar, daB das Geheimnis der AufkHirung,
seine Macht zu verschleiern, zum Prinzip des Politischen geworden ist" (p. 138).
31. See Burke, Letter to a Member oj the National Assembly, in ed. Paul Langford, The
Writings and Speeches oj Edmund Burke, vol. VIII, L. G. Mitchell, The French
Revolution: 1790-1794, p. 314.
32. On Hegel's interpretation of civil society and its distinction from the state, see
especially ed. Zbigniew Pelczynski, The State and Civil Society: Studies in Hegel's
Political Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984); Manfred Riedel,
Burgerliche Gesellscha{t und Staat bei Hegel (Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1970); and
Norbert Waszek, The Scottish Enlightenment and Hegel's Account oj "Civil Society"
(Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1988).
33. See especially the Contrat social, III.xiv and xv, and the Gouvernement de Pologne,
sect. VI ("Moyens de maintenir la constitution"), in Rousseau's Oeuvres completes,

eds. Bernard Gagnebin, Marcel Raymond et al. (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliotheque de la
Pleiade, 1959-1995), vol. 3, pp. 427-431 and 957-989.
34. By which Rousseau of course meant just the citizenry, or the whole of the electorate
eligible for public office. As opposed to sovereignty, which must be exercised directly
by the people and from which no one could be excluded, government, he argued, was
inescapably representative and therefore could never be democratic.
35. With respect to Sieyes' debt to the Hobbesian theory of representation, see especially
Forsyth, "Thomas Hobbes and the constituent power of the people," Political Studies
29 (1981), 191-203. In his own notable treatment of Sieyes' conception of the
nation-state, Hont concludes that "as a political definition of the location of
sovereignty, Hobbes's "state" and Sieyes' "nation" are identical. Sieyes' "nation" is
Hobbes's "Leviathan". Both are powerful interpretations, in a sharply converging
manner, of the modern popular civitas' ("The Permanent Crisis of a Divided
Mankind," p. 203). With respect to the contrast between Sieyes' and Rousseau's
conceptions of representation, but also the apparent convergence of their ideas of the
general will and indivisible sovereignty, see Bronislaw Baczko, "Le contrat social des
Franyais: Sieyes et Rousseau," in ed. Baker, The Political Culture of the Old Regime,
comprising vol. 1 of The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political
Culture, pp. 493-513.
36. Rousseau, Emile, livre III, Oeuvres completes, vol. 4, p. 468.
37. Rousseau, Lettres de la montagne, septieme lettre, ibid., vol. 3, p. 815.
38. This intellectual debt, often noticed by Sieyes' interpreters, is specially highlighted with
reference to manuscript sources by Pasquino in his "Sieyes, Constant et Ie 'Gouverne-
ment des Modernes.'" With respect to his writings on economic affairs, however,
most of which were completed before his attention was drawn to the work of Smith,
Sieyes was principally concerned with the doctrines of the physiocrats, which he
largely combated. Sewell in his Rhetoric of Bourgeois Revolution, emphasizes Sieyes'
claim that he had conceived his own theory of the division of labor, which had gone
further than that of Smith, prior to the publication of The Wealth of Nations.
39. For Habermas' conception of the public sphere, see above all his Strukturwandel del'
Offentlichkeit (Neuwied: Hermann Luchterhand, 1962), of which an English
translation, mainly by Thomas Berger, is available under the title, The Structural
Transformation of the Public Sphere (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989). For a Straussian
censure of modernity, with a Rousseauist flavour, see Pierre Manent, Naissance de la
politique moderne (Paris: Payot, 1977). In Politics and Vision (New York: Little, Brown
& Co, 1960), Wolin frames his critique of modern political thought in large measure
around conflicting images of community and organization. With respect to notions of
a public sphere in France in the age of Enlightenment and the Revolution, see
especially Baker, "Defining the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century France:
Variations on a Theme by Habermas," in ed. Craig Calhoun, Habermas and the Public
Sphere (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), pp. 181-211; Dena Goodman, "Public
Sphere and Private Life: Toward a Synthesis of Current Historiographical Approaches
to the Old Regime," History and Theory 31 (1992), 1-20; and the contributors to the
forum, "The Public Sphere in the Eighteenth Century," French Historical Studies 17
(1992), 882-956. Most of these authors also address the problem of the place of
women within the public sphere of the period, on which Goodman's line of argument,
in particular, contrasts with that pursued by Joan Landes, in Women and the Public
74 Robert Wokler
Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988).
40. The abruptness and decisiveness of the break in French history which was occasioned
by the establishment of the National Assembly was of course much discussed by both
participants and contemporary observers, of whom, among the Revolution's critics,
Burke was perhaps foremost in his conviction that no more awful drama had ever
been enacted so abruptly upon the stage of human history. Other commentators took
a more sanguine view of such upheavals in France. "How much the greatest event it is
that ever happened in the world," exclaimed Charles James Fox, in applauding the fall
of the Bastille (see Fox, Memorials and Correspondence ed. Lord John Russell, 4 vols
(London: Richard Bentley, 1853-1857), vol. 2, p. 361). As Tocqueville was later to
remark, "Comme [Ia Revolution fran«aise] avait I'air de tendre a la regeneration du
genre humain plus encore qu'a la reforme de la France, elle a allume une passion que,
jusque-Ia, les revolutions politiques les plus violentes n'avaient jamais pu produire"
(see L'Ancien regime et la revolution, I. vol. 3 in Tocqueville's Oeuvres completes, ed.
J. P. Mayer (Paris: Gallimard, 1951-), vol. 2, p. 89). The French Revolutionaries'
determination to embark upon a new course of history, unencumbered by the past, is
well illustrated by Lynn Hunt in her Politics, Culture and Class in the French
Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), for instance. But I have in
mind less the innovative character of that break than the leading Revolutionaries'
conceptual disengagement even from Enlightenment programmes of reform, which
were themselves put forward in order to transform a political system deemed to be in
comprehensive need of change.
41. See, for instance, Robert Hahn, Kant's Newtonian Revolution in Philosophy
(Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988); Christopher Norris, The Truth
about Postmodernism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993); Robert Pippin, Modernism as a
Philosophical Problem (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991); and John Rundell, The Origins of
Modern Social Theory from Kant to Hegel to Marx (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987).
42. In his Tanner Lectures on Human Values delivered at Stanford University in 1979,
Foucault maintained that "since Kant, the role of philosophy has been to prevent
reason from going beyond the limits of what is given in experience" and "to keep
watch over the excessive powers of political rationality." Yet his occasional, and
limited, defence of Kant's critical philosophy never inspired him to interpret the
Enlightenment as a whole in such sympathetic terms, since, as he remarks in the same
lectures, it was "one of the Enlightenment's tasks ... to multiply reason's political
powers" (see ed. Lawrence Kritzman, Michel Foucault: Politics, Philosophy, Culture
(London: Routledge, 1988, p. 58). Foucault addressed the philosophy of Kant on
several occasions after translating and editing Kant's Anthropologie in pragmatischer
Hinsicht as the these comptementaire he submitted for his doctorate in 1960, and later,
in Les Mots et les choses, locating Kant's work at the nexus of the period which he
identified as marking the advent of les sciences humaines. See especially his lecture
delivered to the Societe jran,aise de philosophie in 1978, published as "Qu'est ce que la
critique?," cited in note 6 above; a second lecture he delivered at the College de France
in 1983, of which a revised fragment was published as "Un cours inedit," Magazine
litteraire (1984), ccvii. 35-39, with a subsequent translation by Colin Gordon, under
the title "Kant on Enlightenment and Revolution," Economy and Society (1986), xv.
88-96; and the essay he wrote not long before his death, first published in an English
translation by Catherine Porter, as "What is Enlightenment?," in ed. Paul Rabinow,
The Foucault Reader, pp. 32-50. For notable accounts of Foucault's changing
perceptions of Kant and the Enlightenment, see Norris, "Foucault on Kant," in The
Truth about Postmodernism, pp. 29-99; James Schmidt and Thomas Wartenberg,
"Foucault's Enlightenment: Critique, Revolution and the Fashion of the Self," in ed.
Michael Kelly, Critique and Power: Recasting the FoucaultlHabermas Debate
(Cambrige, MA: MIT Press, 1994), pp. 283-314, and Maurizio Passerin d'Entreves,
"Critique and Enlightenment: Michel Foucault on 'Was ist Aujklarung?, " forthcoming
in eds. Norman Geras and Robert Wokler, The Enlightenment and Modernity.
43. I have commented at greater length on this distinction between democracy and
representation, and on the part it has played in the development of twentieth-century
political science, in "Democracy's mythical ordeals: the Procrustean and Promethean
paths to popular self-rule," in eds. Geraint Parry and Michael Moran, Democracy and
Democratization (London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 23-46. With respect to ideas of
representation in eighteenth-century French political thought and their articulation in
the course of the Revolution in particular, see especially Baker, "Representation," in
The Political Culture of the Old Regime, pp. 469-492, and Jean Roe1s, Le Concept de
representation politique au dix-huitieme siecle franfais (Louvain: Editions N auwelaerts,
1969). For more comprehensive discussions of notions of representation in modern
political thought, see especially Jaume, Hobbes et l'etat representatiJ moderne (Paris:
Presses Universitaires de France, 1986), and Hannah Pitkin, The Concept of
Representation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967). Among the most
notable contributions to the vast literature on modern theories of democracy, see
David Held, Models of Democracy (Oxford: Polity Press, 1987); Parry, Political Elites
(London: Allen and Unwin, 1969); and John Plamenatz, Democracy and Illusion
(London: Longmans, 1973).
44. See Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, first published in 1951, 2nd ed. (London:
Allen and Unwin, 1958), pp. 230-231. Arendt here comments on what she terms "the
secret conflict between state and nation," arising with the very birth of the nation-state
on account of its conjunction of the rights of man with the demand for national
sovereignty. Her reflections on this subject have occasioned extensive commentary.
See, for instance, Julia Kristeva, Etrangers a nous-memes (Paris: Fayard, 1988), pp.
220-229, and Hont, "The Permanent Crisis of a Divided Mankind," pp. 206-209.
45. The phrasing of the third article of the declaration of the rights of man and of the
citizen, which begins, "Le principe de toute souverainete reside essentiellement dans la
Nation," is owed principally to Lafayette. For the fullest histories of the sources and
drafting of the whole document, and of the deliberations leading to its endorsement by
the Assemblee nationale on 26 August 1789, see Stephane Rials' commentary on La
Declaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen (Paris: Hachette, 1988), and Marcel
Gauchet's La Revolution des droits de l'homme (Paris: Gallimard, 1989). In stressing
that this identification of the rights of man with the rights of the citizen exposed to
injustice all persons who were not duly accredited citizens of nation-states, I do not
ignore the exclusion of women from citizenship which the declaration of the rights of
man came to legitimize as well. In the modern world, women have in a sense been
exposed to a double peril, in so far as they have been deemed unfit for citizenship even
when meeting various states' criteria for nationality. But since the French Revolution,
they have at least progressively gained a civic identity in fundamental respects
undifferentiated from that of men, whereas whole peoples which do not constitute
nation-states have, in living and indeed recent memory, faced mass extermination and
today still risk extinction in diverse ways. On the subject of the French Revolution and
76 Robert Wokler
the rights of women, see especially Landes, Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of
the French Revolution, and eds. Sara Melzer and Leslie Rabine, Rebel Daughters:
Women and the French Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).
46. I have developed these remarks about Kant from two earlier essays: "Hegel versus
Kant: From the Enlightenment Project to Post-Modernity," The Australasian Society
for the History of Philosophy Yearbook, vol. 2 (1994), pp. 85-99, and "The
Enlightenment Project and its Critics," Poznan Studies (1997), in press.
47. This essay bears only scant resemblance to my original talk on the transformation of
political into social science at the end of the age of Enlightenment which I presented at
the second colloquium on "The Great Transition" held at the Swedish Collegium for
Advanced Study in the Social Sciences at Uppsala on 11-13 June 1993. I am
particularly grateful to Johan Heilbron and Bjorn Wittrock for their forbearance in
awaiting my composition and completion of a text I scarcely had in mind when I first
accepted their invitation to speak on a different subject altogether. I am also indebted
to them, as well as to Istvan Hont, Joan Landes, Bruce Mazlish, Geraint Parry,
Maurizio Passerin d'Entreves, John Pickstone, Michael Sonenscher and Martin
Staum, either for drawing a number of pertinent sources to my attention or for
proposing judicious corrections which, however, I have not in every instance managed
to include. My greatest debt is to the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in the
Social Sciences at Uppsala, for facilitating my research and writing, in the course of a
fellowship during the 1995-1996 academic year. I have drawn upon some passages
from my sections on "Manufacturing the Nation-State" and "The Hegelian
Misrepresentation of Rousseau" in subsequently drafting two other essays: 'The
French Revolutionary Roots of Political Modernity in Hegel's Philosophy, or the
Enlightenment at Dusk," Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain (1997), xxxv.
71-89, and "Contextualizing Hegel's Phenomenology of the French Revolution and
the Terror" (see note 29 above).
FRENCH MORALISTS AND THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF THE
MODERN ERA: ON THE GENESIS OF THE NOTIONS OF
'INTEREST' AND 'COMMERCIAL SOCIETY'
JORAN REILBRON
Centre Lillois d'Etudes et
de Recherches Sociologiques et Economiques
Quoiqu'il soit vrai de dire que les hommes n'agissent jamais sans
interet, on ne doit pas croire pour cela que tout soit corrumpu.
Nicolas d'Ailly, Pensees diverses
The notion of 'interest' and its terminological derivatives have gained

intellectual prominence in early modern Europe in two ways. First, by
suggesting a more realistic conceptualization of human nature and
human action; and second, by providing a conceptual basis for new
forms of political, social and economic theory. The term interest was
initially used for describing a particular type of behavior. Interest-driven
acts were opposed to more virtuous deeds or drives, and the use of the
word was embedded in a sceptical view of human affairs. Gradually,
however, the term received both a more general and a more positive
meaning. Despite its amoral connotations, interests came to be seen as a
realistic basis for politics and as a more stable and reliable motive than
the passions. The notion of interest thus provided an anthropological
foundation upon which various political and social theories could be
constructed.
The critical question for all of these theories was whether a well
ordered and prosperous society was possible while consisting mainly of
self-interested individuals. One of the answers to this question was that
an orderly community was conceivable, precisely by relying on the
rational uses of the natural inclination to self-interest. The elaboration of
this idea led to the notion of market society or "commercial" society,
aptly summarized by Mandeville at the beginning of the eighteenth
century. "Public benefits" were in fact the result of "private vices."
77
Modernity, 77-106.
78 lahan Heilbron
Society was thus portrayed as an "aggregation of self-interested

individuals bound to one another neither by their shared civic commit-
ments nor their moral rectitude, but, paradoxically, by the tenuous
bonds of envy, competition and exploitation."l
These disenchanted notions of self-interest and commercial society
have been key-concepts in the social sciences ever since. Interest is a term
situated at the intersection of individual action and social structure, and
in the current division of academic labour, at the cross-roads of
psychology, social science and moral and political philosophy. Its central
role in current debates is well illustrated by the fact that the very notion
of "(self-)interest" marks the dividing line between those approaches
which have borrowed their outlook primarily from neo-classical
economics, and those which have resisted the idea that modern societies
rest on rationally calculating individuals trying to maximize their gains. 2
Since this notion of self-interest is widely associated with markets and
economic liberalism, its intellectual history has been reconstructed along
the same lines. Milton Myers, for example, has related the idea of self-
interest to the rise of commerce and capitalism, and to the liberal views
which are supposed to have accompanied these developments. 3 His-
torically, however, such a view is difficult to sustain. In English eco-
nomic pamphlets it was not until the 1690s that explicit assertions were
made concerning the dependable effects of self-interest. Before then such
a conception was not entirely absent, but it had remained largely
implicit. 4
Yet it was well before the 1690s that the notion of interest obtained a
central position. As Albert Hirschman and Hans-Jiirgen Fuchs have
demonstrated, interest had become a crucial term in political theory and
moral philosophy well before it gained its definitive place in economic
discourse. s What is less clear from their work is how this actually came
about. Can a relatively clear pattern be established in the development of
the concept? In this chapter, I propose such a general outline of the
genesis of the notion of interest, and in particular, of the different
trajectories that may be distinguished in its conceptual development. I
then focus on one of these trajectories and argue that seventeenth
century French moralists have played a pivotal role, both in the
generalization of the notion of interest and in the construction of a
theoretical model of commercial society. I also raise some sociological
questions as to how this development might be interpreted and ex-
plained. Why was it, for example, that a French theologian, Pierre
Nicole, actually produced the first coherent theoretical justification of a
French Moralists and the Anthropology of the Modern Era 79
commercial society; a justification, furthermore, that through the

writings of Domat, Boisguilbert, Bayle, Mandeville and others even-
tually became a core element of both liberalism and social science?
The Genesis of Interest: Three Trajectories
The word interest is a relational term, derived form the latin inter esse,
which originally referred to procedures for compensation in Roman
law. 6 The expression "id quod interest" could be applied to a variety of
claims in this respect. The specific meaning of taking rent on loans was
directly related to the legal notion of compensation. "Interest" in this
restricted, economic sense came into use in many European languages
during the fifteenth century, commonly as a euphemism for usury. The
more general, anthropological meaning of the term emerged somewhat
later, probably not before the first decades of the sixteenth century.
Interest then increasingly refers to a general notion of "advantage" and
to the human propensity for seeking benefits.
This general notion was elaborated between approximately 1500 and
1700 in three, relatively distinct intellectual traditions: political theory,
natural jurisprudence and moral philosophy. In the political literature,
interest came to be considered as the central principle for realistic
conduct in statecraft and court politics. In modern natural law, interest
was part of a foundational argument which served to construct new
models of politics and society. And in moral philosophy the term came
into use as an equivalent for self-love, which, in the Augustinian theo-
logy associated with it, referred to the psychological constitution of
human beings after the Fall.
In early modern political theory, the word interest first appears in the
work of Francesco Guicciardini. With Machiavelli, the Florentine
aristocrat Guicciardini was arguably the most perceptive political
theorist of Renaissance Italy. Their work, written during the time when
the free city-republics were superseded by principalities and tyrannies,
marks the transition from the civic philosophy of politics to the theory of
politics as reason of state. 7 The most crucial terms of this new political
language were "interest" and "reason of state," and both expressions
were supplied by Guicciardini.
In the observations and reflections collected in his Ricordi (1512/30),
Guicciardini frequently notes that "self-interest [interesse proprio]
prevails in nearly all human beings." (B 106) Indeed, "". men's actions
80 lohan Heilbron
are more determined by their self-interest or by their evil character than

by considerations of reason, of your merits, or of their obligations to
you." (C 196) This sceptical outlook applies in particular to successful
leaders and others who do well in life: "they always have their own
interest in mind and measure all their actions accordingly." (C 218) Since
such observations were combined with practical advice, Guicciardini
concludes the previously quoted maxim with the following warning:
"But it is a great error not to know where true interest lies; that is, to
think it always resides in some pecuniary advantage rather than in
honor, in knowing how to keep a reputation, and in a good name."
(C 218)8
Guicciardini's work not only offers the first systematic use of a general
notion of interest, it also contains its principal variations: "self' -interest,
"particular" interest and "true" interest. The use of this vocabulary was
not confined to the notes collected in his Ricordi, which were intended
for the members of his family; he also used it in historical studies, such
as his pionering History of Itaiy.9 Interest to Guicciardini was the only
real motive for people's actions. Political power, therefore, could not be
wielded "according to the dictates of good conscience." (C 48) Political
considerations had to be separated from morals, law and religion, and
politics tended to become an instrumental "art of the state."
This conception was developed more fully in the reason-of-state-
literature, which florished in Europe in the decades around 1600.10 In
one of the main treatises, Giovanni Botero's Della Ragion di Stato
(1589), the author defines reason of state as the knowledge of the proper
means to establish, maintain and enlarge a state. Reason of state to
Botero was "reason of interest," and interest therefore represented the
supreme rule of conduct for princes and statesmen. II To be guided by
state interest meant that religious or constitutional matters were seen as
merely instrumental issues. For the ruler, interest was the only ap-
propriate motive of action, and even bonds of friendship and personal
affinity were thought of as less trustworthy. Interest was state interest,
defined in opposition to both the interests of other states and to the
particular preferences and passions of the ruler. Such "disorderly
appetites" had to be banned from political conduct. Control over people
demanded self-control. Self-control, in turn, needed to be combined with
insight into the relevant constellation of interests and a conscious use of
this insight in political decision making. Interest thus understood, Botero
argued, appeases everyone: ['interesse acqueta tutti. I2
Before the close of the sixteenth century interest had thus become one
of the central concepts in political theory. The term originated in a

sceptical anthropology in which interests were the principal motive of
human behavior and the only realistic rule of political conduct. From an
essentially critical concept, directed against both clerical and humanist
notions of virtue, it had received a more positive meaning. It seemed to
offer a realistic anthropology and a more stable basis for political action
than the popular views in which humans were depicted as unpredictable
victims of their passions. 13 Guicciardini's work was the first in which this
new notion had appeared, and its conceptual development culminated,
in a certain sense, in the Duke of Rohan's influential work De l'Interest
des Princes et Etats de la Chrestiente (1638). More than a century after
Guicciardini, and following mainly Italian and Spanish authors, Rohan
summarized the essential idea in the introductory phrases of his book
"Les Princes commandent aux peuples, et I'interet commande aux Princes. La
connaissance de eet interet est d'autant plus releve par-dessus celle des actions des
Princes qu'eux-memes Ie sont par-dessus les peuples. Le Prince se peut tromper,
son conseil peut etre corrumpu; mais I'interet seul ne peut jamais manquer; selon
qu'il est bien ou mal entendu, il fait vivre ou mourir les Etats."14
It was through the work of Rohan that the notion of interest became
firmly established in the political vocabulary in England. And it was
from the political scene that the term was then transferred to the market
place and came to be applied to men's private behaviour. 15 The political
and then economic uses of the term subsequently gave rise to many of
the critical questions that were taken up in English moral philosophy
from Shaftesbury to Smith.
Closely linked to the reason-of-state-literature were the guides to
court politics, in which a similar stance prevailed: self-interest was taken
to be the general principle of human behavior, and self-control and a
calculating attitude were advised as the only effective mode of behavior.
This behavioral "prudence," another term frequently used in the reason-
of-state-literature, implied the knowledge of keeping secrets and the art
of mastering simulation and dissimulation. The notoriously un-
scrupulous Oraculo manual (1647) of the Spanish Jesuit Baltasar Gracian
was one of the more eloquent examples of this literature.
Self-interest in political theory was thus a factual as well as a nor-
mative notion. It was factual in the sense that interests were perceived as
crucial in a realistic view of human affairs. But it was also a normative
notion in the sense that interests should be observed in a rational and
calculating way. "Calculating" self-interest then was not so much a
82 lohan Heilbron
descriptive category as a prescriptive one. Although political theorists

did not portray human beings as rational decision makers, they did
stress the comparative advantages of rational calculation. The prudential
weighing of costs and benefits was a behavioral norm, rather than a
form of motivational reductionism. As Stephen Holmes has argued, such
reductionism was unattractive to them, among other reasons, 'because it
robs "calculating self-interest" of the specificity it acquires when viewed
against a backdrop of selfless urges and thoughtless acts.'16
Besides the political literature, written by counsellors and diplomats,
natural jurisprudence is the second intellectual genre in which interest
became a core concept. Initiated by Hugo Grotius, modern natural law
is best seen as a response to the consequences of scepticismY The
anthropology of the sceptics had given a seemingly universal role to self-
interest, and in particular, to the desire for self-preservation. Natural law
theorists treated this factual observation as a natural right. On the basis
of the fundamental right to assure one's self-preservation, they built a
system of minimalist morality which was intended to overcome the
relativism of the sceptics.
There were, as Istvan Hont has explained, two varieties of modern
natural law: one that followed Grotius' assumption that humans have
a natural inclination for social life, an appetitus societatis, and the
other which held a darker view of human nature. Assuming that man
was motivated merely by self-love, Thomas Hobbes and Samuel
Pufendorf represented the latter current. Pufendorf elaborated the idea
that human communities arise out of individual needs. Upon this notion
of self-interested need Pufendorf constructed an historical scheme of
societal development, culminating in a model of what Hont calls
commercial sociability.18 Contrary to the uses of the term in political
theory, including Hobbes, Pufendorf thus connected the concept of
interest to a social theory which entailed the possibility a commercial
society.
The same observation holds for the third current in which the notion
of interest gained a central place: the French moralist tradition. Al-
though Montaigne is generally regarded as the founding father, much of
this seventeenth century work was conceived at the intersection of
Jansenist theology and secular moral philosophy. In seventeenth century
France, Jansenism emerged around the monastery of Port-Royal, while
moral philosophy became increasingly tied to salons and aristocratic
gatherings. The writings of La Rochefoucauld, Arnauld, Pascal and
Nicole were all primarily shaped by the tensions between these two
worlds, between the pessimistic Jansenist psychology on the one hand,

and secular, mainly aristocratic moralities on the other.
Jansenism and the French Nobility
Jansenism originated as a religious movement around the convent of

Port-Royal in the beginning of the seventeenth century.19 It was led by
Angelique Arnauld, with Abbe Saint-Cyran, Jean Duvergier de
Hauranne, as its spiritual director. They refused worldly influences and
adhered to a simple and pious life, while opposing the laxist morality of
the Jesuits. This orientation was linked to the Counter-Reformation and
was derived from the Augustinian doctrine of a Louvain theologian,
Jansenius, who was a friend of Saint-Cyran. The different varieties of
Augustinianism all rested on the rigourous opposition between the city
of man and the city of God. According to Augustine, these were
radically separated realms founded on mutually exclusive drives: self-
love and love of God. The theological disputes about grace, free will and
predestination were largely derived from this fundamental dichotomy.
Augustinianism, which became a very important current in seventeenth
century France, stressed the weakness and misery of man, the import-
ance of the Fall and the radical discontinuity between terrestrial life and
divine grace.
As one of the varieties of Augustinianism, Jansenism was not merely a
spiritual or theological movement, it was also perceived as political and
intellectual opposition. 2o Saint-Cyran had been hostile to Richelieu's
regime and was imprisoned for many years. After his death in 1643, the
movement entered a new phase, marked by a series of public disputes.
The first centred around Jansenius' postumously published Augustinus
(1640), which was officially condemned by the Church, but energetically
defended in various publications by the philosopher and theologian
Antoine Arnauld. After the Fronde (1648-1652), the quarrel turned into
a vivid polemic, involving a widening circle of writers, philosophers and
cultivated noblemen and noblewomen. Following the Pope's condemn-
ation of Jansenism in 1653, a prominent protector of Port-Royal, the
marquis de Liancourt, was refused absolution. Arnauld came to his
defense, for which he was subsequently expelled from the Sorbonne. His
exclusion was attacked and ridiculed in Pascal's Lettres provinciales
(1656-1657), which were written deliberately for a worldly audience and
were vividly discussed in many salons. By then, Jansenism had become a
84 lohan Heilbron
forceful intellectual movement, with an importance far beyond religious

and theological matters. The "thousand disputes" between Jesuits and
Jansenists, David Hume noted, are not worthy of the reflections of a
man of sense. But what principly distinguishes them, and merits
attention, is the different "spirit" of their religion:
" ... the jesuits are great friends to superstition, rigid observers of external forms
and ceremonies, and devoted to the authority of the priests, and to tradition. The
jansenists are enthusiasts, and zealous promoters of the passionate devotion, and
of inward life; little influenced by authority; and in a word, but half catholics. "21
The controversies around Jansenism ended provisionally in 1668 with

the "Peace of the Church." Imprisoned leaders were released, Arnauld
came out of hiding and for a while even became a celebrity. Numerous
writings then appeared in print, among them Pascal's Pensees (1670) and
Nicole's series Essais de morale (1671-1678). After a decade, however,
persecutions recommenced, culminating, for example, in the revocation
of the Edict of Nantes in 1685.
Jansenism appealed to two social groups in particular, to members of
the high nobility (such as La Rochefoucauld, Madame de Sable, the
duke of Longueville) and to members of the noblesse de robe and their
decendents (Arnauld, Nicole, Pascal).22 Particularly under Richelieu's
rule and after the Fronde, both groups had lost some of their power and
prestige to the king, the court and the absolutist state. Jansenist themes
and theories offered them a critical view of these developments.
The intellectually most prominent Jansenists were not official spokes-
men of the movement. Arnauld, Pascal, Nicole, all had an intermediary
position between the more orthodox Jansenists and worldly elites.
Central to their work was not so much the necessity to withdraw from a
corrupted world, but the question of how human beings might cope with
a world from which God had retreated. In these concerns "self-love" was
the central anthropological category. Amour-propre was considered the
general and most powerful human drive. But curiously enough, some of
these moralistes actually produced a subtle apologia of this type of
behaviour. Self-love or self-interest (the terms were often used
interchangibly) became the basis for a general theory about the mecha-
nisms of social exchange and the foundations of social order. Self-
interest was not in any way considered to be a noble motive, but under
certain conditions it might have beneficial social consequences and could
even serve as a basis for a secular social order.
This type of reasoning had far reaching consequences. In many
traditional anthropologies the passions had to be tamed from "outside"

and "above." If people were left to themselves, anarchy and destruction
was inevitable, and social order could only be achieved through the strict
enforcement of religious and political duties. But if human beings acted
in accordance with their interests, and if these forms of conduct could
produce orderly social arrangements, it would be possible to conceive of
at least certain sectors as autonomous realms. No longer would it be
imperative to appeal to a single centre of authority and control. Certain
social arrangements might be seen as self-regulating social universes and
certain functions of the state might thus be transferred to human beings
themselves. What was previously defined as a religious or political task
was conceived of as belonging to a domain outside the church and the
state, which could be left to self-regulating mechanisms, merely based on
what was thought to be characteristic of human exchange.
Moral Philosophy and Moralistics
Before considering the contributions of these French moralists in more

detail, it is necessary to say a bit more about their position in the French
intellectual constellation. In seventeenth century France, political theory
gradually declined, whereas moral philosophy and moralistics were on
the rise. Questions about morals and manners became increasingly
popular, and at least for a while, political theory and moral philosophy
tended to diverge.23
Parallel to the establishment of absolutism, French political theory
declined. During the Renaissance, jurists were a leading intellectual
group, including not only Bodin, but also Montaigne, La Boetie and
others. In the course of the seventeenth century, jurists gradually lost this
predominant role. The Parlements were deprived of their political power,
the monarchy was transformed into an absolutist state, and the
conditions for independent work on political and legal matters rapidly
deteriorated. With few exceptions, French jurists in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries restricted their work to the elaboration of existing
forms of law. 24 They did not produce many original political studies, and
for a fairly long time ignored or rejected the theories of natural law,
which rose to prominence in many protestant countries. The fact that all
the initiatives to create an Academy for law and political science failed,
illustrates the fate of French political theory. In absolutist France,
politics and public administration remained a state monopoly, subjected
86 lohan Heilbron
to the immediate control of the official authorities. Contrary to the fields

of literature, the fine arts and the natural sciences, there was no room for
a political Academy. Among the great names of seventeenth century
political thought there are Englishmen (Hobbes, Locke), Dutchmen
(Grotius, Spinoza) and Germans (Althusius, Pufendorf), but very few
Frenchmen.
The contrast with moral philosophy is striking. Morality was a subject
with a proper place in the intellectual field. Morals represented a
legitimate subject for writers as well as for salon conversation.
Traditionally, it belonged to the humanities and was part of the
curriculum of the studia humanitatis. 25 What was referred to as la morale
covered a broad range of questions related to character and temperament,
behaviour and manners, customs and habits. Morals, in other words, was
an intellectual genre concerned with human conduct, its drives and
motives, as well as its immediate social and cultural context. The latter
terms, of course, are of much later date. Human reality in the seventeenth
century was commonly described as political and moral. Politics were
concerned with the official side of life, with laws, rights and duties, and
with individuals as "citizens" or "subjects." Morals generally referred to
the unofficial, to the peculiarities of individuals in non-political settings,
to moeurs et mani£!res as Montesquieu called it, and to considerations
of human nature in general. Moral and political phenomena to-
gether covered just about the whole social world, and before the
expression "social science" was coined, these sciences were - from the
1760s onwards - referred to as the "moral and political sciences."
Morals thus formed an encompassing and rather complex domain.
The aim of the authors known as the moralistes was not so much to
prescribe moral commandments or to develop ethical doctrines. Instead
they carefully observed human conduct and interaction in order to
understand actual behavior. That could be done in a more psychological
sense, and was then primarily concerned with motives, character and
temperament, or in a more sociological fashion by insisting on customs
and manners. But the difference was only a matter of degree, and most
characteristic was that no single author made such a distinction between
"psychological" and "sociological" considerations. It is therefore
somewhat misleading to call the moralist tradition an "individualist"
tradition. 26 It is also not very accurate to suggest that moralists were
concerned with only "private" matters. Their avoidance of immediate
political concerns is indeed typical for the French context, but it does not
follow that they were therefore preoccupied merely with the private
French Moralists and the Anthropology o/the Modern Era 87
sphere. Moralists wrote on all sorts of public and semi-public

phenomena, one of the most common themes being the functioning of
the monde or societe.
Their leading question "Why do people behave as they do?" was not
asked for academic purposes. It was posed in relationship to the question
"What is a sensible way of life?" Montaigne was their favourite example.
He had abandoned Latin to write in French, preferring "essays" to
treatises, and the description he gave of "moral science" is illuminating.
He defined it as "considerations of the nature and circumstances of
different people, and of the customs of different nations."27 Montaigne's
formulation illustrates the link between the "psychological" and
"sociological" aspects; it also points to an attitude of detachment which
is foreign to "moralising" in the common sense meaning of the word.
In the doctrines of the church, human motives were considered
primarily as objects of prohibition; they served to encourage penance
and willingness for sacrifice. In political theory, passions and interests
were seen in a more realistic way; they were not considered as sinful
affections and were accepted as driving forces of human action. Political
theorists from Machiavelli and Guicciardini to Hobbes had argued that
however unworthy ambition and interest might be, it was necessary to
reckon with its importance. This "realist" stance was what most
moralists had in common with these political theorists. 28
Because passions and interests were widely seen as the true motives of
human conduct, they formed the starting point for considerations of life
style and manners. That is why there was a strong interest in these
matters in aristocratic circles. Although learning and scholarship were
often considered "pedantic" and unworthy of the nobility, morals
represented an important exception. Around the salons and the court
new codes of behavior had emerged. Parallel to that development, a
demand had arisen for a new discourse on the nature of human conduct
and the understanding of morals and manners. Court life, as Norbert
Elias has shown, demanded close attention to the behaviour of others. 29
Because of the high level of self-restraint and the rich variety of polite
manners, attention and psychological insight were necessary to
understand the conduct of courtiers. It was not sufficient to know how
to behave. At least intuitively, one also had to know why to behave in a
certain fashion, why, in other words, certain modes of conduct were
more effective than others. That was the reason why in aristocratic
circles one spoke a good deal about the passions that in social inter-
course were so carefully hidden. In salons, passions and temperaments
88 lohan Heilbron
were favourite topics of conversation, and in seventeenth century France

both literary and more reflexive writings prospered as never before.
Book statistics indicate that the enormous growth of publications on
morals in the latter half of the seventeenth century was equalled by no
other genre. 30 Partly because political dispute had to be avoided, morals
became the medium for intellectual and ideological struggles.
Observation and close scrutiny of the behaviour of the people with
whom one interacted, were part of the aristocratic life style. In these
circles, as La Rochefoucauld remarked, it was more important to study
people than to study booksY This special attention to the psychology of
human behavior is indeed present in classical French literature and art.32
Portraits and character sketches became prominent literary genres, and
the depiction of manners and morality a familiar part of literary work. 33
These literary genres owed part of their success to the dissection of
human conduct that was raised to a special art by such moralists as La
Rochefoucauld, Pascal, Nicole and La Bruyere. The common theme of
their work is that human conduct is seldom noble and disinterested. Self-
love and self-interest are the most common and most powerful drives,
even when disinterestedness seemed to rule. From La Rochefoucauld to
Chamfort, French moralists again and again stressed that even the most
sublime acts were motivated by human, all too human drives. For
Nietzsche, this was the reason why he admired the French. Nowhere
else, he wrote, is there an equivalent for that psychological sensitivity
and curiosity, that in France one even finds in the newspapers and the
boulevard theatre. 34
Between Monastery and Salon
Moralists treated human conduct not so much in relationship to duties

and norms, but in terms of motives and effects. 35 The central term used
to describe the motivational structure of human conduct was self-love,
amour-propre. La Rochefoucauld's maxims are still appreciated for the
psychological finesse with which he dissected the manifestations of this
human drive. What appears to be virtuous (courage, friendship, love,
charity) is but a refined expression of interest:
"L'interet parle tautes sartes de langues, et joue toutes sartes de personnages,
meme celui de desinteresse. "36
In La Rochefoucauld's work this idea was formulated in entirely secular

terms. He had borrowed it essentially from Jansenist writers, but

eliminated the theological assumptions (the Fall) as well as its religious
implications. Self-love, in the Jansenist sense, had been the starting point
for the Maxims, but the word gradually became less prominent. While
polishing his text, La Rochefoucauld increasingly deplored its
theological connotations, and as Vivien Thweatt observed, the word
"interest" tends to replace amour-propre as the central theme of the
bookY This secularizing tendency, to avoid religious connotations and
to hide theological sources, has also been observed for other texts by
members of the high nobility. The novel La princesse de Cleves (1678),
for example, written by madame de Lafayette, was equally marked by
Jansenist themes presented in a secular idiom. 38
La Rochefoucauld and madame de Lafayette eventually preferred the
word "interest" to "self-love," probably because they preferred the secular
connotations of the former to the religious implications of the latter. But
this does not mean that they actually held a particular social or political
doctrine. La Rochefoucauld's anthropology merely led to a doctrine of
honm!tete, which for him was a sort of well managed self-love, a self-love
which was respectful of the aristocratic codes of civilized behavior.
La Rochefoucauld and his Jansenist friends were part of the same
social circle. All were visitors to the salon of the marquise de Sable. 39
From 1656 to 1661, in the years following the Fronde, Madame de Sable
lived next to the Port-Royal Monastery. In her salon, Jansenists mingled
with members of the high nobility such as La Rochefoucauld. The
predominance of self-love and its consequences was one of the main
themes in the exchanges between disillusioned nobles and Jansenist
writers. Jansenists demonstrated that because even the most noble
human acts were manifestations of self-love, there was no reason to
credit human beings with any virtuous or noble motive. In this respect,
they followed the Augustinian psychology in which self-love and love of
God were radically opposed. Since self-love was seldom a rational and
conscious motive, Jansenists stressed the fact that it was a hidden
inclination. And so they looked for pride in humility and detected
presumption in expressions of modesty. This recourse to hidden motives
was, as Benichou notes, their supreme weapon. 40 The Jansenist notion of
self-interest or self-love is therefore much closer to the psychoanalytic
notion of unconscious desires - and more specifically to "narcissism" -
than to the concept of interest in economics. 41 It is also closer to
sociological notions of interest and action.42 For the Jansenists the
pursuit of self-love was not so much a rational endeavor. Self-interest
90 Johan Hei!bron
was associated with love - self-love - which is a different category from

utility. People were frequently the victim of their own desires,
particularly of pride and self-complacency. Madame de Sable wrote that
"L'amour-propre fait que nous nous trompons presque en toutes
choses." Because people rarely calculate rationally, they frequently miss
opportunities they would have otherwise immediately seized. As she
explained:
"L'amour-propre se trompe meme par !'amour-propre, en faisant voir dans ses
interets une si grande indifference pour ceux d'autrui qu'il perd I'avantage qui se
trouve dans Ie commerce de la retribution."43
In aristocratic circles critical of absolutism and the court, Jansenist views

were received with interest. It was a disillusioned nobleman and former
frondeur like La Rochefoucauld who produced a secular version of the
Jansenist themes. 44 The motto he used for the later editions of his
Maxims, "nos vertus ne sont Ie plus souvent, que des vices deguises,"
was an adequate summary of the psychology the Jansenists defended
against both Jesuits and secular groups.
The Maximes (1665) of La Rochefoucauld and related works by
members of the high nobility may be interpreted as part of the cultural
opposition to which opponents of Louis XIV had been condemned after
the Fronde. Members of the nobility who had resisted the establishment
of absolutism could only accept the new order and participate in court
life or continue their struggle with other means. The last alternative was
one of the reasons for the enormous flowering of salon life in the second
half of the seventeenth century. For the nobility, salons could offer both
amusement and opposition: nobles could beguile their boredom in a
worthy manner, which included poking fun at courtiers. 45 The armed
struggle had failed, so they could only express their discontent symboli-
cally, by unmasking the "true" motives of human conduct, or by irony
and satire.
La Rochefoucauld's maxims originated in exchanges with two others:
madame de Sable and Jacques Esprit. In their work the same themes
appear, often in similar formulations. But the maxims of madame de
Sable were essentially about how to behave properly. They lacked a
leading idea and were more in the tradition of the "precieuses." La
Jaussete des vertus humaines (1677/78) by Jacques Esprit, on the other
hand, was more of a Jansenist treatise. Examining human virtues, he
concluded that God was the only source of true virtue.
La Rochefoucauld's maxims were better suited to the success they
would enjoy. They were secular, had a leading idea, and were expressed
in a tone and style proper to salon gatherings: not the slightest sign of
pedantry, elegant, penetrating, and although the first reactions were
critical, they were soon widely read and imitated.
One of the unexpected effects of the radical use of the notion of self-
love or interest was that La Rochefoucauld gradually became slightly
more positive about its role. Precisely because interests were also
responsible for more acceptable forms of behavior, this motive might be
seen as somewhat more trustworthy. La Rochefoucauld noted: "L'interet
que l'on accuse de tous nos crimes merite souvent d'etre loue de nos
bonnes actions."46
But the decisive step in this process of upgrading the notion of interest
was taken by Pierre Nicole. Contrary to La Rochefoucauld, Nicole
connected the Jansenist anthropology with an elaborated social theory.
Although in this view human action rests uniquely on self-interest, and
human virtue was an illusion, Nicole actually demonstrated that the
rational appeal to self-interest might serve as a basis for social order.
Hans-Hirgen Fuchs rightly observed that Nicole's work represents a
"turning-point" in the history of the notion of interest. 47 Yet Nicole's
originality lay not so much in having developed a "positive" notion of
interest. That had already been done by many political writers, ranging
from Guicciardini and Botero to Rohan. Rather, Nicole's originality was
to connect a broad anthropological notion of interest, derived from his
Augustinian anthropology, to a theory of commercial society. Com-
merce, as Nicole and his contemporaries understood it, was very general
term. Trade and other economic transactions were only one particular
type of commerce. Just as the notion of self-interest meant self-love
rather than utility, commerce referred to all forms of exchange or human
traffic. All these exchanges were located in "civil society."
Commercial Society and the Politics of Enlightened Self-Interest
Pierre Nicole (1625-1695) was the son of a prominent member of the

Parlement of Paris. Like Pascal and Arnauld, he had family connections
with Port-Royal, where two women relatives were nuns. Although
originally destined to become a magistrate, he studied theology and
became a very well known theologian and moralist. Nicole had no part
in the more orthodox or extremist Jansenism of Saint-Cyran and Martin
de Barcos. With Arnauld and Pascal, he belonged to the intermediary or
92 lohan Heilbron
"centrist" group, to use Lucien Goldmann's phrase. They occupied a po-

sition between the defenders of a rigorous retreat from worldly affairs
and those worldly groups who supported the Jansenist cause or showed
more than an occasional interest in their outlook.
The tension between these two universes is visible in Pascal's
thoughts. His struggle with conceptual dualities corresponds to a
particular social opposition. In the fragments on the misery and great-
ness of man, for example, one recognizes austere Jansenist arguments on
the one hand and aristocratic notions of grandeur on the other. Pascal
initially refuses to choose. He rejects both, at least in their extreme
version, he acknowledges the relative value of each point of view, and
then experiments with some form of rational coordination:
"II est dangereux de trop faire voir a I'homme combien il est egal aux betes, sans
lui montrer sa grandeur. Et il est encore dangereux de lui trop faire voir sa
grandeur sans sa basesse. II est encore plus dangereux de lui laisser ignorer I'un et
I'autre, mais il est tres avantageux de lui representer I'un et l'autre."48
The same search is expressed more militantly in the following passage, in

which he says about man:
S'il se vante, je I'abaisse
S'il s'abaisse, je Ie vante
Et Ie contredis toujours
lusqu'a ce qu'il comprenne
Qu'il est un montre incomprehensible. 49
In the end, only those who search in anguish are acceptable: "je ne puis
aprouver que ceux qui cherchent en gemissant."
Nicole's writings lack the Pascalian dialectic and its tragic dimension,
but they do move in the same direction. Nicole taught in the petites
ecoles of Port-Royal, wrote authoritative textbooks and assisted Arnauld
with his defense during the 1650s. Besides his pedagogical and theo-
logical works, he was best known for his series Essais de morale
(1671-1678), which were widely read at the time, admired by madame de
Sevigne, and partly translated by Locke for the countess of Shaftesbury.
The essays were written for a worldly and largely aristocratic audience.
At the time of their publication, in the period of the "Peace of the
Church," Nicole was mostly resident in the quarters of madame de
Longueville. He also frequented the Hotel Liancourt, which was the resi-
dence of La Rochefoucauld's uncle. When the "Peace of the Church"
came to an end, Nicole fled with Arnauld to Brussels in 1679. Arnauld
eventually died in exile in 1694, but Nicole almost immediately returned

to France after making his peace with the Archbishop of Paris in 1681.
Nicole's work had the effect of making the Jansenist orientation less
harsh. In a clear and rational style, Nicole somehow sought to adapt the
Jansenist outlook to the demands of a worldly life. In many of his moral
writings he tried to define a modus vivendi for christians who are forced
to live in a corrupted world. Nicole looked for a middle way, an
intermediary route between pious retreat and worldly corruption. In the
words of E. D. James, his constant concern was with the "capacities,
needs and duties of man - fallen yet living in hope of things to come, a
transient inhabitant of an imperfect world yet contriving to make of it
his home."so Henri Bremond therefore called Nicole a "Jansenist despite
himself."Sl To him, Nicole was too much of a rational moralist: "Nicole
est trop raisonnable; ou plutOt Nicole n'est que raisonnable. Tranchons
Ie mot: Nicole n'est pas mystique."s2
Indeed, Nicole was no mystic. His philosophical style is rational, at
times cartesian, whereas his political stance resembles that of Hobbes. s3
One of his most original contributions is a truly astounding argument
about the question of how human society could be well ordered, without
prescribing religious duties or assuming any secular virtues. Nicole
presented this argument in his De l'education d'un prince (1670), and,
most provocatively, in his De fa charite et de l'amour-propre (1675).
In the latter text, Nicole's analysis begins with a startling paradox.
Although "self-love" and "charity" are the two contradictory principles
of human conduct, they seem to have the same "effect." The whole text
is an attempt to explain this curious observation and to formulate its
implications.
The Hobbesian image of a war of all against all, according to Nicole,
is valid only in the very beginning of mankind. Since each human being
is a threat to the other and no one wants to be a victim, people unite
with other people. To affirm their union, laws are established and
punishment is instituted for those who violate the laws. Fear of death,
therefore, is "the first bond of civil society and the first restraint on self-
love."s4 Since "open violence" is now excluded, human beings are forced
to use "artificial" means to satisfy their desires. These artificial means
are all forms of exchange or commerce, and since then human society is
nothing but a more or less refined system of exchange:
"On donne pour obtenir. C'est la source et Ie fondement de tout Ie commerce qui
se pratique entre les hommes, et qui se diversifie en mille manieres; car on ne fait
94 lohan Heilbron
pas seulement trafic de marchandises qu'on donne pour d'autres marchandises, ou

pour de l'argent, mais on fait aussi trafic de travaux, de services, d'assiduites, de
civilites. (oo.) C'est ainsi que, par Ie moyen de ce commerce, tous les besoins de la
vie sont en quelque sorte remplis sans que la charite s'en meJe. De sorte que dans
les Etats OU elle n'a point d'entree, parce que la vraie religion en est bannie, on ne
laisse pas de vivre avec autant de paix, de surete et de commodite, que si l'on etait
dans une republique de saints."55
Nicole's argument was as simple as it is rigorous. Ever since the Fall men
were merely driven by self-love. As a consequence, it was this same self-
love which had led to the establishment of states and a more pacified
order, which had enabled the differentiation and further refinement of
exchange. The result of this process was a "civil society," which - in view
of corrupt human nature - could not be "better organized, more juste,
more honest and more generous." Even if "true religion" was banned, one
had the impression of living in a "republic of saints." Human "traffic"
alone, established and regulated by self-love, had produced this result.
Most "admirable" of all, according to Nicole, was that whereas self-
love was its only basis, it hardly ever appeared as such. Even completely
deprived of charity, one saw its "form and characteristics" everywhere.
From the point of view of God, human society meant corruption, but
from the point of view of human beings themselves, the establishment of
a civil society was the best possible achievement, and "enlightened" self-
love the best principle of social organization:
"oo. pour reformer entierement Ie monde (oo.) et pour rendre les hommes heureux
des cette vie meme, il ne faudrait (oo.) que leur donner a tous un amour-propre
eclaire, qui sut discerner ses vrais interets et y tendre par les voies que la droite
raison lui decouvrirait. "56
Somewhat later the same principle was expressed by another habitue of

the former salon of Madame de Sable, Nicolas d' Ailly: "L'amour-propre
fait tous les vices et toutes les vertus morales, selon qu'il est bien ou mal
entendu."57
Two conclusions followed, one factual, the other pedagogic. Nicole
assumed that since the Fall men were uniquely driven by their own
interests. To grant humans more would be a flattering illusion, an
illusion that itself was the product of self-love. As in La Rochefoucauld's
secular version of this argument, it followed that human history and
human action were invariably based on interests, but also that it was this
very "self-love" which had produced "civility." Human civilization is not
the result of virtuous deeds or noble drives, but the result of organized
exchange among self-interested individuals: "Le fondement de la civilite

humaine ( ... ) n'est qu'une espece de commerce d'amour-propre."s8
This statement, also found in many other texts of the same group, had
implications for religious teaching. If self-love was the general human
drive, the appeal to "enlightened" self-love was the most effective means
to intervene in human affairs:
"L'amour-propre eclaire pourrait corriger tous les defauts exterieurs du monde et
former une societe tres reglee. Qu'il serait utile d'avoir cela dans I'esprit en
instruisant les grands."59
"Enlightened" self-love could thus become the central principle for the
management of social affairs.
Pierre Nicole was the first to have developed this argument in such a
clear and coherent manner, but the idea can be found somewhat earlier
in Pascal's Pensees (1670). While no more than a relatively obscure
statement, Pascal expresses the same idea when he notes:
"On a fonde et tire de la concupiscence des regles admirables de police, de morale
et de justice. "60
And in a more pointed way:

"Grandeur de I'homme dans sa concupiscence meme, d'en avoir su tirer un
reglement admirable, et en avoir fait un tableau de la charite."61
Although Pascal did not develop it, the paradoxical argument is the very
same Nicole elaborated upon in his later essay. Nicole was well
acquainted with Pascal, whose works he edited and published, and might
very well have elaborated it. Since Nicole developed the argument in
such a provocative manner, it did not fail to attract attention. There are
various references to it in the literature of the last decades of the
seventeenth century, for example, in the main work of the Cartesian and
Augustinian philosopher Malebranche. To maintain civil society,
Malebranche notes in his De fa recherche de fa verite (1674-1678), God
had not only commanded charity, he had also united men by "natural"
bonds. These subsist "in the absence of charity." Merely founded on self-
love, these natural bonds commonly tie people together "much more
narrowly" than charity, which, as Malebranche notes, is "rather rare."62
Of more immediate significance for the social sciences was the use of
Nicole's work by the natura11aw theorist Jean Domat (1625-1696) and
the economist Pierre de Boisguilbert (1646-1714). Both had close ties to
Port-Royal and in their work one explicitly finds the idea of self-
96 Johan Heilbron
regulating social mechanisms, based only on the human pursuit of self-

interest. 63 Boisguilbert derived his idea of a "natural" economic order
from Nicole. On the condition that this order could function freely, it
would tend towards an equilibrium. That being the case, Boisguilbert
spoke of "laisser aller la nature," which unambiguously announces the
liberal consequences of Nicole's model. Boisguilbert initiated an
important tradition of economic thought. This "liberal mercantilism" or
"egalitarian liberalism," as it has been variously called, was prominent in
France from the 1690s to the 1750s, from roughly Colbert until the
physiocrates. 64
Jean Oomat was somewhat older than Boisguilbert, belonging to the
same generation as Nicole and Pascal. His idea of "natural laws" was
more strictly bound to Jansenist premises than Boisguilbert's work.
Oomat also evoked the "good effects" which God extracted from human
self-love, thereby enabling human society to be sustained by human
beings themselves. 65
By the time a younger member of the former salon of madame de
Sable, Nicolas d' Ailly, published his Sentiments et maximes sur ce qui se
passe dans la societe civile (1697), he noted that there was an enormous
literature on the hidden inclination of self-love and its social
consequences. His own verses summarized the type of reasoning which
had come to the foreground since the middle of the seventeenth century:
Tout ce que nous cherchons sur la terre et sur l'onde

Plaisirs, honneurs, fortune; enfin tout ce qui plait;
Tout ce qu'on fait dans ce monde
Est un commerce d'interet
L'amour propre a souvent des routes inegales
S'il fait notre deregelement
II est aussi Ie fondement
De toutes les vertus morales 66
Before concluding this overview it should be noted that the diffusion of

these general notions of interest and commerce also provoked an
important counter-argument. In his critique of the Jansenist anthro-
pology, the philosopher Fenelon asserted that "disinterestedness" was
not beyond human reach. Human beings may experience an amour pur
or amour desinteresse, which is close to a state of selflessness. The love of
God is the highest form of this "disinterested" love, but Fenelon also
acknowledged more worldly forms, especially in the spontaneity of
children. The term "disinterestedness" and the argument about its
possible significance were formulated in the context of a theological

dispute, the querelle du pur amour, but soon gained importance in
esthetics. When Kant defined esthetical experience as interesseloses
Wohlgefallen, he referred to a notion of disinterestedness which Shaftes-
bury had actually taken from the French dispute over Jansenism. 67
The Dynamics of an Intellectual Innovation
Pierre Nicole's work had thus been the first in a series of publications in
which a general notion of (self-)interest was connected to a social theory
of commercial society. According to this model, the exchanges among
self-interested individuals constituted an appropriate, and under certain
conditions, sufficient basis for social order, for which "enlightened" self-
interest represented the most sensible policy.
If this is an accurate conclusion, it is remarkable that - contrary to
the assertions of many - the idea of commercial society was not initially
formulated in the country which was economically the most advanced;
nor was it formulated by bourgeois authors with vested interests in a
doctrine which would justify economic gain. For a sociological ex-
planation of the genesis of the notion of commercial society, capitalism
and the rising bourgeoisie were apparently less important than the
functioning of aristocratic salons in France and their selective receptivity
for Jansenist arguments. It was in these circles, in the decades after the
Fronde, that Jansenist themes were secularized and transformed into a
penetrating discourse in which "interest" appeared both as the hidden
motive of human action as well as the basis of civil society. The
exchanges between Jansenists and aristocrats led a disillusioned noble-
man like La Rochefoucauld to accept Augustininan arguments about the
true source of human conduct, while it led some Jansenists to accept
certain aristocratic and worldly values ("civilite," "honnetete") as more
suitable for human societies than others.
The emergence of this general notion of commercial society was
therefore the result of a peculiar social dynamic. The innovations of
Nicole, Pascal and La Rochefoucauld were closely linked to the develop-
ment of the French aristocracy after the Fronde. It would be misleading
to say that they were "reflections" or "expressions" of this process. Yet
they depended much more on these developments than on the rise of the
bourgeoisie or the emergence of a capitalist economy.
Nicole's argument, furthermore, may seem quite heretical in light of
98 lohan Heilbron
the austere Augustinian doctrine. But Nicole distinguished himself from

his "brothers in faith" only in his willingness to propose second best
solutions. If people refused to withdraw from worldly affairs, then they
should be instructed in the benefits of "civility" and "enlightened self-
interest." Nicole's reasoning about the positive effects of enlightened
self-interest was a second best argument; it was valid only for those who
could or would not accept more rigorous conclusions. Given the as-
sumption that human beings are motivated either by self-love or the love
of God, Nicole proposed a policy for those who persist in their self-love,
demonstrating that they were best advised to act according to their
enlightened self-interest.
His argument is typical of a widespread form of intellectual
innovation. Conceptual renewals are often embedded in conventional
frame works. Whereas Nicole's reasoning today seems to exemplify a
classical liberal position, this is obviously not the way he himself
intended and interpreted it. He was and remained the Jansenist theo-
logian he was, and only allowed himself to work out new implications of
the doctrine, addressed to those who persisted in their self-love. To
preach the love of God to these corrupted individuals was of no use; all
that could be done was to appeal in a rational manner to their interests.
One other possible conclusion may be drawn from this particular
historical episode. Contrary to occasional suggestions by post-
modernists, these ideas about "interest" and "commercial" or "civil
society" obviously did not emerge as the naive dream of some
Enlightenment "project." The theoretical contributions of the
Enlightenment period were built on earlier, frequently seventeenth
century renewals, and many of these are best seen as cautious responses
to scepticism and to religious pessimism. Richard Popkin has forcefully
argued that Pyrrhonian scepticism was possibly the most central
problem in the rise of modern philosophy and modern science. 68 From
that perspective he described the work of Mersenne, Gassendi, Hobbes,
Descartes and others as constructive or mitigated skepticism. Many of
these founding figures of modern philosophy and science were convinced
that in a fundamental sense one could not establish the truth or falsity of
any human belief. Nonetheless, they each held that there are more or less
adequate ways of dealing with the world. Although it is misleading to
define Jansenism as a form of skepticism,69 a clear parallel can be drawn
between Pyrrhonian scepticism and Augustinian pessimism. Both lead to
relativism, whether it be epistemological or political. To overcome these
relativist consequences, forms of mitigated scepticism emerged, and in
this respect Arnauld and Nicole may be viewed as representatives of a

form of constructive or mitigated religious pessimism.
These modern or proto-modern theories were thus clearly not in-
tended to provide absolute certainty or to imagine an unbounded
progress. As Keith Baker recently concluded, they emerged as a "human
middle-ground," situated "between certainty and doubt, religion and
relativism, grace and despair, absolute power and anarchy." While
accepting either a sceptical or a pessimistic outlook, these theorists
similtaeneously refused its fatalistic and relativistic conclusions. Instead
they sought to define a "bearable, imperfect - but possibly ameliorable -
human world."70
Unsocial Sociability
Nicole's core-argument about the beneficial effects of interest-driven

behavior became well known in the eighteenth century, mainly through
the work of Mandeville. Leading French writers such as Voltaire and
Montesquieu referred to Mandeville's formulations as if they were fairly
obviouS. 71 Helveiius, in the middle of the eighteenth century, codified the
interest paradigm by stating that "interest" was to the moral world what
gravity was to the physical universe. But his argument was not
specifically linked to Nicole's idea of commercial society; and although
De l'esprit was an immediate success and became one of the most widely
debated books of the century,n Helvetius had little support from the
philosophes. The main thrust of Nicole's argument had been taken up in
certain political and economic writings, but it was no longer very central
in philosophical debates.
Like the notion of interest, the term self-love also tended to lose its
Augustinian connotations. Many secular authors proposed variations.
Vauvenarques, for example, distinguished between a corrupted and a
legitimate form of self-love: amour-propre and amour de nous-memes. 73
Rousseau, similarly, made the distinction between amour-propre and
amour de soi. He accepted that self-love was the most powerful drive in
human conduct, but denied that it was "natural." Neither God's wish
(the Fall) nor human nature could be held responsible for the evil in the
world. Instead, the historical development of society and civilization was
considered to be the true cause of the predominance of self-interest. 74
Nicole's work and the debates with which he had been associated had
not become part of the intellectual canon. There is evidence, for
100 lohan Heilbron
example, that the use of the term interest became less frequent during the
eighteenth century. According to the database FRANTEXT, which
contains hundreds of mainly literary and philosophical texts, there had
been a general increase in the relative frequency of the words "interest"
and "interests" from 1600 to 1720. But this growth was followed by a
remarkable decline for the years from 1720 to the end of the eighteenth
century (see the data presented in Appendix 1). Although this trend may
very well be valid as a general tendency, the outcome is likely to be very
different for various subsets of more specialised texts. In political
economy, for example, notions of interest and commercial exchange
were obviously central, but very few of these texts are actually part of
the corpus of FRANTEXT.
For England there is evidence for a similar trend. Prevailing in
English anthropologies were not interest or self-love, but the idea of
"fellow-feeling," "moral sense" or "sympathy." From Shaftesbury to
Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), interests appeared as only
one human inclination among many, and rarely as the most appropriate
one for the founding of a social order.7 5 Only with The Wealth of
Nations (1776) and the introduction of the "invisible hand" did self-
interest become the basis of elaborate social and economic theories. It
was not until the latter decades of the eighteenth century that utilitarian
currents appeared in England and Scotland as well as in France.
The significance of these approaches is clear, among others, from the
counter-movements they provoked. In France, for example, the morality
of interest came under the attack of both conservatives (Bonald,
Maistre) and republicans like Auguste Comte. Comte detested many of
the French moralists and advised against reading La Rochefoucauld in
order to avoid "gater Ie coeur et fausser l'esprit."76 It was the same
Comte who coined the term altruism, which he eventually considered to
be a vital complement to his positivism and sociology.
In the same decades around 1800 another perspective arose in
Germany. It was Kant in his Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten
(1785) who criticised both the French and the English traditions, and
introduced a different point of view. 77 Kant was well aware of the whole
debate about interest and moral sense, and he referred to Nicole and
Mandeville's position as the problem of unsocial sociability, ungesellige
Geselligkeit.7 8 But it was a mistake, he argued, to found moral doctrines
on "empirical" principles such as the feeling of sympathy or the
inclination of self-love. Moral rules should be regarded as "duties" and
were not to be confused with factual questions of how and why people
behave. Kant's argument thus marked the end of a period in yet another
way. By separating empirical from philosophical questions he put an end
to conception of "moral science" which had been the very framework for
the debates he referred to.
Appendix 1
Occurrences of the word interet ( s) in a database of French texts (l600~1800)
interet interNs interet(s)

n /1000 n /1000 n /1000
1600~1620 73 0,0363 9 0,0045 82 0,0408

1621~1640 356 0,0755 102 0,0216 458 0,0971
1641~1660 351 0,0895 147 0,0375 498 0,1270
1661~1680 243 0,0624 118 0,0303 361 0,0928
1681~1700 278 0,0646 88 0,D205 366 0,0851
1701~1720 134 0,0588 183 0,0803 317 0,1392
1721~1740 224 0,0353 150 0,0236 374 0,0589
1741~1760 161 0,0244 56 0,0085 217 0,0329
1761~1780 55 0,0055 6 0,0006 61 0,0061
1781~1800 7 0,0009 0,0001 8 0,0010
Source: Database FRANTEXT containing more than 1100 seventeenth and eighteenth
century French texts (with special thanks to Eric Brian).
Notes
l. E. G. Hundert, The Enlightenment·s Fable. Bernard Mandeville and the Discovery of

Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. l.
2. For an overview see James S. Coleman and Thomas J. Farrao (eds.), Rational Choice
Theory: Advocacy and Critique (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1992). For critical assessments see
Jane Mansbridge ed., Beyond Self-Interest, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1990;
Robin M. Hogarth and Melvin W. Reder (eds.), Rational Choice: the Contrast
Between Economics and Psychology (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1986). For an
interesting attempt to meet criticisms of rational choice theory while maintaining some
of its basic assumptions see Abram de Swaan, 'Rational Choice as Process"
(Amsterdam School for Social Science Research, 1995) (papers in progress).
3. Milton L. Myers, The Soul of Modern Economic Man. Ideas of Self-Interest. Thomas
Hobbes to Adam Smith (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983). As the title of his
book indicates, Myers' perspective is not only an economic one, he has also limited his
research to England, and his analysis is unsatisfactory for both reasons.
102 lohan Heilbron
4. Joyce Oldham Appleby, Economic Thought and Ideology in Seventeenth-Century

England (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), p. 248.
5. Albert Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests. Political Arguments for Capitalism
before Its Triumph (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977); Hans-Jiirgen Fuchs,
Entfremdung und Nazissmus. Semantische Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der
"Selbstbezogenheit" als Vorgeschichte von franzosisch "amour-propre" (Stuttgart: J. B.
Metzler, 1977).
6. For brief accounts of the conceptual history of the term, see especially Hans-Jiirgen
Fuchs, "Interesse," in Historisches Worterbuch der Philosoph ie, Band 4. Herausgege-
ben von J. Ritter und K. Griinder (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft,
1976), pp. 480-485; Albert O. Hirschman, "The Concept of Interest: From
Euphemism to Tautology," in his Rival Views of Market Society (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1992), pp. 35-55.
7. Maurizio Viroli, From Politics to Reason of State. The Acquisition and Transformation
of the Language of Politics 1250-1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
8. Francesco Guicciardini, Maxims and Reflections (Ricordi), Translated by Mario
Domandi (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1965).
9. See the remarks in Felix Gilbert, Machiavelli and Guicciardini. Politics and History in
Sixteenth-Century Florence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965), p. 292.
10. See Richard Tuck, Philosophy and Government 1572-1651 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1993).
II. A. Enzo Baldini, 'Botero et Lucinge' in Yves Charles Zarka (ed.), Raison et deraison
d'Etat. Theoriciens et theories de la raison d'Etat aux XVIe et XVIIe siecles (Paris:
Presses Un ivers ita ires de France, 1994), pp. 67-99.
12. Yves Charles Zarka, 'Raison d'Etat et figure du prince chez Botero', in ed. Y. C. Zarka,
Raison et deraison d'Etat (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1994), pp. 101-120.
13. This was a standard view during the sixteenth century. For an illuminating example
see Montaigne, "De I'inconstance de nos actions" in Essais (II, I). Edition de Maurice
Rat (Paris: Garnier Freres, 1962), vol 1, pp. 365-372. On the intellectual history of
anthropology see Wilhelm Dithey, Weltanschauung und Analyse des Menschen seit
Renaissance und Reformation (Gbttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1970); Arthur O.
Lovejoy, Reflections on Human Nature (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1961).
14. Quoted in Etienne Thuau, Raison d'Etat et pensee politique a l'epoque de Richelieu,
(Paris: Armand Colin, 1966,) p. 312.
15. J.A.W. Gunn, Politics and the Public Interest in the Seventeenth Century (London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969), p. 42.
16. Stephen Holmes, Passions and Constraint: on the Theory of Liberal Democracy,
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), p. 53.
17. Richard Tuck, "The 'Modern' Theory of Natural Law, in ed. A. Pagden, The
Languages of Political Theory in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1987), pp. 99-119.
18. Istvan Hont, "The language of sociability and commerce: Samuel Pufendorf and the
theoretical foundations of the 'Four-Stages Theory'" in ed. Anthony Pagden, The
University Press, 1987); Robert Wokler, "Rousseau's Pufendorf: Natural Law and the
Foundations of Commercial Society", History of Political Thought 15 (1994), 373-402.
19. For a recent overview see Alexander Sedgwick, Jansenism in Seventeenth Century
France (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1977).
20. See Rene Taveneaux, Jansimisme et politique (Paris: Armand Colin, 1965); Paul
Benichou, Morales du grand siecle (1948) (Paris: Gallimard, 1988).
21. Hume concluded that the Jesuits are the "tyrants of the people, and the slaves of the
court," whereas the Jansenists "preserve alive the small sparks of the love of liberty
which are to be found in the French nation." David Hume, Essays, Moral, Political
and Literary (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1985), p. 79.
22. Jean Mesnard, La culture du XVIIe siecle (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,
1992),pp.259-260.
23. For the context and the consequences see the first part of my The Rise of Social
Theory (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995).
24. W.F. Church, "The Decline of the French Jurists as Political Theorists, 1660-1789,"
French Historical Studies 5 (1967), 1-40.
25. P.O. Kristeller, Renaissance Thought II (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), pp. 20-68.
26. In her important study, Nannerl Keohane distinguishes three currents of thought:
absolutism, constitutionalism and individualism. Most moralists are labelled "indi-
vidualists" and are thought to be mainly preoccupied with "private moralities." See
N.O. Keohane, Philosophy and the State in France. From the Renaissance to the
Enlightenment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980.)
27. Quoted in H. Friedrich, Montaigne (Bern: A. Francke Verlag, 1949), p. 220.
28. For useful overviews of the moralist tradition see Hirgen von Stackelberg, Franzosische
Moralistik im Europaischen Kontext (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft,
1982); Louis van Delft, Le moraliste classique. Essai de definition et de typologie
(Geneve: Droz, 1982).
29. In his analysis of the civilizing process, Norbert Elias indicated related changes in the
understanding and self-understanding of human beings. The increased constraint to
self-restraint brought about not only new forms of behavior but also new modes of
observation and cognition. Human conduct became the object of a more secular and a
more psychological outlook which contributed to the rise of new conceptions of
human beings. See especially Norbert Elias, Die hOfische Gesellschaft (Frankfurt am
Main: Suhrkamp, 1983), pp. 159-164, and Ober den Prozess der Zivilisation (Frankfurt
am Main, Suhrkamp, 1981) (especially chapter 5 of the summary).
30. H.-J. Martin, Livre, pouvoirs et societe a Paris au XVIIe siecle (1598-1701), (Geneve,
Droz, 1969), pp. 826-830 and 1074.
31. La Rochefoucauld, Maximes. Edition etablie par J. Truchet (Paris: Garnier, 1967),
("maximes postumes" no. 51) p. 172. Madame de Staellater rephrased this remark by
saying that in Germany one studies books, whereas in France one studies people. See
Madame de Stael, De l'Allemagne (1810), (Paris: Garnier Freres), n. d., vol I, p. 74.
32. For art see B. Rogerson, "The Art of Painting the Passions," Journal of the History of
Ideas 14 (1953), 68-94. The fashionable character books form a good example of
widespread interest in human psychology, see Louis van Delft, Litterature et anthro-
pologie. Nature humaine et caractere a l'age classique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de
France, 1993).
33. Dieter Steland, Moralistik und Erzahlkunst von La Rochefoucauld und Mme de
Lafayette bis Marivaux (Munchen: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1984).
34. F. Nietzsche, "Jenseits von Gut und Bose" (par. 254). in Werke. Herausgegeben von
K. Schlechta (Frankfurt am Main: Ullstein, 1979), vol. 2, pp. 721-23.
35. For general overviews see See A. Levi, French Moralists. The Theory of the Passions,
1585 to 1649 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964); A.J. Krailsheimer, Studies in Self-
104 lohan Heilbron
Interest. From Descartes to La Bruyere (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962).

36. La Rochefoucauld, op. cit., p. 15.
37. Vivien Thweatt, La Rochefoucauld and the Seventeenth-Century Concept of the Self
(Geneve: Droz, 1980), p. 164.
38. Philippe Sellier, '''La princesse de Cleves': Augustinisme et preciosite au paradis des
Valois," in Images de La Rochefoucauld. Actes du Tricentenaire 1680-1980 (Paris:
Presses Universitaires de France, 1984), pp. 217-228.
39. See N. Ivanoff, La marquise de Sable et son salon (Paris: Les Presses Modernes, 1927);
Jean Lafond, "Madame de Sable et son salon," in Images de La Rochefoucauld (Paris:
Presses Universitaires de France, 1994), pp. 201-216.
40. Paul Benichou, Morales du grand siixle (1948) (Paris: Gallimard, 1988), p. 118.
41. See Serge Doubrovsky, "Vingt propositions sur I'amour-propre: de Lacan a La
Rochefoucauld," Cahiers Confrontation III (1980), 51-67.
42. See, for example, Bourdieu's reflections on 'interest' and 'habitus', cf. Pierre Bourdieu,
The Logic of Practice (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990).
43. Madame de Sable, "Maximes" (1678), in Moralistes du XVIIe siecle. Edition etablie
sous la direction de Jean Lafond (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1992) p. 249.
44. On La Rochefoucauld's receptivity to Jansenist arguments see especially Jean Lafond,
La Rochefoucauld. Augustinisme et litterature (Paris: Klincksieck, 1977).
45. Wolf Lepenies, Melancholie und Gesellschaji (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1969);
Lionel Rothkrug, Opposition to Louis XIV The Political and Social Origins of the
French Enlightenment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965).
46. La Rochefoucauld, op. cit., p. 76 (maxim 305).
47. See Hans-Jtirgen Fuchs, Entfremdung und Narzissmus. Semantische Untersuchungen
zur Geschichte der 'Selbstbezogenheit' als Vorgeschichte von franz6sisch 'amour-propre',
(Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler, 1977). The work of Fuchs appeared in the same year as
Hirschman's book, but whereas the latter has rightly become well known, Fuchs'
study is still largely ignored. Fuchs has mainly drawn on earlier French work, most
explicitly an article by Marcel Raymond, "Du jansenisme a la morale de I'interet",
Mercure de France no. 1126 (1957), pp. 238-255. The significance of Augustinianism
has been stressed in many recent works. Of particular importance were especially
Philippe Sellier, Pascal et saint Augustin (Paris: Armand Colin, 1970); Jean Lafond, La
Rochefoucauld. Augustinisme et litterature (Paris: Klincksieck, 1977). An American
specialist of Jansenism also published recently on Pierre Nicole, but without referring
to most of the literature mentioned above. See Dale Van Kley, "Pierre Nicole,
Jansenism, and the Morality of Enlightened Self-Interest," in Anticipations of the
Enlightenment in England, France, and Germany. Edited by Alan Charles Kors and
Paul J. Korshin (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987), pp. 69-85.
48. Pascal, Pensees, no. 153 in the recent edition by Philippe Sellier (number 121 in the
Lafuma edition; number 418 in the Brunschvicg edition) (Paris: Garnier, 1991).
49. Pascal, op. cit., number 163 (130 in the Lafuma edition; 420 in the Brunschvicg
edition).
50. E.D. James, Pierre Nicole, Jansenist and Humanist (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff,
1972), p. 1.
51. Henri Bremond, Histoire litteraire du sentiment religieux en France (Paris: Bloud,
1925), vol. IV, p. 420.
52. Henri Bremond, op. cit., p. 471.
53. Nannerl O. Keohane, "Non-conformist Absolutism III Louis XIV's France: Pierre
French Moralists and the Anthropology o/the Modern Era 105
54. Pierre Nicole, Oeuvres philosophiques et morales. Comprenant un choix de ses essais
par C. Jourdain (Paris: Hachette, 1845), p. 181.
55. Ibid. The same point can be found in other writers of the same group. Madame de
Sable, for example, notes:
"La societe, et meme I'amitie de la plupart des hommes, n'est qu'un commerce qui ne
dure qu'autant que Ie besoin."
Madame de Sable, "Maximes," in Moralistes du XVIIe siecle (Paris: Laffont, 1992), p.
254.
56. Pierre Nicole, op. cit., pp. 199-200.
57. Nicolas d'Ailly, "Pensees diverses" in Moralistes du XVIIe siecle. Edition etablie sous
la direction de Jean Lafond (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1992), p. 261. This anthology con-
tains many original texts, with introductions and useful notes, but nothing by Pierre
Nicole or Jacques Esprit.
58. Pierre Nicole, "De la civilite chretienne," in op. cit., p. 368.
59. Pierre Nicole, op. cit., p. 199.
60. Pascal, Pensees, number 244 in the Sellier edition (211 in the Lafuma edition; 453 in
the Brunschvicg edition).
61. Op. cit., number 150 in the Sellier edition (no. 118 in the Lafuma edition; 402 in the
Brunschvicg edition).
62. Nicolas Malebranche, De la recherche de la verite (3. I), in Oeuvres (Paris: Gallimard,
1979), p. 244 (and the corresponding note on p. 1441).
63. This is the core of Honigsheim's interpretation of Jansenism, cf. Paul Honigsheim, Die
Staats- und Sozial-Lehren der Jranzosischen Jansenisten (1914) (Darmstadt: Wissen-
schaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1969).
64. On Boisguilbert see Gilbert Faccarello, Aux origines de l'economie politique liberale:
Pierre de Boisguilbert (Paris: Anthropos, 1986); ed. Jacqueline Hecht, Boisguilbert
parmi nous. Actes du Colloque international de Rouen (1975) (Paris: INED, 1989). On
Boisguilbert as the founder of "egalitarian liberalism" and the "break" this implied
with mercantalism, see Simone Meyssonnier, La balance et l'horloge. La genese de la
pensee liberale en France au XVII1e siecle (Montreuil: Editions de la passion, 1989).
See also Jean-Claude Perrot, Une histoire intellectuelle de l'economie politique
(XVIIe-XVII1e siecle (Paris: Editions de I'EHESS, 1992), especially pp. 333-355.
65. Domat writes: "Cette lumiere de la raison que Dieu donne a tous les hommes et ces
bons effets qu'il tire de leur amour-propre sont des causes qui contribuent a soutenir la
societe des hommes par les hommes eux-memes." Quoted in Simone Meyssonnier, op.
cit., p. 47.
66. Nicolas d'Ailly, Sentiments et maximes sur ce qui se passe dans la socihe civile (Paris:
Louis Josse, 1697).
67. Werner Strube, "Interesselosigkeit. Zur Geschichte eines Grundbegriffs der Asthetik,"
Archiv fur Begriffsgeschichte 23 (1979), 148-174. On disinterestness in science, see
Peter Dear, "From Truth to Disinterestedness in the Seventeenth Century," Social
Studies of Science 22 (1992), 619-623.
68. Richard Popkin, The History of Scepticism From Erasmus to Spinoza (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1979). For a broader perspective on the very same
question see Johan Goudsblom, Nihilism and Culture (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980).
69. As is proposed in Thomas M. Lennon, "Jansenism and the Crise pyrrhonienne,"
Journal of the History of Ideas 38 (1977), 297-306.
70. Keith Michael Baker,"Enlightenment and the Institution of Society: Notes for a
106 lohan Heilbron
70. Keith Michael Baker,"Enlightenment and the Institution of Society: Notes for a
Conceptual History," in Willem Melching and Wyger Velema (eds.), Main Trends in
Cultural History (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1994), pp. 95-120.
71. For the reception of Mandeville in England and France see Paulette Carrive, La
philosophie des passions chez Bernard Mandeville (Lille/Paris: Didier Erudition, 1983),
pp. 65-113.
72. See D. W. Smith, HeIVl!tius. A Study in Persecution (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965).
73. Vauvenargues, Introduction a la connaissance de l'esprit human (1746). Edition par
Jean Dagen (Paris: Flammarion, 1981), pp. 85-87.
74. This is Cassirer's interpretation, see Ernst Cassirer, Le probleme Jean-Jacques
Rousseau (1932) (Paris: Hachette, 1987).
75. See Volker Gerhardt, Vernunft und Interesse. Inaugural-Disseratation Munster, 1974
(unpublished), pp. 319-335. W. H. Schrader, Ethik und Anthropologie in der Englischen
Aujklarung (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1984).
76. Auguste Comte, Correspondance generale et confessions (Paris: Mouton, 1981), vol. 4,
p.168.
77. See Randall Collins, 'The Transformation of Philosophy" (this volume).
78. I. Kant, "Idee zu einer algemeinen Geschichte in weItburgerIicher Absicht" (1784), in
Schriften zur Anthropologie, Geschichtsphilosophie, Polilik und Padagogik. Werkaus-
gabe, Band XI, herausgegeben von W. Weischedel (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,
1977), p. 37.
THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
IN LATE EIGHTEENTH AND
EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY GERMANyl
PETER HANNS REILL

UCLA Center for 17th & 18th Century Studies
Introduction
In 1980, a group of historians of science published a book evaluating the

history of eighteenth-century science. 2 The authors lamented the fact
that despite the virtual revolution taking place in the history of science,
its impact upon the history of 18th century science had been negligible.
They ascribed this result to two factors. The first was the problematic
nature of the 18th century. "Historians of science have tended to regard
it as a tiresome trough to be negotiated between the peaks of the
seventeenth and those of the nineteenth century; or as a mystery, a twi-
light zone in which all is on the verge of yielding."3 The second retarding
factor was the persistent tendency of historians of science to write
"tunnel histories" of specific disciplines, a practice that privileged intern-
alist accounts, assumed a model based upon continuous development
and by implication postulated the existence of a scientific discipline even
before it was defined as such. 4
To a certain extent, the same can be said about the history of the social
sciences of this period. The same two interpretive strategies, though often
contradictory, have, with notable exceptions, been the norm. In the first
instance, one usually assumes that the concept of society has always been
present, though in various degrees of consciousness, insuring, thereby the
existence of its attendant sciences. 5 In this explanatory model, the history
of the social sciences usually portrays the eighteenth century as a period of
transition in which a small number of outstanding thinkers such as
Montesquieu and Smith anticipated the agenda of later social science or
even established some of its major precepts. But the full meaning of these
formulations had to wait until the professional development of the
discipline, usually located in the first half of the nineteenth century.
107
Johan Heilbron et al. (Eds.) The Rise of the Social Sciences and the Formation of
Modernity, 107-140.
© 1998 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
108 Peter Hanns Reill
The second explanatory move integrates eighteenth-century thinkers

into a larger developmental pattern, usually beginning in antiquity and
progressing to its current phase, though allowing for false turns and
regressions along the way. It assumes the continued existence of a
community of intellectual specialists, "scientists" with analogous con-
cerns and a shared discourse to have existed through time. As a rule this
model is fashioned only after the discipline achieves institutional status
and is then legitimated by its practitioners. In this phase, historians of
specialized disciplines have constructed a canon of "classical" writers
and questions that seemingly joined all practitioners of the discipline in a
diachronic pattern that validated an explanatory pattern based upon
transmission and transformation from one to the other to explain the
discipline's development. 6
For the historian of the social sciences in Germany a third factor
complicates the picture. It is the persistence of the epistemological model
propounded in the 19th century separating the Natur from the Geistes-
wissenschaften. On one level, this distinction between nomothetic and
ideographic sciences has questioned the possibility of ever constructing a
social science other than one based upon the postulates of non-natur-
alistic Verstehen. Those social sciences that take their models from the
natural sciences have been and sometimes still are considered pseudo-
sciences, their practitioners labeled "Szientisten" instead of Wissen-
schaftler. 7
But though the methods and the subject matter of the social and
natural sciences have traditionally been separated, it was assumed
something united both in a common endeavor, designated by the term
Wissenschaft. The search for correct methods and modes of evaluation
and proof, though different in form, were seen to have been universally
shared by all serious disciplines. This diversity within the general rubric
of Wissenschaft has reinforced the tradition of writing tunnel history by
assuming that each science has its own mode of understanding and
method, not comparable to others. For this reason, an internalist
history, diachronically organized, still is considered the preferred model
of the history of disciplinary science. Wissenschaftsgeschichte, no matter
what its object of analysis and methods of discovery were, has essentially
traced the process of increasing rationalization effected by great
thinkers.
Whatever validity these practices may have had in the late nineteenth
century when they were elaborated and accepted as self-evident
propositions, they do violence to the Enlightenment as a whole and
The Construction of the Social Sciences 109
especially to the intellectual dynamics of the late Enlightenment. The

social and the natural sciences, rather than being separated, were
intimately related and over the period were drawn ever closer together. 8
The connection between them was twofold. On the most general level,
each participated in a movement of renewal, generated by an increasing
ambivalence towards the ruling precepts of the early eighteenth century
and the social-political order these precepts helped to authorize. On a
more specific level, the relation went beyond the simple parallelism of
shared aspirations and dissatisfactions. The two were symbiotically
joined, linked in an endeavor to evolve a new science of humanity in
which earlier antinomies established by the elaboration of mechanistic
science and moral philosophy were to be healed. In this specific
relationship the conceptual reordering of the natural sciences preceded
that of the social sciences and, in effect, made the latter possible. To
illustrate this I would like to discuss the relation between one new model
of late Enlightenment science and the paradigmatic social sciences for
Germany of this period, namely anthropology, history and linguistics/
philology or Sprachwissenschaft.
To do so, we must pose two simple questions; what models of science
were available to late eighteenth-century historians, anthropologists and
Sprachwissenschaftler? And to what extent did they translate existing
scientific models in their project of making their respective disciplines
scientific? When this is done, a surprising picture emerges, one that goes
far in modifying if not transforming the usual stereotypes concerning the
dynamics of late Enlightenment thought and the relations between
science, Enlightenment, and the emergence in Germany of historicism,
anthropology and Sprachwissenschaft.
Vitalizing Nature in the Late Enlightenment
Counter to most traditionally held assumptions, the scientific thought of

the Enlightenment was not simply the e~aboration of a unified vision
defined by Newtonian natural philosophy, based upon a specific
definition of matter and upon the imperative to simplify and quantify
observed reality in order to generate universal laws of nature. For,
throughout Europe, from at least the mid-century on, alternative scient-
ific visions were being proposed by a number of thinkers that altered
substantially the early eighteenth-century mechanistic model of science
and nature. In other words, competing discourses were being created
llO Peter Hanns Reill
within the general outlines of Enlightened scientific thought with their

own unique shape and profile. I would like to argue that the late
Enlightenment construction of the social sciences of anthropology, his-
tory and Sprachwissenschaft in Germany was made possible by trans-
lating the fundamental assumptions and operational methodologies of
one of these competing discourses - what I call Enlightenment vitalism -
to these specific disciplines.
The most basic feature of this new language of nature was its dis-
satisfaction with both early eighteenth-century mechanism and animism.
Mechanism, once the rage amongst progressive intellectuals began to
loose its positive connotations. Increasingly it was associated with
repressive conformity, tyranny, rote learning, and mindless, immoral
activities. 9 If man was a machine, as La Mettrie had proclaimed, he was
a perpetual motion machine, something unknown in the mundane world
of constructed mechanisms lacking life force.1O In simple terms, the
principles of mechanical natural philosophy which had supported
Cartesian, Leibnizian, Wolffian and early Newtonian science were
attacked in the name of a reanimated nature filled with matter imbued
with active, vital forces. At the same time the reintroduction of active
forces in nature did not signal a return to animism. Enlightenment
vitalists were adamant in rejecting animism's spiritualistic connotations,
which elevated mind over matter. For them mechanism and animism
were both reductionist, though in contradictory ways, and hence held
suspect.
In their stead, Enlightenment vitalists proposed an approach that
attempted to mediate between both mechanism and animism. In the
words of Charles Louis Dumas, who coined the term vitalism, this new
approach to science was to rectify the misuse of physical laws which
supported the "ancient sect" of mechanists and the misuse of meta-
physics which generated the equally ancient sect of the spiritualists. The
new vitalistic science "will derive all appearances of life neither from
simply the material nor simply from the soul, but rather from a capacity
that lies in the middle between both."ll
It is impossible in so limited an amount of space to present a totally
comprehensive characterization of this new scientific vision, therefore, I
would like to extract a few significant points, central to this discourse of
science. They can be comprised under the following topics: 1) the trans-
formation of method, 2) the redefinition of matter, 3) the reintroduction
of the concept of active forces, 4) the development of an epistemology to
validate this scientific vision, 5) and the formulation of a harmonic
vision of reality and explanation that called into question the basic
assumptions upon which a binary system of logic and explanation had
been grounded.
The new concept of scientific method radically reformulated the
definition of what science was and how it proceeded. In the same way
that Enlightenment vitalism sought to mediate between mechanism and
animism, it tried to strike a balance between the two contemporary
strategies of discovery that were vying for superiority at the mid-century:
simple empiricism and mathematical abstraction. The simple empiricists
were easy game. They were dismissed as a tribe of hapless collectors
(predominantly German) who said nothing and said it in too many
words. 12 But the major force of the critique was directed at the second
approach; and well it should have been, for by attacking the competency
of mathematical abstraction in scientific explanation, they stormed the
inner sanctum of mechanical natural philosophy, which had achieved a
dominant position in the first half of the century. Mechanists had
proclaimed that the only path to obtaining "evident" knowledge was to
reduce the manifold appearances of nature to simple principles, expres-
sible in symbolic logic, which would produce a transparency far more
reliable than that achieved from simple observation.
This argument was reversed. Abstract proofs were now considered
products of human invention, of reason gone astray. Such proofs were
correct but sterile, incapable of saying anything other than that with
which they had begun. They represented a tautology affirming only what
had already been proclaimed. They were, as Buffon proclaimed,
"abstract, imaginary and arbitrary."13 In place of mathematical and ab-
stract· hypothetical reasoning, a different form of reasoning was
demanded that mediated between simple empiricism and abstraction, a
position that could be called "controlled empiricism," or, to use Sergio
Moravia's term, "observational reason" [Beobachtende Vernunft].14 The
scientist was to join observation and scientific imagination in order to
tell it wie es eigentlich gewesen und geworden ist, how it actually was and
became.
The rejection of mathematical-mechanical and spiritualist models was
accompanied by a new definition of matter. Mechanists defined matter
as an aggregate of identical yet independent elements or building blocks.
According to them, the world was "composed of inert bodies, moved by
physical necessity, indifferent to the existence of thinking beings."15
Animists had seen matter as emanations of the spirit or mind. Enlighten-
ment vitalism defined matter as a complex conjunction of related parts.
There was no such thing as an isolated entity or a simple substance.

Rather, everything was related to everything else, everything was joined,
zusammengesetzt. And the manner in which they were joined determined
the character or organization of the entity. Instead of beginning with the
simple and proceeding by aggregation to the complex, which is the seen
as the sum of its parts, one was to start with the conjoined.
This conception of matter dissolved the strict mechanistic distinction
between observer and observed, since both were related within a much
larger conjunction. Relation or Verwandschaft replaced aggregation as
one of the defining principles of matter. Identity and non-identity were
substituted by degrees of relation and similarity. The world consisted of
a circle of relations, which looking at it from the human vantage-point
radiated out to touch in varying degrees all forms of matter. Since these
circles of relations were assumed to pertain especially to living or
"organized" matter (at least for humans), their generation became a
central problem facing late Enlightenment thinkers. Reproduction arose
as the dominant metonymy in this language of nature.
Since the circle of relations included the observer in the field of
scientific inquiry, the only way knowledge could be obtained would be to
discover the intensities of these relations and place them in a correct,
"real" order. To do this, the scientist had to devise a concept of sys-
tematic analysis that avoided aggregation and instead replicated natural
connections, that apprehended the makeup of what was called an "or-
ganized body," rather than defining it according to arbitrary categories.
In such a "natural system" the constituent elements were defined as
being symbiotically related to one another. The whole was considered a
"synergy" in which each conjoined particle was influenced by each other
and also by the habitus in which it existed. 16 Organism and environment
were locked together in a mutual embrace. They were conjoined in a
similar way as were the parts of an organized body. A natural system
described a body as it actually was - in its place and with its relations to
the world surrounding it - and as it actually became - its history. It was
to join structure and process, what we today would call the synchronic
and diachronic, into a unified field of explanation.
The third element central to the elaboration of this new scientific dis-
course was the expansion of the definition of force. Mechanical natural
philosophy had proposed two types of force: imparted force and con-
served force. Buffon and his followers added a third category that
mechanists had sought to expunge from natural philosophy, namely
active or self activating force, which had a teleological character. At the
same time, they did not ascribe this force to a single all empowering will
as did the animists. Living matter was seen as containing an immanent
principle of self-movement whose sources lay in active powers residing
within matter itself. The dead and inert matter of the mechanists could
once again be thought of as having the possibility of becoming animated,
dissolving thereby the strict separation between matter and spirit
essential to Newtonian mechanism.
In Germany, this position was developed most forcefully by the Gott-
ingen physiologist, comparative anatomist and anthropologist Johann
Friedrich Blumenbach. In the complex composition of organized matter,
he discerned a number of "common or general vital energies that exist
more or less, in almost all, or at least in a great many parts of the
body."17 The foremost of these was the Bildungstrieb, which Blumenbach
defined as a power which directs the formation of bodies, preserves them
from destruction and compensates them through reproduction from any
mutilations the body may incur. IS With the introduction of the idea of
the Bildungstrieb, Blumenbach thought he had successfully mediated
between the "two principles ... that one had assumed could not be joined,
the teleological and the mechanical."19
The postulation of the teleological principle tied to that of universal
interaction and connection between organized bodies and the world
around them reintroduced both contingency and development as central
scientific explanatory concepts. In effect, nature was historicized: quali-
tative, directional change over time was deemed natural to organized
bodies. But this "progressive" development was not continuous. It
proceeded through a series of drastic changes, "revolutions" in which the
outward form was changed drastically, followed by a gradual development
in the newly formed shape. There was a continuous interplay between free
creation and regular development. In it the critical transition periods were
marked, as Blumenbach said, by "astonishing revolutions in almost the
whole economy of the system."20 The image often used for these
revolutions was metamorphosis. Hence, in apprehending nature it became
necessary to provide a genetic or dynamic-teleological explanation in
which change takes place, usually in the form of step like development
(either positive or negative) where each step had its own unique character.
The transitions between the steps could either follow a "normal" path or
be interrupted by a "mysterious" eruption attesting to new creation.
All of these shifts in scientific explanation challenged late eighteenth-
century thinkers to construct an epistemology capable of justifying and
validating these assumptions. None of the postulated active forces could
be seen directly, nor could they be measured. They were "occult powers"
in the traditional sense of the term, not as modified by Newton. 21 At best
they were announced by outward signs, whose hidden meaning could
only be grasped through a glass darkly. As Blumenbach said, one could
not pierce the "Cimmerian darkness" of nature. 22 In effect, this language
of nature reintroduced the topos of locating real reality as something
that lurked within a body. That which was immediately observable was
dismissed as superficial, unimportant. Understanding entailed a progres-
sive descent into the depths of observed reality. The markers that aided
this descent were outward signs, heralds of inner activity. Thus, late
Enlightenment scientists reintroduced the idea of semiotics as the key to
understanding what really happened. As Adam Ferguson, the Scottish
historian and brother-in-law of the chemist Joseph Black, expressed it,
the "world is a system of signs and expressions .. .it was a magnificent but
regular discourse."23 The task of the natural philosopher was to decipher
the language of nature.
The basic epistemological problem was to understand the meaning of
these signs and how to perceive the interaction of the postulated
individual yet linked active forces without collapsing one into the other,
without falling into the reductionism of either mechanism or animism. To
resolve this problem, late Enlightenment vitalists called for a form of
understanding that could combine the individualized elements into a new
harmonic appreciation that did not destroy the unity and diversity of
nature. The methods adopted to implement this program were
comparative, functional analysis and analogical reasoning. The first
allowed one to consider nature as composed of systems having their own
character and dynamics. It further allowed one to go beyond a simple
concentration on outward form and thereby establish new sets of order in
which active, invisible powers were operative. Analogical reasoning was
seen as the functional replacement for mathematical analysis. With it one
could discover similar tendencies between dissimilar things that approx-
imated natural laws, again without dissolving the specific in the general.
But, even here late Enlightenment scientific writers encountered a
further tension that had to be resolved. For, if nature was unity in
diversity, then the scientist was to investigate closely the manifold variety
of individual empirical phenomena and to cultivate creative scientific
imagination. The proposed answer was to do both at once, allowing the
interaction between them to produce a higher form of understanding
than provided either by simple observation or by discursive, formal
logic. This type of understanding was called Anschauung, divination, or
intuition. 24 It's operation was based once again upon the image of
mediation, of continually moving back and forth from one to the other,
letting each nourish and modify the other. 25
But they did not move directly from one to another. Rather, they
passed through a third, hidden and informing agent that was, in effect,
the ground upon which all reality rested. In eighteenth-century language,
this hidden, middle element, opaque, unseeable, yet essential was called
by terms such as internal mold (Buffon), prototype (Robinet), Mittel-
kraft (Schiller), Urtyp (Goethe) schemata (Kant) or Haupttypus
(Herder).
For us, this model of apprehension is difficult to perceive, for it flies
in the face of what we consider rational, logical or scientific. In effect, I
believe these late Enlightenment thinkers were consciously criticizing
binary systems of logic and explanation and replacing them with a
ternary one. Binary systems assume that the distance between signifier
and signified can be collapsed, that reason can look at the world and it
would look back reasonably. Ternary systems introduce something
between sign and signified, the conjuncture, or, to use Kant's term
"schemata," through which everything was refracted but which could
never be seen, grasped, or directly identified. 26 In essence this was a
harmonic view of nature in which the opposing or conflicting tones were
resolved through the assumed existence of what I would like to call the
extended middle or the hidden organizer.
In effect Enlightenment vitalists were grasping for a new way of
organizing reality built upon the concepts of ambiguity and paradox,
often embodied in the creative oxymoron, symbolized by Buffon's for-
mulation of the "internal mold." To attempt to clarify this position a
modern comparison may help.
In many ways this activity parallels what Bachelard seems to have
been striving for in his attempt to evolve a new way of understanding
science. In The New Scientific Spirit, Bachelard formally labels his
position a "dialectical" one, yet modifies it by differentiating between the
"crude dialectic of traditional philosophy" and his approach where "the
poles between which it moves are less extreme, less heterogeneous."
"Unlike traditional dialectics reconciling contradictory points of view
does not do away with the dualism that is inscribed in the history of
science itself, in every conceivable approach to the teaching of science,
and indeed in the very structure of thought." He concluded by elevating
the principle of ambiguity as a central category. "What I am proposing,
therefore, is a new way of looking at ambiguity, a view sufficiently
116 Peter Hanns ReiIl
supple to comprehend the recent teachings of science. The philosophy of

science is, I believe, in need of genuinely new principles. One such
principle is the idea that the characters of things may be essentially
complementary, a sharp departure from the tacit (philosophical) belief
that being always connotes unity ... What would be needed, then, would
be an ontology of complementarity less sharply dialectical than the
metaphysics of the contradictory."27 I argue that Enlightenment vitalists
were also striving to establish a logic of the ambiguous, enthroning
complementarity over unity or polar conflict.
This was a harmonic view of reality which formed the core and
essence of the late Enlightenment vitalistic vision of nature and hu-
manity; it accounted for both its fascination with extremes - boundaries,
limits - and its hope for mediations. It was not a dualistic character-
ization of nature and humanity, for real reality always lay between both;
harmony, the merging of opposites within an expanded middle, served as
the norm and desired end of each historical and natural process, though
that dynamic was continually in motion, leading to ever changing
harmonic combinations.
In proposing this harmonic view of nature, Enlightenment vitalists
consciously returned to a way of thinking about nature that had been
dominant before the Scientific Revolution. Once again, hidden sym-
pathies, active forces, vibrating chords, subtle fluids, characteristics,
appetites, affinities, drives and the hidden organizer (Archaeus) were
reintroduced into serious scientific discourse, though purged of their
more bizarre manifestations. Nature became vitalized.
Constructing the Social Sciences
The mid-century shift in the natural sciences which vitalized nature

allowed thinkers that we now would characterize as social scientists to
translate the assumptions and methods of these newly constituted
sciences into the realm of the moral sciences, to effect a "naturalization"
of these disciplines. What bound both together was the belief, central to
the Enlightenment, that a basic analogy between the moral and the
natural world pertained. In Germany this position was affirmed by such
diverse thinkers as Schl6zer, Herder, Forster, Blumenbach, Schiller,
Goethe, Schlosser and Humboldt, in addition to a host of less well
known writers. 28 Given this assumption, a translation from one to the
other was deemed both possible and desirable, though in all such efforts
the act of translation required a displacement of concerns and a

redefinition of concepts.
In this section, I would like to discuss briefly three areas where the
impact of the new sciences was especially evident in setting the research
and explanatory agenda of the new "sciences" of anthropology, history
and Sprachwissenschaft. In the concluding section I will focus upon the
efforts of Wilhelm von Humboldt in these realms to serve as a case study
of how they operated. The three areas I will concentrate upon are: 1) the
concept of scientific system, 2) ideas about change over time, and 3)
general epistemological and methodological principles.
The clearest indicator of how the new model of science was ap-
propriated into the social sciences revolves around the concept of system.
System is an illusive word. Everybody seems to use it, yet they assume its
definition as self-evident. Yet, in the late eighteenth century major
battles were contested over what constituted a system and how it should
be portrayed. For most Germans writing about anthropology, history
and language - the core of the emerging social sciences in Germany - the
concept of system they employed was drawn from those that dealt with
living matter. August Ludwig Schlozer, a leading German historian,
linguist and publicist, provides a fine example. 29 In discussing the nature
of a system, he drew a distinction between two types of ordering
procedures, which he called an Aggregat and a System. An Aggregat
arises when "the whole human race is cut up in parts, all of these parts
numbered, and the available information about each is correctly
presented." Such a view was, however, unsatisfactory. "A picture cut up
into parts in which each part is treated separately does not give a living
representation of the whole." This picture described a mechanistic
principle of order and explication. One had to go beyond mechanism,
Schlozer argued, and create a true system by looking at things with "a
generalizing vision that encompasses the whole; this powerful vision
transforms the aggregate into a system, brings all the states of the earth
together in a unity."3o The power and popularity of this injunction can
be seen in Schiller's inaugural lecture on universal history in which he
paraphrased Schlozer directly.3l Schlozer's and Schiller's goal and those
of countless other German anthropologists, historians, and linguists was
to establish a "Realzusammenhang," a real connection, that would make
clear the "natural, immediate, and obvious connections" between pheno-
mena such as the varieties of the human race, the history of the world
(Weltgeschichte) or the connections oflanguages.
In these assertions, the late Enlightenment's critique of superficial
empiricism and of mechanism (both concentrating only on the external

and immediately perceptible) was taken up and joined to an attack upon
the efficacy of hypothetical or abstract reasoning. The plan for con-
structing a natural system describing real relations was adopted and
complemented by the call for proceeding from outward signs to inner
reality, designed to achieve a comprehension of the unseen, active and
penetrating forces of living nature. As Humboldt said in his anthro-
pological work, "The Eighteenth Century," "observational understand-
ing [der beobachtende Verstand] and the poetic power of imagination
must stand together in a harmonic conjunction."32 The question, of
course, was how this was to be done?
The answer late Enlightenment German social scientists adopted
sought to mediate between the dual operations of investigating structure
and process, being and becoming. Structural analysis located the object
of inquiry within the total field of external and internal synchronic
relations, while the inquiry into process dealt with the "history of
species," with what we would call diachronic analysis. Kant, in his first
essay on anthropology, emphasized that a natural description and a
natural history must be joined, for "it is clear that the knowledge of
nature as it is now, always asks for knowledge of what it once was and
through which row of transformations it went ... to reach its present con-
dition."33 In Herder's terminology, the two approaches were represented
by the figures of place [Ort] and time [Zeit]. The category of place or
structural investigation included a further mediation, that between
nature and nurture. It thus incorporated both the reciprocal-action
model that described the relations between an organized body and its
habitus and the identification of the hidden, active forces residing in and
constituting the social body.
According to the assumption of reciprocal interaction, every organized
body (from the individual to a culture, civilization or language) was
influenced by the physical and social environment in which it existed.
Thus, these thinkers would look to geography, climate, soil, social and
economic organization, government, religion, "opinions," and culture as
those elements which form and limit the body social or linguistic. Those
constituent parts that we would consider specifically unique elements (e.g.
social structure, economic organization and culture) were treated as
"acquired characteristics" or habits. They were ingrained determinants
that defined the "characteristics" of a social body, but were not onto-
logically established qualities. They could be changed.
This attempt to join synchronic and diachronic analyses meant that
no organized body was forever the same, all were, as the Adam
Ferguson called them, "progressive natures."34 "Progressive natures are
subject to the vicissitudes of advancement or decline, but are not
stationary, perhaps in any period of their existence. Thus, in the material
world, subjects organized, being progressive, when they cease to ad-
vance, begin to decline ... " By analogy, intelligence and human society
were also "progressive natures, " continually advancing or declining, and
should be analyzed as such. Unlike stationary (mechanical) bodies which
"are described by the enumeration of coexistent parts ... subjects progres-
sive are characterized by the enumeration of steps, in the passage from
one form or state of excellence to another." But not all progressive
development was continuous. At critical junctures it proceeded through
a series of changes, "revolutions" in which outward form was altered
drastically, followed by gradual development in the newly formed shape.
The image often used for these revolutions was metamorphoses. Schlozer
confirmed these views. "The best periodization in the history of states,"
he said, "is, without a doubt, the genetic, which details the step-like
growth and decline of states (their metamorphoses)."35
What late eighteenth-century social scientists found so fascinating
about the idea of genetic development was that it assumed the dual
existence of individuality and regular order, without collapsing one upon
the other. The "progression" or "degeneration" of a social body or of a
language was not arbitrary. Rather, it followed a pattern analogous to
that of all living entities. These patterns were directed by the internal
mold. These formative principles, hidden within the depths of organized
matter, served as regulative principles. They were the functional equiv-
alents of general laws, insuring the ordered step-by-step progression or
regression of a social body, a language, or a human species. These
patterns differed from axiomatic laws, for they were not sufficient to
account adequately for individual appearances. They dealt only with
form, not with specific manifestations, not with the multiplicity of life.
The active powers operating in the moral world were seen as
analogues to the specific forces in an individual body, the one most
usually cited being the Bildungstrieb. In translating the physical concept
of active force to the moral world, the active forces were defined in
various ways. Sometimes they were seen as the principles of a specific
human activity (commerce, language) or as the spirit of a group (middle
class). In cultures as a whole ~ seen as analogues to varieties within a
species ~ these powers were considered to reside in those people or
groups whose activities were hidden from normal observation, omitted
by traditional historical discourse.

Sch16zer provides us with an insight into which groups late
Enlightenment historians, anthropologists and linguists considered
active. Expanding on the theme of conjunction and universal inter-
connection, Schlozer exclaimed: "All peoples of the world have always
been connected with one another, though in most cases very indirectly ...
The universal historian does not seek, as had previously been done, for
these connections along highways, where armies and conquerors have
marched to the beat of the drum, but rather along byways, where
merchants, apostles, and travelers silently have wandered."36 Apostles,
traders, travelers, along with craftsmen and farmers, scholars, writers,
artists and poets did the real work that kept the body-social alive and
hence were equivalent to the "hidden" active powers in an organized
body. On the other hand, the more conventional subjects of social-
political analysis - nobles, monarchs, and warriors - represented the
external characteristics of a state's history: to concentrate on them alone
was to fall into the dual dangers of "artificial," Linnaean classification
and of mechanistic analysis; it elevated the obvious and often most
superficial aspect of an organized body to an essential characteristic,
providing in Kant's opinion, a "school system" instead of a "natural
system." "The first only had the goal of designating creatures, the second
of bringing them under laws.,,37
In anthropology, history and Sprachwissenschaft, these patterns of
change were assumed universal because they were founded upon
inherent human drives. However, since drives could only be understood
in relation to an object, these descriptive forms only have meaning when
placed within a context. As in the world of nature these forms were
"empty," they could never predict the specifics of any organic entity. For
this reason, specific content could only be apprehended by investigating
the action and interaction of an entity - be it an individual, a language,
or a culture (nation) - existing within a specific environmental context.
Understanding was seen as combining a sense for the formal pattern of
development with an acute awareness of the unique force field of social,
historical and environmental determinants existing at a given moment.
These specific positions were constructed upon the interpretive figures
of mediation. These, in turn, were authorized and unified by the model
of understanding, of "observational reason," that underpinned the new
formulations of science. The epistemology offered a theory of under-
standing founded upon relationship and conjunction rather than upon
identity and separation. It proposed a methodology of investigation and
a procedure of explanation in which analogical reasonmg and

comparative analysis were considered as primary.
Comparative analysis became the most accepted procedure of social
science research. Whether in anthropology, history or Sprachwissen-
schaft, comparative procedures modeled upon natural history and
comparative anatomy became the norm. And since comparisons were
built upon principles of relation not identity, proof by analogy was also
elevated to a prime position in the practices of these three emerging
disciplines.
Comparison and analogical reasoning went hand in hand. They
provided the researcher, as Herder proclaimed, with the key to penetrate
below the superficial level of immediate appearances and to probe the
inner reality of things. In fact, he argued, all great scientific advances were
based upon analogical reasoning. 38 Humboldt used the same argument in
his linguistic studies. "The external form of objects gives the researcher a
mirror that enables his eye to catch a glimpse of its inner nature."
Language, as a set of organized signs fulfilled this role; it was "the
physiology of the intellect."39 Anthropology was assigned a similar task.
As Kant stated, it should strive to evolve a comparative system to classify
and compare human races modeled upon Buffon's definition of a system,
one which emphasized relations [Verwandtschaften] rather than mere
similarities. 4o Humboldt expanded upon this definition. "As in com-
parative anatomy one explains the nature of the human body through an
investigation of its animal elements, so can one in comparative anthro-
pology comparatively judge the characteristics of the moral character of
the different human species by placing them next to each other. "41
Schl6zer, Herder and Humboldt, for example, employed analogical
comparisons with a vengeance. They roamed freely in the world of
physical phenomena to illustrate and explain moral, social, historical,
and linguistic phenomena. This was equally true for other German
thinkers of the late Enlightenment. Comparisons and analogies enabled
German historians and anthropologists to probe the distant past where
documents were lacking, supported ideas about the primacy of poetic
composition in all "primitive" societies, and led to major historical re-
evaluations such as Niebuhr's magisterial recasting of early Roman
history, a work which, I believe, sums up the late Enlightenment's idea
of history.42
The same procedures were carried through by analysts of language
such as Schl6zer who in his Nordische Geschichte dealt with the area
encompassed by Northern Europe and Russia. His self-appointed goal
was to make some sense of the interconnection of the various ethnic

groups that had inhabited the area. He sought to classify these people
along "natural" and "genetic" lines and chose language as the medium
by which this could be achieved. Schlozer proposed a theory of language
which assumed that all languages, though influenced by the habitus in
which they were spoken, developed according to analogically similar
patterns. This was an expansion and refinement upon the work of his
mentor and friend, Johann David Michaelis, who had studied what he
called the Morgenlandische Sprachen. Both Michaelis and Schlozer
assumed that languages could be placed within larger language families
in a way analogous to which individuals are considered members of a
species. The procedure of creating such a natural systematization re-
quired an intimate knowledge of each individual group without denying
the specific individuality of each language (Schlozer not only studied the
northern languages, he was the first to define the "Semitic" languages as
a distinct linguistic group). The dynamics of change could be appre-
hended by comparing the changes in one group with those of others.
Hence single words no longer formed the proof for language relations, as
had been the case for early etymologists. Structure and patterns of
change became central and change was seen as being propelled by
internal forces similar to Blumenbach's Bildungstrieb.
The call to use analogy in order to discern the inner reality hidden
behind external signs confirms the centrality of the interpretative topos
of moving from the immediately observable to the intuited and points to
the important role semiotics assumed for late Enlightenment thinkers. In
its traditional usage, semiotics was a medical term, implying the art of
discerning sicknesses from outward signs, but as Ferguson's statement
quoted above shows, the meaning of semiotics was expanded to include
what we call the social sciences. Nowhere was the procedure more
obvious than in anthropology, where a strong discussion raged through-
out the late eighteenth century concerning the relationship between the
physical characteristics of races and peoples and their moral and
spiritual qualities. Its most exaggerated form was Lavater's physio-
gonomy, but other more moderate attempts were made to link form,
structure, or expression with spirit, confirming the late Enlightenment
tendency to dissolve the mind-body duality. Thus Petrus Camper would
concentrate upon the facial angle as the key to discerning this semiotic
relationship;43 Sommerring looked at comparative anatomy in his
discussion of the Blacks,44 while Blumenbach and Lichtenberg would
dismiss this type of semiotic interpretation as misleading, arguing that
signs such as skin color pertained only to the most superficial part of the
body and that bone structure went through such infinite variations
within each species that no sure signs could be discerned. 45
The Culmination of a Tradition: Wilhelm von Humboldt
Perhaps the most thorough-going and consistent consideration of the

relationship between sign, meaning and society derived from the
principles of Enlightenment vitalism was provided by Wilhelm von
Humboldt. It is with him that I would like to conclude this paper, for I
believe that Humboldt was the most effective German of the period to
translate this late Enlightenment model of science directly to the two
disciplines of Sprachwissenschaft and history and indirectly to anthro-
pology.
For Humboldt the three disciplines were closely connected; anthro-
pology was the science that probed the "characteristics" of human
societies; at the beginning of his researches it was the primary discipline
that imparted meaning to the other social sciences. However, as
Humboldt proceeded in his inquiries, he came to the conclusion that
"characteristics" were formed by and embodied in the languages which
individuals and nations spoke. These languages, in turn, were closely
dependent upon the development of human or world history (Welt-
geschichte). Anthropology, Sprachwissenschaft and history investigated
human nature from a specific point of view, yet all were related in the
larger interconnection of humans founded upon the unity of humankind,
which, in Humboldt's vision, formed the true basis that enabled under-
standing to take place. 46 But since humans were part of the realm of
organized matter, the "laws" which governed it also provided the
analogues for understanding humanity.
Humboldt was adamant in affirming the close connection between the
two realms. "Therefore, it cannot be denied that physical nature forms a
great single whole with the moral: appearances in both obey the same
laws.,,47 The linking element was life, which Humboldt defined as "the
maintenance of a ruling form of thought as a law within a mass of
material through the action of a mysterious power. In the physical world
this form and law is termed organization; in the moral and intellectual it
is character."48 The physical world, which was more clearly known, pro-
vided the analogies upon which the moral and intellectual could be
comprehended and explained, for "it is always a safeguarding device to
trace the analogies in the physical world when investigating that of the
spiritual."49 This was especially true concerning the laws of living matter
and intellectual activity. "Organic life is much closer to the life of the
mind than is physical form or structure, and the laws governing both are
more readily and mutually applicable."so
The refrain of the analogical similarity of the laws governing the
physical/organic and spiritual/moral world runs through all of
Humboldt's writings, from his first attempts at comprehending human
existence through the extremely important and revealing essays on the
male and female principles to "On the Historian's Task" and his great
pieces on comparative linguistics. At times it led to analogical pro-
nouncements that now appear bewildering, such as his definition of the
human race as a "natural plant" just as were the race of lions and of
elephants, all of them being "products of nature."Sl Other analogies were
clearer; In writing of the movement of world history [Weltgeschichte]
Humboldt exclaimed: "The movement of the human race, which world
history shows, originates as all movement in nature does, from the drive
to act and to reproduce and the limitations this drive experiences: it
follows laws that are not always visible."s2 Essential to his whole task
was the assumption that living nature - especially in its drive to act and
reproduce - presents the historian, Sprachwissenschaftler, and anthro-
pologist with the analogies necessary for the construction of these
disciplines as sciences.
Nowhere is this made more evident than in the two great essays
Humboldt composed on defining the disciplines of Sprachwissenschaft
and history, "Ueber das vergleichende Sprachstudium in Beziehung auf
die verschiedenen Epochen der Sprachentwicklung" (1820), and "Ueber
die Aufgabe des Gechichtschreibers" (1821), both read before the
Prussian Academy of Sciences. The first was clearly designed as a plan
for the institution of a new discipline. In it, Humboldt laid out his theory
of language and its study, which formed the ground upon which he later
constructed his monumental study of the Kawi language, Ueber die
Verschiedenheit des mensch lichen Sprachbaues und ihren Einfluss auf die
geistige Entwicklung des Menschegeschlechts (1830-1835). The second
essay is probably the most important short article on historical
understanding and writing composed in the nineteenth century.
According to such diverse interpreters as Eduard Spranger, Georg
Iggers, and Hayden White, it served as the theoretical foundation for the
development of modern German historicism. In short these two essays
can be considered true "foundational" documents; yet though mentioned
and analyzed in innumerable works, few commentators have looked at

their connection to the regnant sciences of the times, despite the fact that
both were constructed using critical terms and concepts drawn from
Enlightenment vitalism. They have become archetypical canonical
works, venerated yet limited to the fields they helped establish.
Both incorporated the vitalistic vision of nature and epistemology
that blurred the strict mind/body distinction, emphasizing the mediation
between them. The image of mediation between limiting boundaries and
the desire to expand the space and increase the variety between the limits
reigned supreme in Humboldt's development of a logic of ambiguity.
Subject and object, form and representation, sign and signified, activity
and receptivity, masculine and feminine principles were locked in an
intimate reciprocal relationship. All were were linked by a "secret, mys-
terious connection."53
Within this universal scheme of multiple harmonic relations, history
and Sprachwissenschaft were sciences that dealt with being in time [das
Seyn in der Zeit] characterized by the interaction of diachronic and
synchronic elements. In order to chart this relationship, Humboldt
employed two analogical systems drawn from the life sciences. The first
and most important focused upon reproduction, growth and develop-
ment, the second upon connection, mass, and structure. Together they
represented the two interlocking and limiting poles of time and being,
force and mass, process and structure in which history and language
subsisted.
The generative or reproductive analogy was given primary importance
because it explained origins and offered a model for change over time.
Humboldt constructed his vision of generation upon grounds laid out by
Blumenbach. Conception was a spontaneous process in which a
mysterious hidden force is ignited that separates a specific quantity of
matter from the mass and gives it a unique and individual form. 54
Humboldt raises this analogy to cover all creation ranging from the
single organism to the nation and including the generation of ideas, for
"original initial activity is due to [masculine and feminine] generating
powers."55 The action between matter [Stofj] and formative drive
[Bildungstrieb] was archetypal for all existence in time. 56
Central to this explanatory model is that creation is both immediate
and inexplicable; it is mysterious, the instantaneous result of inner active
forces forming matter. Thus, for example, languages, spring forth at
onceY Nowhere can one see a language in the making, for all languages,
even those of the lowest level of the language's "ladder of organization"
possess everything necessary for complex communication. 58 Creation

cannot be part of the Great Chain of Being which proceeds continuously
through minute gradations. Rather, there are leaps in nature,59 testified
to by the eruption of new species, new languages and new nations. For
this reason, the history of the human race or of languages could not be
conceived as the steady step by step advancement towards a pre-
established goal. "The improvement of the human race is therefore not a
step-like education ... , rather it is nature and always surprises through its
novelty. "60 Traditional teleology is as inapplicable to historical or
linguistic analyses: "teleological history can ... never properly locate the
ultimate goal of events in living things but has to seek it, as it were, in
dead institutions and in the concept of an ideal totality."61
Once creation takes place, then the new entity (organism, individual,
language, nation) acquires its form or organization and begins a regular
step-like "development" [Entwicklung] analogous to that of the life cycle
of an individual,62 though in it development proceeds from a material to
a "finer" more spiritual level. Thus, in the case of language development,
Humboldt formulated an "idealized" three stage theory of Ausbildung,
which constituted its "Ladder of organization" [Organisationsleiter]:
1) the first complete Bildung of its organic structure after its conception:
2) the transformation effected by its mixture with other languages until a
saturation point [Sattigung] is reached. This process is described as cross-
breeding [Kreuzung] or combination [Mischung]: 3) an "inner" and
"finer" Ausbildung that takes place in a "completed organization" in
which language is in control of and fully disposes of its functions. 63 The
process of Ausbildung entails the movement from matter to energy or
spirit, from necessity to freedom,64 with the one proviso that all are
constituted through interplay between opposing limits.
Both form and regular development fall under the heading of
structure, one in space and the other in time. The major features of a
nation's organization are its religion, constitution, and its public,
domestic and individual activities that together constitute its character,
which is rooted in its specific environment. That of a language is its
form, its outer Ausbildung - modified by its inner of spiritual Ausbildung
- which dictates that every word or phrase spoken already anticipates
what isn't or cannot be spoken. Character, whether of a nation or a
language, develops over time according to specific plan. "All living
forces, men as well as plants, nations as well as individuals, mankind as
well as individual peoples, have in common certain qualities, kinds of
development and natural laws. This is even true for products of the
mind, such as literature, art, morals, or the outward form of society,

insofar as they are based on continuous activity with a specific tradition.
The same truth is evident in the step by step ascension to a peak and the
gradual decline from it, or in the transition from a certain perfection to
certain types of degeneracy, and so forth."65
Since this development was regular, it could at times be mechanical in
its effects. When so, Humboldt sometimes employed the language of
chemical affinities to describe normal human and historical develop-
ment. 66 But mechanical activity was not sufficient to explain human
history or language development. As Blumenbach, who constructed the
concept of the Bildungstrieb to mediate between the "two prin-
ciples ... that one had assumed could not be joined, the teleological and
the mechanical,"67 Humboldt called for a similar mediation. Thus, in the
case of world history, it is "compounded from development whose steps
follow one another and from new creations and revolutions. One must
look carefully at both in order to observe and discover its path."68
The discovery of this path is only possible because of the analogies
presented to the historian and Sprachwissenschaftler by the example of
living nature. But, since the essential drives in living nature are not
visible nor capable of being encompassed by abstract reasoning their
portrayal raised a host of problems. Humboldt attempted to solve them
by exploring an epistemological model that mediated between extremes
in the desire to emphasize the realm of the expanded middle, the
informing ground of all existence lying beyond direct knowledge. In both
essays, the interpretive figures already mentioned above play central
roles: the analogy of generation and new creation, the ideas of
development and organization, the interplay between free creation and
regular development, the critique of teleological reasoning and the Great
Chain of Being, and the assumption that internal active powers shape
the external world and are the causes for creative change. What I would
like to focus upon here is his epistemology and what is called his
Ideenlehre, his emphasis upon ideas directing history and language
development.
The epistemological issue is discussed directly in the essay on
language. He began by an assertion of the reciprocal dependence of
word and thought, language and speech, nation and individual. Because
of the mutual embrace of these elements, all language and thought takes
place within specific limits. These limits cannot be transcended by ab-
stract reason. Hence it is impossible to construct a universal grammar or
a universal language, or to establish an identity between significant and
signifier. Language does not merely "represent." It is not a purely

physical and a formal entity composed of sounds and signs. Rather, it is
an activity in which meaning is created. In the process, every speaker,
every language, every nation approaches knowledge from a different
perspective embodying a specific manner of feeling and perceiving. The
"sum of knowledge," however, is "independent" of language. It is a
"field to be cultivated" by the human spirit and lays "between all
languages, in the middle." But, it can only be approached through the
path of human subjectivity.69
Humboldt's choice of words clearly reveals the type of creative
paradox that runs through this model of explanation. Humboldt asserts
the objective existence of the extended middle. Yet its independence is
modified by the image of cultivation (a conscious reference to Bildung),
for that cultivation can only be done through language which in its
individuality is subjective. Thus language is both objective (an expression
of the extended middle) and subjective (a specific set of speech
conventions influenced by time and place).
Here, Humboldt demonstrated the method of progressive separation
and combination central to the logic of ambiguity associated with En-
lightenment vitalism. He began with a consideration of subjectivity and
relativity. But just when it appears that he would propose a thorough-
going theory of linguistic relativity, he reversed his position and
introduced objectivity into the medium of subjectivity, into language. He
did this by reaffirming the analogy between nature and language. Since
language was analogous to a living organism, it must be governed by
natural laws analogous to those that direct organized matter. Language
development and existence was not arbitrary. Language is subject and
object, matter and movement, universal and relative at the same time.
For that reason, all understanding is at once objective and subjective.
Every language and the understanding it conveys is a "chord [Anklang]
of the general nature of humanity. "70
Humboldt uses a similar argument in his discussion of history. Here
the epistemological issues is addressed by asking the question of what
does the historian do when writing history. Humboldt asserts that the
task of the historian is to tell it as it had happened; in this sense the
historian is just a recorder and as such would be considered "merely
receptive and reproductive." But recording the past poses insurmount-
able obstacles, for the really crucial elements in history, the active,
internal forces, are hidden from view, not accessible to direct
observation. "Observation can perceive circumstances which either
accompany or follow one another, but not their inner causal nexus, on
which, after all, their inner truth is solely dependent. "71 To perceive these
causes, the historian had to use creative imagination, intuition and
divination. In this sense the art of composing history was active, creative,
approximating the activities of the poet.
How does one combine these supposedly contradictory approaches -
that of the objective, passive recorder and the subjective, active creator?
The solution Humboldt offered parallels that given by Buffon in 1749.
As noted above, Humboldt had provided a simple formula for this
process in an earlier essay: "observational understanding [der beo-
bachtende Verstand] and the poetic power of imagination must stand
together in a harmonic conjunction."72 In "Ueber die Aufgabe des
Geschichtschreibers," he expanded upon it. "Thus two methods have to
be followed simultaneously in the approach to historical truth; the first is
the exact, impartial, critical investigation of events; the second is the
connecting of the events explored and the intuitive understanding of
them which could not be reached by the first." The filiations with En-
lightenment vitalism signaled by this paraphrase of Buffon were
strengthened by a direct reference to natural description. "Even a simple
depiction of nature cannot be merely an enumeration and depiction of
parts or the measuring of sides and angles; there is also the breath of life
in the whole and an inner character which speaks through it which can
neither be measured nor merely described. Description of nature, too,
will be subjected to the second method, which for such description is the
representation of the form of both the universal and the individual
existence of natural objects."73
Humboldt's characterization not only emphasizes harmonic con-
junction, it again points to the existence of a third mediating element
symbolized by the evocation of the breath of life and inner character.
Humboldt elaborated upon this third element when he discussed the
necessity of perceiving something from inner to outer, from essence to
form, which when translated into historical and artistic representations
become imitations of nature. 74 "If you want to understand the contour of
form from within, you must go back to form per se and to the essence of
the organism, i.e. to mathematics and natural science. The latter provides
the concept, the former the idea of the form. To both must be added, as a
third linking element, the expression of the soul of the spiritual life. "75
This linking element is an analogue of the "breath of life," or the
"middle which lays between all languages." It represents the extended
middle that allows understanding to occur without invoking the strict
mind/body duality essential to mechanistic epistemology. "All under-

standing presupposes in the person who understands, as a condition of
its possibility, an analogue of that which will actually be understood
later: an original, antecedent congruity between subject and object.
Understanding is not merely an extension of the subject, nor is it merely
a borrowing from the object; it is, rather, both simultaneously. Under-
standing always is the application of a pre-existent general idea to
something new and specific."76
This invocation of a third linking element, tied to the concept of life
and related to the essence of an organism, raises an important question
concerning Humboldt's use of Ideen, ideas, as the ultimate motive force
in history. For most commentators, it was the Ideenlehre that made
Humboldt the founder of historicism and the critic of Enlightenment
scientism. Yet, his definition of ideas vary greatly from that usually as-
sociated with the term (hence I shall retain the German term with
reference to Humboldt). I suggest that Humboldt's concept of Idee is
modelled upon the image of the extended middle, especially upon
Buffon's concept of the internal mold and Goethe's Urtyp, both of them
modified by Blumenbach's Bildungstrieb. In effect the Idee functions as
the hidden organizer of matter.
In an earlier fragment, Humboldt addressed the issue of the Ideen in a
discussion of individuality. In history the realm of freedom was as-
sociated with individuality, but individuality, he asserted, could only be
comprehended by relating it to Ideen, which were the eternally given
types that served as the origins for individuals. 77 Universal form and
individual freedom were intimately joined. "Therefore, the individual in
every genus [Gattung] of life is only a mass of matter controlled by an
indivisible force according to a uniform type (now only this, not
something actually thought, is here understood as Idee). And the Idee
and the sensible form of anyone genus of individuals may both - the
former as formative cause, the latter as symbol - lead to the discovery of
one or the other."78 The Idee is the type or formative principle embodied
in all individual members of the genus, though in an infinite variety of
appearances. The individual becomes in this semiotic system both sign
and manifestation of the type.
In "Ueber die Aufgabe des Geschichtschreibers" Humboldt's
language is less laden with these specific terms associated with En-
lightened vitalism. Still he refers to Ideen as active principles, inner
drives, as creators of energies, as form giving, as the core of reality that
is universal; in one place he even evokes the term Urideen, which
underlie everything that can be thought, exist, or have vaiidityJ9

According to Humboldt, an Idee "manifests itself in two ways: on the
one hand as a trend which affects many particulars, in different places
and under different circumstances, and which is initially barely
perceptible, but gradually becomes visible and finally irresistible; on the
other hand as a creation of energies which cannot be deduced in all their
scope and majesty from their attendant circumstances."8o In its first
manifestation the Idee approximates the internal mold with the addition
of the Bildungstrieb's forward motion. In the second, it is the hidden
force that accounts for new births. For Humboldt, the first of these
manifestations was rather apparent, the second more difficult to
perceive. To account for it, he turned to his favorite metaphors of seeds,
plants, and growth. "The idea can entrust itself only to an individual
spiritual force, but the fact that the seed which the idea implants in the
force develops in its own way, that this way remains the same whatever
other individual it is transferred to, and that the plant issuing forth from
it reaches bloom and fruition of itself and then withers and disappears
no matter how the circumstances and individuals involved may develop:
all of this shows that it is the independent nature of the idea which
completes its course in the realm of phenomena."81
Humboldt explained language development in a similar manner. To
achieve the ideal development of language, Humboldt envisioned a
double bi-polar process: progressive Bildung within a language and
increasing cross-fertilization between languages. The first would result in
an enhancement of a language's energy, the second in expanding its
horizon, or its mass, both of which would bring language in closer
harmony with the expanded middle. Even at this highest level, which
Humboldt called the "economy of the human race" the same reciprocal
and harmonic interrelationships between force and mass, time and space,
process and structure characteristic of late Enlightenment vitalism were
at work. 82
Humboldt's linkage of language development to the large scale
process portrayed in his essay on historical writing illustrates an
important feature in the late Enlightenment conception of the sciences of
humanity they desired to establish. The ostensible goal of Humboldt's
essay was to lay the foundations for an independent study of language.
"The comparative study of languages can only provide sure and impor-
tant explanations about language, the development of peoples, and the
Bildung of humanity, when it is made into a self-supporting study
satisfying its own needs and purposes."83 But as this statement reveals,
Humboldt's aims went far beyond the establishment of an independent

discipline. For this supposed self-supporting study was designed to
provide a key to understand what language signified, namely the
development of peoples and the Bildung of humanity.
The analogy between language and culture was so strong, Humboldt
believed, that one could infer from one to the other. Language was sign
and representative for civilization. 84 Hence, it became a key to unlock
the secrets of history just as history provided insights into understanding
language development. But these analogies were not restricted to what
later would be called the Geisteswissenschaften. The central point is that
Humboldt posited the existence of a strong analogy between them and
living nature. This analogical relationship between nature and moral
development validated the assertions late Enlightenment social scientists
made concerning the scientific status of their endeavors. It legitimated
the first step in what we would call the professionalization of the
humanities without surrendering the idea that all partook in a larger
common discourse.
In goal, method, and scientific assumptions, Humboldt developed the
late Enlightenment project of creating a science of humanity (science de
l'homme) to its highest degree. Within this unified vision, the redesigned
social sciences were to playa central role in expanding and refining the
field of knowledge essential to provide the science of humanity with the
empirical data that justified it as an "observational" science, one based
upon the mediation between imagination and the determined
investigation of the particular, and designed to achieve the goal which
drove the endeavor: "The true end of humanity is the highest and most
harmonious development of its powers to a complete and consistent
whole."85 Science and the humanities joined in a harmonious
relationship would help achieve the goal of the Bildung of humanity.
Notes
I. The last section of this essay and portions of the second section were published in an
article entitled "Science and the Construction of the Cultural Sciences in Late
Enlightenment Germany: The Case of Wilhelm von Humboldt," History and Theory
33 (October 1994).
2. G. S. Rousseau and Roy Porter eds. The Ferment of Knowledge: Studies in the
Historiography of Eighteenth-Century Science (Cambridge, 1980).
3. Ibid., 2.
4. Thus, though the term biology was only coined at the beginning of the nineteenth
century and the discipline of biology was constructed during the nineteenth century,
most histories of biology begin with the Greeks.
5. This observation is based upon Keith Baker's article "Enlightenment and the
Institution of Society: Notes for a Conceptual History," in W. F. B. Melching and
W. R. E. Velema, eds., Main Trends in Cultural History (Amsterdam and Atlanta,
1993).
6. See J.G. Pocock's critique of this method with respect to political science in his essay,
"Languages and their Implications: The Transformation of the Study of Political
Thought," in Politics, Language and Time (New York, 1973), pp. 3-42.
7. For an example see Michael Gottlob, Geschichtsschreibung zwischen Aujklarung und
Historismus: Johannes von Muller und Friedrich Christoph Schlosser (Frankfurt am
Main: Peter Lang, 1989).
8. "philosophies of nature were routinely seen by the actors as imbued with social mean-
ing. This was not because of "mere" metphorical glossing, but because in these (and
later) cultural contexts nature and society were deemed to be elements in one
interacting network of significance." Steven Shapin, "Social Uses of Science," in
Ferment of Knowledge, p. 101.
9. In the late eighteenth century despotism was increasingly associated with "allgemeine
GleichfOrmigkeit," precisely the characteristic associated with inert matter in
mechanical systems. Despotism proceeded in a manner analogical to the methods of
mechanical natural philosophy. It simplified everything ("der sonst liberall alles
simplificirt und gleich macht"). It was opposed to a system in which movement was
central and communication critical. See Ludwig Timotheus Spittler, Sammtliche Werke
(Stuttgart, 1827-1837), vol. XV, 363. As Horst Thome demonstrates, Herder drew the
connection between the mechanization of thought and the mechanization of social life.
"Ueber den Bereich der Philo sophie und Wissenschaft hinaus wendet Herder die
Metapher der Mechanisierung auch gegen die Strukturen der politisch-gesellschaft-
lichen Welt. Technische Erfindungen wie Pulver, Buchdruck und Kompass, politische
Entwicklungen wie die Herausbildung der absoluten Monarchien haben Armee,
Wirtschaft und Staat zu stabilen, liberpersonlichen Systemen gemacht. In ihn fungieren
Menschen nur noch in vorgegebenen Rollen, ohne dass SpontaneiHit des Handels
ermoglicht oder gewlinscht wlirde." Roman und Naturwissenschaft: Eine Studie zur
Vorgeschichte der deutschen Klassik. Regensburger Beitrage zur deutschen Sprach-und
Literaturwissenschaft, Reihe B. vol. 15. (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1978), pp. 327-328.
Kant also employed the mechanical metaphor to chracterize absolute rule. Peter Burg
makes this clear: "In der 'Aufklarung' und der 'Kritik der Urteilskraft' wird die
Maschine als Metapher verwandt, urn am absolutistischen Staat Kritik zu liben. Die
'Aufklarung' fordert eine Regierung, in der der Mensch 'mehr als Maschine ist.' In der
'Kritik der Urteilskraft' wird der 'monarchische Staat' als 'blosse Maschine' bezeichnet,
wenn er 'durch einen einzelnen absoluten Willen beherrscht wird.' ... Wird hingegen der
monarchische Staat 'nach inneren Volksgesetzen' regiert, ist er ein 'beseelter Korper.'
"Kant und die Franzosische Revolution, pp. 176-177. Humboldt established the same
equation between autocracy and mechanism in The Limits of State Action. "Daher
nimmt in den meisten Staaten von Jahrzehend zu Jahrzehend das Personale des
Staatsdiener, und der Umfang der Registratuen zu, und die Freiheit abo Bei einer
solchen Verwaltung kommt freilich alles auf die genaueste Aufsicht, auf die plinktlichste
und ehrlichste Besorgung an, da der Gelegenheiten, in beiden zu fehlen, so viel mehr
sind ... Dadurch werden die Geschafte beinahe vollig mechanisch und die Menschen
Maschinen; und die wahre Geschicklichkeit und Redlichkeit nehmen immer mit dem
Zutrauen ab." Schriften, vol. I, p. 126. Humboldt also equated mechanical power with
modern military establishments, which he contrasted to earlier "republican" armies
where one fought out of a sense of obligation and choice. Here one encounters the
merging of the discourse of civic republicanism with vitalist science, similar to the
discussion played in Scotland over the question of a standing army.
10. For an excellent interpretation of La Mettrie see A. Vartanian, La Mettrie's L'Homme
Machine: A Study in the Origins of an Idea (Princeton, 1960).
II. Charles Louis Dumas defined vitalism in his important work, Principes de Physiologie,
ou introduction a la experimental, philosophique et medicale de l'homme vivant. "Aus
dem Missbrauch physischer Grundsatze entstand die alte und zahlreiche Secte der
Materialisten. Der Missbrauch der Metaphysik erzeugte die eben so alte Secte der
Spiritualisten. Zwischen beyde tritt noch eine dritte Classe von Physiologen ein, welche
aile Lebenserescheinungen weder bloss von der Materie, noch bloss von der Seeie,
sondern von einem zwischen beyden mitten innen liegenden Vermi:igen ableiten,
welches sich von der einen, wie von der andern durch besondere Eigenthumlichkeiten
unterscheidet und aile Lebensthatigkeiten regiert, leitet und ordnet, ohne durch die
physischen Einwirkungen des materiellen Ki:irpers bestimmt, noch durch die geistigen
Thatigkeiten oder die intellectuellen Krafte des denkenden Grundvermi:igens beseelt
und aufgeklart zu werden. Aus diesen drey Secten sind aile ubrigen physiologischen
Secten hervorgegangen. Aus der ersten die der Mechaniker und Chemiker; aus der
zweyten die der Animisten und Stahlianer; aus der dritten die der Vitalisten." I have
used the German translation, Anfangsgrunde der Physiologie oder Einleitung in eine
auf Erfahrung gegrundete, philosophische und medicinische Kenntniss des leben-
den Menschen. 2 vols., trans. L. A. Kraus and C. J. Pickhard (Gi:ittingen, 1807), vol. I,
p.97.
12. Buffon, De Ie maniere d'etudier & de traiter I'Histoire Naturelle (Paris, 1986: fac.
reprint), p. 3S.
13. Ibid., 66. Adam Ferguson, Principles of Moral and Political Science, 2 vols.
(Edinburgh, 1972), vol. I, p. 79.
14. Beobachtende Vernunft: Philosophie und Anthropologie in der Aujklarung (Frankfurt:
Ullstein, 1977).
IS. Richard S. Westfall, The Construction of Modern Science: Mechanisms and Mechanics
(Cambridge, 1977), p. 33.
16. The term synergy was originally coined by Stahl and taken up by the French
physiologist Paul-Joseph Barthez, Nouveaux elements de la science de l'homme 2 vols.
(Montpellier, 1778), vol. I, p. 146.
17. Elements of Physiology, trans. Charles Caldwell (Philadelphia, 179S) vol. I, p. 33.
18. Ibid., p. 22.
19. Ibid., pp. 6S-66, fn.
20. Ibid., p. 203.
21. Blumenbach described the Bildungstrieb as an "occult quality." Blumenbach, Ueber
den Bildungstrieb, 2 ed. (Gi:ittingen, 1791), pp. 33-34.
22. Blumenbach, Elements of Physiology, vol. I, p. 177. A similar assumption that inner
powers could never be seen, but approximated by looking at outward phenomena was
given by Carl von Dalberg in his Grundsatze der Aesthetik deren Anwendung und
kunftige Entwicklung (Erfurt, 1791).
23. Principles, vol. I, p. 27S.
24. Buffon, Historie der Natur, vol. I, pp. 29-30. In the French original the statement
reads as follows: 'Ton peut dire que I'amour de I'etude de la Nature suppose dans
I'esprit deux qualites qui paroissent opposees, les grandes vues d'un genie ardent qui
embrasse tout d'un coup d'oeil, & les petites attentions d'un instinct laborieux qui ne
s'attache qu'a un seul point." G.L. Leclerc de Buffon, De la Maniere d'etudier & de
traiter I'Histoire Naturelle. Reprint of original edition (Paris, 1986), p. 6.
25. Ibid.
26. Kant defines the schemata as that which "underlies our pure sensible concepts."
Though making sensible understanding possible, its operations remained a mystery.
"This schematism of the understanding, in its application to appearances and their
mere form, is an art concealed in the depths of the human soul, whose real modes of
activity nature is hardly likely ever to allow us to discover, and to have open to our
gaze." And, as so many writers of the time, Kant joined this topos of hidden activities
to the concept of semiotics by designating the schemata as a monogram of something
else. "This much we can assert: the image is a product of the empirical faculty of
reproductive imagination; the schema of sensible concepts .. .is a product and at the
same time a monogram, of pure a priori imagination, through which, and in accord-
ance with which, images themselves first become possible. These images can be
connected with the concept only by the schema which they signify. In themselves they
are never completely congruent with the concept." Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure
Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (New York, 1965), pp. B 180-181 fA 141.
27. Gaston Bachelard, The New Scientific Spirit, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Boston,
1984), pp. 14-16.
28. Herder, who was one of the first to totally embrace this vision of science and apply it
to history, anthropology and language offers testimony to the intimate connection
between nature and society."Die Kraft die in mir denkt und wirkt, ist ihrer Natur nach
eine so ewige Kraft als jene, die Sonne und Sterne zusammenhalt...Denn alles Dasein
ist sich gleich, ein unteilbarer Begriff, im Gr6J3ten sowohl im Kleinsten auf einerlei
Gesetze gegrundet." In essence, "Geist und Moralitat sind auch Physik." Siimmtliche
Werke, vol. XIII, p. 16.
29. Schl6zer is usually called a historian. However, his activities transcended such simple
disciplinary categories. As a leading publicist and commentator upon political events,
he could just as easily be called a political scientist. As a major writer upon what was
then called "statistics." which was a study of the synchronic relations between all
elements of a society, he would merit the appelation of sociologist. And in some of his
most important work, Schl6zer made major contributions to the study of language.
30. August Ludwig Schl6zer, Vorstellung seiner Universal Historie (G6ttingen, 1772), 2
vols., vol. I, pp. 15-19. The generalizing vision to which Schl6zer refers is an anlogy to
Buffon's coup d'oeil. See footnote 22.
31. "So wurde denn unsre Weltgeschichte nie etwas anders als ein Aggregat von
Bruchstlicken werden, und nie den Nahmen einer Wissenschaft verdienen. Jetzt also
kommt ihr der philosophische Verstand zu HUlfe, und, indem er diese Bruckstlicke
durch kunstliche Bindungsglieder verkettet, erhebt er das Aggregat zum System, zu
einem vernunftmaJ3ig zusammenhangenden Ganzen." "Was HeiJ3t und zu welchem
Ende studiert man Universalgeschichte? Eine akademische Antrittsrede," Schillers
siimmtliche Schriften: Historisch-kritische Ausgabe, vol. 9 (Stuttgart, 1870), pp. 95-96.
The close connection between history, anthropolgy, language, and science is made
evident in Schiller's career. He started out as a student of medicine and received a
doctorate from the Karlsschule in Stuttgart. If one compares the interests shown in his
medical writings they overlap very nicely with his later conerns. I discuss these issues
in the essay "Anthropology, Nature and History in the Late Enlightenment: The Case
of Friedrich Schiller," in Schiller als Historiker, ed. Otto Dann (Stuttgart, 1995).
32. "Das Achtzehnte Jahrhundert," in Wilhelm von Humboldt Werke, eds. Andreas Flitner
and Klaus Giel, 5 vols. (Stuttgart, Cotta; 1980), I, 377. "Der beobachtende Verstand
und die dichtende Einbildungskraft miissen in harmonischen Bunde stehen." I call this
an anthropological work because it was an attempt to capture the characteristics of the
period. This, according to Humboldt was the prime goal of anthropologiy. See his
important essay, "Plan einer vergleichnden Anthropologie," Werke, vol. I, pp. 337-375.
33. "Wir nehmen die Bennungen Naturbeschreibung und Naturgechichte gemeiniglich in
einerlei Sinne. Allein es ist klar, daB die KenntniB der Naturdinge, wie sie jetzt sind,
immer noch die ErkenntniB von demjenigen wiinschen lasse, was sie ehedem gewesen
sind, und durch welche Reihe von Veranderungen sie durchgegangen, urn an jedem
Orte in ihren gegenwartigen Zustand zu gelangen. Die Naturgeschichte, woran es uns
fast noch ganzlich fehlt, wiirde uns die Veranderung der Erdgestalt, ingleichen die der
Erdgeschopfe (Pflanzen und Thiere), die sie durch natiirliche Wanderungen erlitten
haben, und ihre daraus entsprungene Abartungen von dem Urbilde der Stammgattung
lehren. Sie wiirde vermuthlich eine groBe Menge schein bar verschiedene Arten zu
Racen eben derselben Gattung zuriickfiihren und das jetzt so weitlauftige Schul system
der Naturbeschreibung in ein physisches System fiir den Verstand verwandeln." "Von
den verschiedenen Racen der Menschen," (1775) in Kants Werke; Akademie-Text-
ausgabe (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1968), vol. II, p. 434.
34. Ferguson was one of the most favored writes for German thinkers of the late
Enlightenment. Writers such as Heeren, Herder, Miiller, Schiller, and Schlosser all
cited him with approval.
35. SchlOzer, Vorstellung Universal Historie, vol. II, p. 358.
36. Ibid., vol. II, pp. 272-273.
37. "Jene verschafft ein Schul system fiir das GedachtniB; diese ein Natursystem fUr den
Verstand; die erstere hat nur zur Absicht, die Geschopfe unter Titel, die zweite, sie
unter Gesetzte zu bringen." "Von den verschiedenen Racen der Menschen," (1775) in
Kants Werke, vol. II, p. 429.
38. "Vom Erkennen und Empfinden der mensch lichen Seele. Bemerkungen und Traume,"
Sammtliche Werke, vol. XIII, p. 16. All great scientific thinkers, Herder claimed, had
used analogies. Newton, Leibniz, and Buffon had been poets against their will. They
had arrived at their great and daring discoveries through "ein neues Bild, eine
Analogie, ein auffallende Gleichnis." Ibid., vol. VIII, p. 170.
39. Once again, the descriptive words employed here are essential. To designate language
as a set of "organized signs" is to invoke the language of late Enlightenment vitalism.
The addition of the characterization of language as the "physiology of the intellect"
makes the connection even stronger, especially in Humboldt's case. He was very
careful in his use of words, continually choosing those that expressed his ideas in a
myriad of ways. I am convinced that these are not merely metaphors, but rather
metonomies, designed to reflect a reality in which he fervently believed.
40. "Daher muB die Buffonsche Regel, daB Thiere, die mit einander fruchtbar Jungen
erzeugen ... doch zu einer und derselben physischen Gattung gehoren, eigentlich nur
als die Definition einer Naturgattung der Thiere iiberhaupt zum Unterschiede von
allen Schulgattungen derselben angesehen werden. Die Schuleintheilung geht auf
Klassen, welche nach Ahnlichkeiten, die Natureintheilung aber auf SUimme, welche
die Thiere nach Verwandtschaften in Ansehung der Erzeugung eintheilt. Kants Werke,
vol. II, p. 429.
41. "Wie man in der vergleichenden Anatomie die Beschaffenheit des menschlichen
Korpers durch die Untersuchung des thierischen erlautert; eben so kann man in einer
vergleichenden Anthropologie die EigentUmlichkeiten des moralischen Characters der
verschiedenen Menschengattungen neben einander aufstellen und vergleichend
beurtheilen." "Plan einer vergleichenden Anthropologie," in Werke, p. 335.
42. Peter Hanns Reill, "Barthold Georg Niebuhr and the Enlightenment Tradition,"
German Studies Review 3 (1980).
43. Peter Camper, Ueber den natarlichen Unterschied des Gesichtszage in Menschen
verschiedener Gegenden und verschiedenen Alters; aber das schone antiker Bildsiiulen und
Geschnittener Steine; nebst Darstellung einer neuen Art, allerlei Menschenkopfe mit
Sicherheit zu zeichen, trans. Samuel T, Sommerring (Berlin, 1792).
44. Samuel Thomas Sommerring, Ober die korperliche Verschiedenheit des Mohren vom
Europiier (Mainz, 1784); Ober die korperliche Verschiedenheit des Negers vom Europiier
(Mainz, 1785). See the excellent dissertation on Camper: Miriam Claude Meijer, The
Anthropology of Petrus Camper (1772-1789) (Los Angeles, 1991).
45. Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, "On the Varities of Mankind," in The Anthropological
Treatises: with Memoirs of Him by Marx and Flourins, trans. & ed. Thomas Bendyshe
(London, 1865). Handbuch der vergleichende Anatomie (Gottingen, 1805). Georg
Christoph Lichtenberg, "Uber Physiognomik: Wider die Physiognomen. Zu BefOrde-
rung der Menschenliebe und Menschenkenntnis," in Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Schriften und Briefe, ed. Wolfgang Promies (Munich: Hanser, 1972) vol. III, pp.
256-295.
46. Humboldt's conception of the unity of humankind underpinned his whole approach.
He made this clear in a letter to Brinckmann in 1803. After criticizing Fichte's idea of
the I and Schelling's pantheism, he defined what he meant by unity: "Diese Einheit ist
die Menschheit, und die Menschheit ist nichts anders a1s ich selbst. Ich und Du, wie
Jacobi immer sagt, sind durchaus Eins und dasselbe, eben so ich und er und ich und sie
und aile Menschen. Es ist nur als wenn jede Facette eines kunstlich geschliffenen
Speigels sich fur einen abgesonderten Spiegel hielte," vol. V, p. 204.
47. "Dennoch ist es unlaugbar, daB die physische Natur nur Ein grosses Ganze mit der
moralischen ausmacht, und die Erscheinungen in beiden nur einerlei Gesetzen
gehorchen." Wilhelm von Humboldt Werke, eds. Andreas Flitner and Klaus Giel, 5
vols. (Stuttgart, Cotta; 1980). In the citations I will give the Werke volumes and pages
first and then in parenthesis the volume and page of the fifteen volume Gesammelte
Schriften. The following quote was taken from "Ueber den Geschlechtsunterschied,"
vol. I, p. 271 (vol. I, p. 314).
48. "Leben heisst durch eine geheimnissvolle Kraft eine Gedankenforrn in einer Masse
von Materie, als Gesetz, herrschend erhalten. In der physischen Welt heisst dieser
Form und dies Gesetz Organisation, in der intellectuellen und moralischen
Charakter." "Betrachtungen Weltgeschichte," vol. I, p. 572 (vol. III, p. 356).
49. "On the Historian's Task," History and Theory 6 (1967), p. 69.
50. Ibid.
51. "Das Menschengeschlecht ist eine Naturpflanze, wie das Geschlecht der Lowen und
Elephanten; seine verschiedenen Stamme und Nationen Naturprodukte,"
"Betrachtungen Weltgeschichte," vol. I, p. 569 (vol. III, p. 352)
wie aile Bewegung in der Natur, aus dem Drange zu wirken und zu zeugen, und den
Hemmungen, die dieser Drang erleidet, und folgt Gesetzen, die nur nicht immer
sichtbar sind." "Betrachtungen Weltgeschichte," vol. I, pp. 571-572 (vol. III, pp. 355,
356).
53. V, 206. In this quote Humboldt was referring directly to the connections between
languges. "Der innre geheimniBvoli wunderbare Zusammenhang aller Sprachen, aber
vor allem der hohe GenuB, mit jeder neuen Sprache in ein neues Gedanken und
Empfindungssystem einzugehen, ziehen mich unendlich an."
54. "Zeugen heisst, jene geheimnissvolle Kraft beginnin lassen, oder mit andern Worten
eine Kraft anziinden, die plotzlich eine gewissen Quantitat von Materie in einer
durchaus bestimmten Form von der Masse losreisst, und nun fortdauernd diese Form
in ihrer Eigenthiimlichkeit allen andern Formen entgegenstellt." "Betrachtungen
Weltgeschichte," vol. I, p. 572 (vol. III, p. 356)
55. "Denn die urspriinglich anfangende Thiitigkeit ist den zeugenden Kraften .. " "Ueber
den Geschlechtsunterschied," vol. I, p. 288 (vol. I, p. 328). Humboldt described the
process of birth as follows: "Es giebt einem Moment der moralischen Erzuegung, auf
dem das Individuum (Nation oder Einzelner) wird, wie es seyn soli, nicht stufenweis,
sondern plotzlich und auf einmal. Alsdann fiingt es an zu seyn, denn vorher war es ein
Anders. Dieser Anfang nun ist auch seine Vollendung; von da geht es unmittelbar in
blosser Entwicklung des Vorhandenen, und mit Kraftabnahme riickwarts."
"Betrachtungen Weltgeschichte," vol. I, p. 569 (vol. III, p. 352)
56. Though Humboldt employed a variety of dyads to characterize the limits in which
harmonic action occurs, his primary choice was the masculine/feminine. If one goes
through his works, the other categories can all be put under headings of masculine and
feminine. For example: mass, matter, receptivity, and warmth are all feminine; their
masculine counterparts are form, drive, activity, clarity. This gendered language
reflects some of Humboldt's own personal sexual problems and those of many of his
generation. Basically he was extremely ambivalent in his male/female relations,
sometimes dreaming of being controlled, othertimes indulging in sadistic fantasies of
control and enslavement. Similar manifestations of masculine ambivalence can be seen
in Goethe, the Schlegel brothers, Schleiermacher, Niebuhr, and Gentz.
57. "Es kann auch die Sprache nichtanders, als auf einmal entstehen, oder urn es genauer
auszudriicken, sie muss in jedem Augenblick ihres Daseyns dasjenige besitzen, was sie
zu einem Ganzen macht." vol. III, p. 2 (vol. IV, p. 3).
58. Ibid. The term "Organisationsleiter" is clearly derived from the language of the life
sciences.
59. Blumenbach as a proponent of epigenesis also drew a distinction between dead and
living matter, denying in the process the Great Chain of Being: "Man kann nicht
inniger von etwas iiberzeugt seyn, als ich es von der machtigen Kluft bin, die die
Nature zwischen der belebten und unbelebten Schopfung, zwischen den organisirten
und unorganischen Geschopfen befestigt hat; und ich sehe bey aller meiner Hoch-
achtung fiir den Scharfsinn, womit die Verfechter der Stufenfolge oder Continuitat der
Natur ihre Leitern angelegt haben, nicht ab, wie sie beym Uebergange von den
organisirten Reichen zum unorganischen ohne einen wirklich etwas gewagten Sprung
durchkommen wollen. Ueber den Bildungstrieb (Gottingen, 1913), pp. 79-80.
60. "Die Vered1ung des Menschengeschlechts ist daher nicht eigentlich von stufenweiser
Ausbildung, und an demselben Individuum, nicht einmal Complexus von Individuen
zu erwarten, sondern Natur, und iiberrascht immer durch Neuheit." "Betrachtungen
zu erwarten, sondern Natur, und iiberrascht immer durch Neuheit." "Betrachtungen

Weltgeschichte," vol. I, p. 569 (vol. III, p. 352)
61. "On the Historians Task," p. 64
62. "Das Leben der Nationen selbst hat ebensowohl seine Organisation, seine Stufen, and
seine Veranderungen, wie der Individuen." "Bewegenden Ursachen Weltgeschichte,"
vol. I, p. 581 (vol. III, p. 63).
63. Werke, III, pp. 2-5. "Notice the predominance of scientific concepts in this short
exposition. Kreuzigung, Stittigung are still standard terms; Bildung has been discussed
above. Mischung has changed its meaning since Humboldt's time. Then it signified the
opposite of what it does today. A Mischung was a chemical term implying chemical
combination; in effect a Mischung was a compound.
64. "In beiden [early and modern languages] vereinigt sich, was in der ganzen Oeconomie
des Menschengeschlechts auf Erden gefunden wird, dass der Ursprung in Naturnoth-
wendigkeit, und physischem Bediirfniss liegt, aber in der fortschreitenden Entwicklung
beide den hiichsten geistigen Zwecken dienen," Werke, vol. III, p. 25.
65. "On the Historian's Task," p. 66.
66. "Das Struktur dieser mechanischen, und - da nichts einen so wichtigen Einfluss auf
die menschlichen Begebenheiten ausiibt, als die Kraft der moralischen Wahlverwandt-
schaften - chemischen Erklarungsart der Weltgeschichte ist im hiichsten Grade
wichtig, und wird es vorziiglich, wenn man dasselbe auf die genauere Kenntniss der
Gesetze lenkt, nach welchen die einzelnen Bestandtheile der Geschichte, die Krafte
und Reagentien, wirken, und Riickwirkungen empfangen. So lasst sich z.B. aus der
innern Nature der Sprachen, und dem Beispiel vieler einzelnen, der Griechischen,
Lateinischen, Italienischen, Franziisischen beweisen, dass die Lebensdauer, und mithin
die sich erhaltende Kraft und Schiinheit einer Sprache von demjenigen, was man ihr
Material nennen kiinnte, von der Fiille und Lebendigkeit der Empfindungsweise der
Nationen, durch deren Brust und Lippengegangen ist, ganz und gar aber nicht von der
Cultur dieser Nationen abhangt;" "Bewegenden Ursachen Weltgeschichte," vol. I, pp.
580-581 (vol. III, p. 362).
67. Elements of Physiology, trans. Charles Caldwell (Philadelphia, 1795) vol. I, pp. 65-66,
fn.
68. "Aus beidem nun, aus der Entwicklung, deren Stufen sich verfolgen lassen, und den
neuen Erzeugungen und Revolutionen ist die Weltgeschichte zusammengesetzt, und
mit Riicksicht auf Beides muss ihr Gang beobachtet und aufgesucht werden."
"Betrachtungen Weltgeschichte," vol. I, pp. 570 (vol. III, p. 353)
69. "Die Summe des Erkennbaren liegt, als das von dem menschlichen Geiste zu be-
arbeitende Feld, zwischen allen Sprachen, und unabhangig von ihnen, in der Mitte;
der Mensch kann sich diesem rein objectiven Gebiet nicht anders, als nach seiner
Erkennungs- und Empfindungsweise, also auf einem subjectiven Wege, nahen," Ibid.,
p.20.
70. Ibid., p. 20.
71. "On the Historians Task," p. 58.
72. "Das Achtzehnte Jahrhundert," vol. I, p. 377 (vol. II, p. 2).
73. "On the Historian's Task," 59. The German reads as follows: "Zwei Wege also miissen
zugleich eingeschlagen werden, sich der historischen Wahrheit zu nahern, die genaue,
partheilose, kritische Ergiindung des Geschehenen, und das Verbinden des
Erforschten, das Ahnden des durch jene Mittel nicht Erreichbaren ... Auch die schlichte
Naturbeschreibung kommt nicht aus mit der Herzahlung und Schilderung der Theile,
dem Messen der Seiten und Winkel, es liegt noch ein lebendiger Hauch auf dem
Ganzen, es spricht ein innere Charakter aus ihm, die sich beide nicht messen, nicht
beschreiben lassen." "Aufgabe," vol. I, p. 587 (vol. IV, pp. 37, 38).
74. "A historical presentation, like an artistic presentation, is an imitation of nature. The
basis of both is the recognition of true form, the discovery of the necessary, the
elimination of the accidental." "On the Historian's Task," p. 6!.
75. Ibid., p. 62
76. Ibid. In a later essay he stated that "alles Verstehen aus Objectivem und Subjectivem
zusammengesetzt ist," "Ueber das Entsehen der grammatischen Formen, und ihren
Einfluss auf die Ideenentwicklung," vol. III, p. 33 (vol. IV, p. 287)
77. "allein die Freiheit erscheint mehr im Einzelnen, die Naturnothwendigkeit mehr an
Massen und dem Geschlecht, und urn das Reich der ersteren noch auf gewisse Weise
auszumessen, muss man vorziiglich den Begriff der Individualitat entwickeln,
nachstdem aber sich an die Ideen wenden, die als ihr in der Unendlichkeit gegebener
Typus, derselben zum Ursprung dienen, und wieder von ihr urn sich her nachgebildet
werden." "Bewegenden Ursachen Weltgeschichte," vol. I, p. 584 (vol. III, pp. 365-366).
78. "Denn die Individualitat in jeder Gattung des Lebens ist nur eine von einer
untheilbaren Kraft nach einem gleichfOrmigen Typus (da nur dies, nicht etwas wirklich
Gedachtes hier unter: Idee verstanden wird) beherrschte Masses des Stoffes; und die
Idee und die sinnliche Gestaltung irgend einer Gattung von Individuen konnen beide,
jene als Bildungsursach, diese als Symbol, zur Auffindung eine der andern hinleiten."
"Bewegenden Ursachen Weltgeschichte," vol. I, p. 584 (vol. III, p. 366).
79. This is not as apparant in the English translation which renders Urideen as "original
ideas." "On the Historian's Task," p. 70. The German text reads as follows: "Auf eine
noch reinere und vollere Weise verschaffen sich die ewigen Urideen alles Denkbaren
Daseyn und Geltung, die Schonheit in allen korperlichen und geistigen Gesalten, die
Wahrheit in dem unabanderlichen Wirken jeder Kraft nach dem inwohnenden Gesetz,
das Recht in dem unerbittlichen Gange der sich ewig richtenden und strafenden
Begebenheiten," vol. I, pp. 604 (vol. IV, p. 55).
80. "On the Historian's Task," p. 68.
8!. "On the Historian's Task," p. 69.
82. Ibid., p. 25.
83. Ibid., p. l.
84. Humboldt made this clear to F.A. Wolf in 1804. "1m Grunde ist alles was ich treibe,
auch der Pindar, Sprachstudium. Ich glaube die Kunst entdeckt zu haben, die Sprache
als ein Vehikel zu brauchen, urn das Hochste und Tiefste, und die Mannigfaltigkeit der
ganzen Welt zu durchfahren, und ich vertiefe mich immer und mehr in dieser Ansicht."
quoted by Volker Heeschen, Die Sprachphilosophie Wilhelm von Humboldts, diss.,
Bremen, 1972, p. 16. Heeschen also emphasizes the heuristic nature of Humboldt's
language studies. They are the vehicles for his "historical, anthropological, and
ethnographic researches," p. 17.
85. Wilhelm von Humboldt, The Limits of State Action, ed. l.W. Burrow (Cambridge,
1969), p. 16.
THE TRANSFORMATION OF PHILOSOPHY
RANDALL COLLINS
University of Pennsylvania
A revolution in philosophy took place in the middle of the period 1750-

1850. This transformation, which affected virtually all of intellectual life
down to the present, was simultaneously a change in the organizational
base and in the intellectual style of philosophers. Not surprisingly, as a
sociologist I will attempt to show that the change in social organization
determined the change in intellectual contents.
The change in the base was the academic revolution: the establish-
ment of the modern research university, initially in Germany, later
spreading around the world. The change in intellectual contents initially
took the form of German Idealism. As the university revolution spread
elsewhere, a version of Idealism typically accompanied it during the
transition. Everywhere, too, in the next generation there was a revolt
against Idealism. The long-term importance of Idealism however was not
in its metaphysics but in the style of philosophical argument it
established; henceforward academic philosophy has been "critical" or
"transcendental" in the Kantian sense, cutting behind all statements to
what they presuppose if they are to be significant.
The Creative Network of Idealist Philosophers
The Idealist revolution provides a particularly clear example of the three

layers of causal grounding for the social production of ideas. We
consider first the clustering of ideas and the social networks among those
who produced them; second, the changing material bases of intellectual
production which undergirded the Idealist movement; and third, the
surrounding political/economic context which generated these organ-
izational changes. From inwards to outwards: the outpouring of Idealist
philosophies by a dense network of creative thinkers, from Konigsberg
to Jena-Weimar to Berlin: surrounding these, the crisis and reform of the
German university system; and at the outmost layer, the French
141
Modernity. 141-16l.
142 Randall Collins
revolution and the Napoleonic wars, which cracked the religious and
political authority of the north German states and unleashed the period
of reform.
One layer does not reduce to another; least of all do the contents of
the philosophies reduce to the outermost material and political
conditions. Intellectuals manoeuver within their own attention space,
reshaping the tools at hand from past and current controversies internal
to their own sphere, while energized by the structural opportunities
opening up in the material and political world surrounding them. Like
pegs through the stack of concentric rings, Kant and Fichte are
intellectual revolutionaries as well as network stars; again, prime movers
in the struggle to reform the universities to the advantage of the
Philosophical Faculty; still again, shapers of the German ideological
response to the French Revolution. Idea-ingredients flow inwards from
each surrounding layer, but the core which transmutes them into
philosophy is the ongoing struggle in intellectual space.
German Idealism begins with Kant's Critique of Pure Reason in 1781,
and by the end of the decade it had erupted into a farflung movement
lasting down into the 1820s. To understand why it should have emerged
in this way, we must start further back, with the pre-Idealist network
from which Kant appeared. Creative networks beget further creativity,
and the intersection of such networks drives up the level. Let us pass
them rapidly in review. l
As of mid-century (the generation active during 1735-1765) German
intellectual life gave no premonition of what was to come. We find three
main intellectual groups whose debates made up the focus of attention:
French-style Enlightenment thinkers, under the protection of Friedrich
the Great and contered on the Academy at Berlin; a lineage of
Leibnizian!Woolfian rationalist philosophers in the universities of north
Germany, especially Halle and Leipzig; and in these same settings,
defenders of Pietist religious sentiment. Kant at Konigsberg was
connected with all three networks, and his philosophy emerged out of his
efforts to reconcile aspects of each position.
After 1765, the networks reorganized. A creative circle emerged at
Konigsberg: beginning not with Kant, but with the popular defender of
sentimental religious feeling, Hamann; as well as their mutual pupil
Herder, who becomes famous a decade before Kant for a romanticist!
nationalist theory of the origins of language. The Berlin circle of Deists
headed by Moses Mendelssohn and outliers including Lessing keep the
Enlightenment banner flying, but increasingly on the defensive as the
The Transformation of Philosophy 143
creative front shifts elsewhere. Now a new network center emerges from
contacts and migrations from the older centers. Herder makes the
acquaintance of the youthful Goethe and his friend lacobi. Soon
thereafter Goethe becomes an organizational leader as well as intel-
lectual creator in his own right. Gaining control of ducal patronage at
Weimar (including the local university, lena), he assembles a group
including Herder, Kantian publicists like Reinhold, and blossoming
literary stars like Schiller. In the mid-1780s, suddenly there is a surge of
enthusiasm over Kant's Critique, emanating for the most part from the
Weimar/lena network. lacobi plays a key role as the foil for these
developments, provoking a fight with Mendelssohn over Deism and
Spinozaist pantheism, and challenging Kant's transcendentalism from
the point of view of skepticism and religious fideism.
In the 1790s Weimar/lena is bubbling with movements spinning off
new combinations from the idea-ingredients of these controversies.
Fichte, a former lena theology student hitherto of no particular success,
visits Kant and leaps into fame by turning transcendental/critical
Idealism into a full-fledged Idealist metaphysics. Gaining a place at the
center of the action at lena, he recruits a circle of followers, including
the boyhood roommates Schelling and Hegel. In Weimar is formed a
literary circle of Romantics, who acquire a scandalous reputation as
advocates simultaneously of sexual liberation and of return to a
poeticized religious past. In this nexus, Schiller expands patriotic
literature into aesthetic Idealism, a line quickly systematized and trump-
eted to the philosophical world by Schelling. Fichte is the first great
energy-star of this period, but the multiple possibilities for intellectual
realignment are grasped very rapidly by Schelling, who is only 20 years
old when he publishes his first Idealist system. In quick succession he
also creates an Idealist Naturphilosophie to take advantage of the latest
openings in scientific disciplines (magnetism, electricity, chemistry):
altogether three systems, including Schelling's aesthetic and theological
versions of Idealism.
At the turn of the century, the Weimar/lena network breaks up. In
part this is an internal dynamic, as rivalrous sub-factions fill intellectual
attention space with their arguments. The networks move geographically
as well: the Romantic circle heads east and eventually settles in Berlin;
there its most famous recruit is Schleiermacher, a court preacher who
uses the new romantic/Idealist techniques of argument to defend
Christianity and deal the death-blow to Deism. Fichte too moves to
Berlin, where he turns from philosophy to political agitation and to
144 Randall Collins
organizational promotion which was to issue in 1810 in the founding of

the new-style university. Schelling leaves Jena for Bavaria where he joins
Jacobi on the religious right. The main line of Idealism, pioneered by
Fichte, is left open; into this gap steps Hegel, an unknown until 1806,
when his Phenomenology of Spirit appears (or indeed, until after Fichte's
death in 1814).
Hegel's career illustrates how philosophical creativity is shaped by
opportunities within the network structure. Since the early l790s he had
been personally close to the heart of the active network, but occupying
the role of follower rather than independent creator. When Schelling
turns conservative and Fichte abandons his slot within intellectual space,
Hegel suddenly has an opening, which he fills with a full-scale rationalist
dialectics. Hegel picks up the central tools of Idealist system-building,
pioneered by Fichte but since left in disuse. Pushing these tools to their
maximal application, Hegel works out a system constituting simultan-
eously a rational replacement for religion, a reconstruction of academic
disciplines, and a defense of the legalconstitutional state. The main line
of Idealist philosophy captures the main organizational center; Hegel
succeeds to Fichte's chair at Berlin, where his teachings routinize the
Idealist revolution.
The last of the great Idealists, Schopenhauer, comes on the scene after
the Weimar/Jena network has already dispersed, and the Berlin uni-
versity dominance is not yet settled. He gathers the best network ties
available under the circumstances, drawing on all sides: from the
remnants of Weimar around the aging Goethe, a circle now connected
with sojourning French conservatives like Mme. de Stael; from the
university lectures of Fichte and Schleiermacher at Berlin; from a skept-
ical/rationalist network at Gottingen. Schopenhauer casts himself as a
reactionary against the now dominant versions of Idealism, by claiming
to revive a purified Kantian transcendentalism; nevertheless he gives it a
contemporary slant by blending it with quasi-biological naturalism.
Schopenhauer's competition with Hegel over student audiences at Berlin
in the early l820s quickly resulted in a decisive victory for Hegel and
Schopenhauer's retreat into private life. Schopenhauer was defeated by
the limitations on intellectual attention space which I call the Law of
Small Numbers; the set of rival positions was already full when
Schopenhauer began producing in the late l810s, and his position failed
of recognition as the result of by being perceived as a minor variant on
Fichte. Only after the array of Idealisms (Hegelian-Flchtean dialectics,
Naturphilosophie, aesthetic Idealism, Schleiermacherian theology) had
collapsed in a fresh generation of the 1840s and 1850s, was the attention
space cleared for Schopenhauer to achieve fame in old age.
The Academicization of Philosophy
Turn now to the organizational level upon which these philosophical

networks rose and fell. Of overriding importance is the institutional
revolution which took place between the publication of Kant's Critique
of Pure Reason in 1781 and Schopenhauer's The World as Will and
Representation in 1819.
Before the academic revolution, the best-known philosophers for
several centuries had been non-academics. The material base for
intellectual creativity was generally patronage. One might include in this
self-patronage of individuals like Deseartes or Bacon, wealthy enough to
support their own writing; or Spinoza, a frugal middle-class version of
the same. Most typical was patronage of individuals by the aristocracy:
Hobbes, household tutor in a royalist family, or Locke, personal
physician to the opposition leader Lord Shaftesbury, are structurally in
the same position. After 1690 or 1700, there was some shift towards
collective forms of patronage. Leibniz, an intellectual and organizational
entrepreneur par excellence, spread the organizational form called the
"Academy" through central Europe, by which a prince established a
material endowment for a group of intellectuals, thereby giving a
measure of autonomy and permanence to their activities. Another such
form of patronage was the custom of rewarding intellectuals with posts
at the disposal of the government. This was particularly prominent in
Britain as the political spoils system set in with parliamentary domin-
ance; Berkeley and Hume both did a good deal of chasing patronage
appointments, the former in the church, the latter most successfully in
diplomatic service. In German of the Kleinstaaterei, apart from the
Academy at Berlin, prominent intellectuals found positions as govern-
ment officials under a sympathetic prince (e.g., Lessing, a court librarian;
Herder, government superintendent of Lutheran clergy; Goethe, court
counselor).
This is not to say academic positions did not exist. But they were low-
paying, low-prestige, and generally trammeled with pressures for
religious orthodoxy. In Scotland where the universities were an ex-
ception to the low condition elsewhere, intellectual life was more
flourishing, but even there what took place in the chairs of philosophy
146 Randall Collins
tended to be pulled toward the magnet of the secular subjects found

outside in the political world (e.g., Adam Smith turning moral philo-
sophy to economics), while the more religiously orthodox fought back
philosophical innovations in the name of a traditional religion and
common sense. In the German universities, followers of Leibniz like
Wolff and Baumgartner wriggled between medieval scholasticism and
the attacks of Pietists; their career troubles underlined the motivation of
younger German intellectuals to seek their fortunes in modern bases of
support outside the universities. In France, the Sorbonne was the bastion
of theological orthodoxy, while throughout the country universities were
mere shells, with few students.
If there was an alternative to the patronage system during the 1700s,
it would have appeared to contemporaries as the market for books and
magazines. There was a rapid expansion of the publishing market in
Germany during the 1770s, and the Sturm und Drang period of literature
was a sort of sensationalized advertising that went along with the
outbreak of this middle-class market. In France, the greatest publishing
enterprise up to its time was the Encyclopedia (1745-1772), multiple
volumes employing a staff of hundreds; and the circle of writers gathered
around it was the catalyst of creativity for virtually everyone of import-
ance in Rousseau's generation. It took some time for the patronage and
the publishing systems to become distinct, however. Early in the century,
the main intellectual circles in England were grouped around the Whigs
(Addison and Steele) and the Tories (Pope, Swift, Bolingbroke,
Chesterfield); it was by contact with this group in the 1720s that the
young French visitors Voltaire and Montesquieu were galvanized into
their own creative paths. These British groups published periodicals and
sponsored books; political connections remained crucial, because ad-
vance subscriptions from the wealthy were a key to a writer's fortune;
and a political appointment would usually reward a writer who did
honor, and ideological service, to his political faction.2
For this reason, the publishing market did not encourage intellectuals
to pursue autonomous concerns on a high level of abstraction; the
attraction was towards partisan polemic, literary style, and a focus on
topical public issues. The anti-metaphysical and in general anti-philo-
sophical tone which characterized the writings from these secular bases
of intellectual production was a result of these conditions. Antagonism
to traditional philosophy was enhanced by the struggle over religion;
secular intellectuals, having found bases free from dependence on the
church, criticized the theologians and Biblical scholars of the old
religious Establishment, and tarred metaphysics with the same brush.

Such secular bases, close to lay audiences or lay patrons, brought about
a dedifferentiation of the intellectual role; the philosopher (or specialist
in abstract ideas) tended also to be a writer of literary entertainments
and a political partisan. In contrast had been the relatively more
specialized role of philosopher within the medieval university in charge
of a specialized portion of the curriculum. It is because of the
institutional change towards the popular market in combination with lay
patronage, that one finds the predominance of the literary intellectual
during this period. 3
The Academic Revolution
The academic revolution pioneered in Germany was a revival and

reform of the medieval organization of higher education. The medieval
university was part of the church, established to train priests and
theologians; it also combined, in lesser or greater degree in various
places, with guilds monopolizing the teaching of law and medicine,
under the legitimation and control of the church. Philosophy, and the
transmission of Greek and Arab learning in science, mathematics, and
rhetoric, comprised the introductory or undergraduate sequence of
training, as preliminaries to the higher studies in one of the credentialled
professions, theology, law or medicine. Given that after 1700 the church
had lost its monopoly on the production of culture, what significance
was there in reviving the university? To understand the question, it is
desirable for us, as 20th century intellectuals and hence products of
universities, to divest ourselves of hindsight which makes us take for
granted the inevitability of this institution.
For in the 1700s the university was nearly abolished. In many places
the universities did disappear, espeeially during the Freneh Revolution
and Napoleonic wars. The old universities were abolished in France in
1793; in Germany 22 of the 42 total went out of existence. The ideo-
logical tone, especially among self-consciously progressive intellectuals,
was to regard universities as outdated and intellectually retrograde.
Leibniz in 1700 had proposed that universities be replaced by govern-
ment-regulated professional schools, with Academies taking over the
preservation and extension of science and high culture. The same
proposal was made by the Prussian reform minister von Massow in
1806. This is in fact what the French had already done, relying on a
148 Randall Collins
system of Academies together with the Grandes Ecoles for engineers,

teachers, and other professionals.
To abolish the university would not have meant abolishing education.
Thus what significance, if any, could there be to preserving the organ-
ization whose main distinction was that it was traditionally under church
control? Notice that the 1700s was a period of considerable expansion in
secondary schools; in Germany, Gymnasia for classical subjects,
Ritterakademie for aristocratic manners; in France, the Jesuit colleges
which spread widely into the middle classes or even lower; in England,
the elite Public Schools. Here again we must guard ourselves against
anachronism. In the 20th century we take it for granted that there is a
sequence, that one attends secondary school in order to prepare for the
university. Before the German university reform, however, these two
types of school were alternatives or rivals (and in fact the age range of
the students tended to be similar in each). The "secondary" schools
taught a largely secularized curriculum, responding rather directly to the
preceived cultural aspirations of its clientele. This made them much more
popular than the universities, whose curricula and credentialling
sequence had been built up during the Middle Ages in connection with
theology and careers within the church.
Thus it would have been feasible, as well as culturally popular, to
abolish the old religious universities entirely, and replace them with a
new system of "High schools" or "colleges" for general cultural status,4
together with professional schools for more specialized training. This did
not occur because: (a) the universities, through the German university
revolution, recovered their cultural prestige and became the center of
intellectual productivity; and (b) they became locked into the apex of the
credentialling sequence, so that indeed it did become necessary to attend
a secondary school (in Germany, a Gymnasium) in order to be admitted
to a university; conversely, to teach in a secondary school, one needed a
university degree. Together with this went other credentialling require-
ments, including the requirement of a university degree for government
officials (in Prussia after 1804), and a new regulation of access to
professional training via the university. Through the reform, the
university made itself structurally necessary, in the educational sequence
that we have come to take for granted.
Is it not abitrary which organizational form won out? If no university
reform had taken place, there would still be a general cultural education,
plus professional training, plus places where specialized scientists and
scholars would pursue their work. What contribution if any does the
preservation of the medieval university structure make to the role of

modern intellectuals and to the contents of their work? The key
difference is that the medieval university had acquired a good deal of
autonomy from lay society, to create its own topics and methods of
argument. It is the medieval university, as a self-governing corporation,
which created the scholastic hierarchies and competitions which are
manifested not only in archaic traditions, but also in the style and
content of the academic disciplines. The medieval university is
responsible for the field of philosophy as an abstract discipline,
conscious of the methods and contents which make up the various
regions of the intellectual field. It is the university structure, shaped by
generations of turf battles over the space for intellectual debate in the
preliminaries to theology and law, that crystalized the self-conscious
enterprises of logic, metaphysics, and epistemology. Without the
university structure, the role of the general-purpose intellectual - i.e., the
philosopher - dedifferentiates back into the lay conception of culture.
The level of abstraction and of self-reflection is lost; instead one has the
literary or political intellectual, engaging sometimes in a rapid play of
ideas, but deterred by its lay audience from exploring anything in depth.
The very survival of philosophy in a technical sense thus depended upon
the survival of the university.
This is not all. For philosophy in the medieval sense did survive in the
French, German, Spanish and Italian universities of the 1700s, with a
backward-looking focus upon the works of Aquinas, Scotus, and Suarez.
The university reform revived another strength of the medieval system at
its height: its structural impetus to creativity. The German university
revolution set off by the foundation of the university of Berlin in 1810
was the creation of the modern research university, where professors
where expected not only to teach the best knowledge of the past but to
create new knowledge. This impetus to innovation came from the
structure of competition institutionalized within the medieval university:
the public disputation; the dissertation and its defense which made one a
full-fledged academic professional; the competition with other professors
and other universities to attract students.
It was these competitive, innovation-provoking structures which the
university's 18th century rivals lacked. The 18th century college or Gym-
nasium taught a finished culture to students who were not expected to go
on to become autonomous producers in their own right; in the same way
the professional school was in the business of transmitting a finished
body of information to lay audiences who would then apply it. Only the
150 Randall Collins
Academies of scientists or artists were expected to create new works. But

in fact the centralized structure of collective patronage did not stimulate
creativity very well; particularly in France, the great Academies tended
to be places for display of honors, for ceremonialism and rather
traditionalistic standards as to contents. The centralized patronage
system, lacking the internal autonomy and ongoing competitiveness of
the university faculties, tended to degenerate into awards for the socially
eminent and bastians of the intellectually conservative.
The key battle, fought out in Germany in the 1790s, was to reform the
position of the Philosophical Faculty within the university. Traditionally
it had constituted the preliminary (undergraduate) training for the higher
faculties of theology, law, and medicine, at a correspondingly lower level
of pay and prestige. The reform made the Philosophical Faculty into a
full-fledged higher faculty, claiming to teach the most advanced subjects,
and with autonomy from the restrictions formerly imposed by the
theologians. This meant that the exercise of reason by its own lights was
to be free of the guidance of doctrine and orthodoxy. A similar battle
had been fought out in the medieval universitites, and a good deal of
creative energy went into manuevering between the rival claims of
Reason and Faith. The edict of 1277, which had enforced the superiority
of theology and legislated against the encroachments of the philo-
sophers, had cut off a revolt of the philosophical teachers (i.e., "the Arts
Faculty") that was heading in the direction later consummated by the
German university revolution.
With the success of the university revolution, the university gradually
asserted its superiority over the alternative bases of research and inno-
vation. Scientific research, carried out by wealthy amateurs or under the
support of patrons, was upstaged as soon as universities underwent suf-
ficient internal differentiation to give bases for the scientific specialties.
In philosophy, which is our central concern here, the university-based
competitive structures quickly established a level of sophisticated con-
ceptualization that outshone the cruder argumentation of lay-oriented
intellectuals. After the German academic revolution, virtually all notable
philosophers have been professors. The generalization is a loose one; a
more precise way to say it is that within each national culture, as soon as
it underwent a German-style university revolution, the academic philo-
sophers took over the center of attention from philosophers outside the
university. 5
In England, the universities did not undergo the reform until 1870.
Prior to that time, dons had to be clerics, and higher research topics
were subordinated to an undergraduate-oriented instruction in the

classics. Independently creative philosophers in England thus preserved
something like the Enlightenment style much longer than in Germany.
The utilitarians (at their height 1810-1830) were amateurs, typically with
connections to lay practice or the business Establishment. Their
successors at mid-century, mediated by John Stuart Mill (a typical
amateur polymath, based at the East India Company), were the
evolutionist circle around Huxley and Spencer. These two interconnected
circles controlled the main centers of the now greatly expanded publish-
ing industry; they edited the new political/literary journals such as The
Westminster Review and The Economist as well as the Encyclopedia
Brittanica; Spencer made a fortune by publishing in effect an ency-
clopedia of his own. Others of the period were the wealthy amateur
Buckle, famous for his materialist determinism; and Carlyle, successful
as a flamboyant and sentimentalist popular writer. We see here a
continuation of the anti-metaphysical, militantly secularist themes of the
lay thinkers of the previous century.
In the United States, the university reform began in the late 1870s and
1880s, by sojourners importing the model from Germany. Prior to this
notable philosophy was amateur: the New England Transcendentalists in
the 1830s and 40s, and a Hegelian circle at St. Louis in the 1860s and 70s.
In this case philosophy was not anti-religious, and in its content it even
comprised an offshoot of the German philosophies, but it had the mark of
amateur thinkers nevertheless. The major Transcendentalists were
literary/philosophical hybrids, poet/essayists like Emerson and Thoreau;
their methods were far from the critical and dialectic techniques of the
Germans, instead extolling an popularized aesthetic nature-religiosity.
Like most amateur philosophers of the period since 1700, the
Transcendentalists' concern was a popular stance about religion. Here we
see how much difference a state church makes for national styles of
popular philosophy. In England, where the conservative Establishment
was allied with an Established church, political reformers from Bentham
to Spencer were militant secularists, and their philosophies were utilitarian
and materialist. In the U.S., where the church was disestablished from the
outset, intellectuals were more likely to based upon liberal/conservative
splits within the Protestant churches themselves. Thus Emerson and his
group were involved in Unitarian movments, and Transcendentalism was
an ideological counterpart of church liberalization.
If amateur philosophy remained intellectually non-differentiated and
non-technical, wherever the university revolution occured there was an
152 Randall Collins
upsurge of technical, metaphysically-oriented philosophy. In the U.S.,

this is the wave of Idealism led by Royce and the early Dewey, within
which pragmatism eventually creates a distinctive strand. In Britain, it is
Idealism led by Jowett, Green, Bradley, and Bosanquet. In Italy, it is
again Idealism with Labriola and Croce. In France, where the university
system is reorganized along German lines after 1870, Boutroux,
Lachelier, Hamelin and Bergson push Idealist and vitalist themes. After
the initial wave, usually in Idealist form, there are further developments;
but now it becomes distinctively academic philosophy, technically
rigorous, and remote from the clear political and religious appeals of the
lay-based philosophers whom they now displace. 6
Philosophical Style and Contents
In non-academic settings, philosophy was generally anti-metaphysical,

and indeed anti-philosophical in the technical sense. If the philosopher is
the archetypal, all-purpose intellectual, concerned with questions of
widest interest, the role of "philosopher" will exist whether there is an
academic position by this name or not. The non-academic philosopher
however does not construe the realm of foundational issues as a distinc-
tive ontological field, but tends to concretize it: metaphysics is replaced
by the substantive contents of some other discipline - science, literature,
social theory, reasoned political ideology. Marx, moving from his youth-
ful academic career to political journalism and agitation, takes a predict-
able path in transforming Hegelian philosophy into political economy.
When Marx felt he was turning Hegel's system from its head to its feet,
he was passing through the reversal of perspectives typical of the division
between the autonomy of academic philosophy and the lay-orientation
of non-academic intellectuals.
The university revolution affected the contents of philosophy in two
phases: in the transitional generation, when Idealism was created; and in
the following generations, when there was a reaction against Idealism.
That Idealism should have occured at all around 1800 is rather surpris-
ing. It came as a reversal of the preceding philosophical position, which
believed it had seen the death of metaphysics. (We see this still in the
l830s in Comte, a non-academic in the professional-school oriented
French system, who holds that history had already passed through the
stages of theology, metaphysics, and had reached positive science.) Yet
German Idealism was one of the greatest efflorescences of idealist
thinking in aU of world history; moreover, in contrast to the Idealisms of

India or of Greek Neo-Platonism, which treat the existence of the
material world as an illusion, German Idealism claims to be able to
derive the laws governing the empirical world, scientific and historical
alike, from the principles revealed in the Absolute. This Idealism is not
world-escaping but world-dominating: it makes as ambitious a claim to
intellectual power as anything ever proposed.
The key to the puzzle is that Idealism is the ideology of the university
revolution. In support of this let me offer three pieces of evidence.
1. The creators of German Idealism were the leaders in the movement to
reform the university. Kant, when in 1781 he proposes a Copernican
revolution in philosophy, explicitly links it to the claim that
philosophy should become the Queen of the Sciences. In 1798, in his
last published work, Der Streit der Fakultaeten, Kant argues that
philosophy has the task of establishing the limits and character of
knowledge in all other disciplines; thus it should judge the claims of
theology, and not vice versa. (For good measure, he throws in the
claim of philosophy over law and medicine as well.) Fichte, who
moves Idealism from its moderate Kantian critical phase to the
ambitious claims of an aU-explaining metaphysical system, was the
principal agitator for a reformed university system which would
provide the governing elite of Germany. It is Fichte's followers in the
Prussian reform movement, notably Wilhelm von Humboldt, who
founded the university of Berlin, with Fichte as first rector. After
Fichte's death, the leading Idealist theologian, Schleiermacher, took
over as rector, and Hegel was brought to Berlin as Fichte's successor
in philosophy. Schelling too agitated for university reform.
2. Wherever the German university reform was adopted elsewhere, a
generation of Idealist philosophers appeared. We have already noted
this connection: Royce in the U.S., Green et al. in England, Croce in
Italy. This is not merely a matter of inteUectual transmission from one
country to another. The time lags, in some cases, were two or three
generations, by which time philosophy in Germany itself was no
longer Idealist. Conversely, although German philosophy was known
in other countries already in the early 1800s, it did not displace the
main thinkers at that time. England remained heavily utilitarian,
France kept up the materialism and naturalism of the Ideologues and
the Comteans. When the university reform was finally adopted,
sometimes a specific German philosophy was imported (most often
Hegel); but in each case there was also an indigenous form of Idealism
154 Randall Collins
(Bradley, Royce, Croce), often quite critical of Hegel.

3. The contents of Idealism support the claim of intellectual autonomy
and dominance by the philosophical faculty. The initial phase of
idealism in Kant's critical philosophy, was directed against the claims
of theology to know ultimate reality. It is impossible to know the
thing-in-itself, and any such claims lead to inescapable antinomies.
There is no justification for religion except that which is provided by
transcendental critique demonstrating the necessity of moral and
teleological categories of thinking. Kant's critical philosophy also
demonstrates that no field can know the validity and limits of its own
claims of knowledge, until they have been examined by the trans-
cendental methods of philosophy. Kant's revolution simultaneously
downgrades theology, and raises philosophy into the arbiter of all
knowledge. Kant does not cut off the validity of any empirical,
phenomenal field of inquiry as long as its practitioners stick to their
own sphere of investigation. Empirical scholarly inquiry is en-
couraged; so are ongoing philosophical investigations to reveal how
the empirically derived laws (synthetic a posteriori) of specific fields
are related to the transcendental categories (synthetic a priori).
Fichte, Schelling and Hegel create a much more militant form of
Idealism, in which all reality is shown to be a working out of the dialect-
ical principles within the absolute Self. If Kant's prohibition of know-
ledge of the thing-in-itself was a prohibition of speculative theology, the
later Idealists were claiming theological turf as a preserve for philo-
sophers. One might say that Fichte and his followers sensed a vacuum in
intellectual space, which was simultaneously an opening in the organ-
izational space of the university. Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel (as well as
most of their early compatriots) had begun their careers as theology
students, then migrated to the more promising field of philosophy; now
they were coming home to claim theological chairs as well.
The university reform in Germany occured in a period of general
reform: the abolition of feudalism, the emancipation of the Jews, the
superiority of secular authority over the church. But in contrast to the
French Revolution, where Christianity itself was temporarily abolished,
and its universities were replaced by a secular educational system, in
Germany the old Christian universities were not abolished but taken
over by uprising from within. In contrast to Revolutionary France,
where the mood was militant secularism, and the most extreme expres-
sions of atheism and materialism were published (de Sade, Lamarck,
Laplace), in Germany there was an ideological reform within Christian-
ity, not an overthrow. Idealism is a halfway house of religious reform,

replacing Biblical dogma with a theology of pure reason. In earlier eras
such a philosophy would have been regarded as heresy; but in this era of
new religious and political freedom, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel invent
their own religions, without fear of retribution, and indeed with high
hopes that it might be institutionalized in the official educational system
of the state.
Later radicals, like Feuerbach and Marx, regarded Hegel as having
sold out to the conservative state. But their own militancy, grounded in a
new political situation, missed the point of why the Idealists had
proliferated so successfully between 1780 and 1820. Kant cautiously and
skillfully pared away the claims of theology, and elevated philosophy to
procedural precedence as a discipline. Fichte, sensing the institutional
floodgates opening, preached rather apocalyptically the dominance of
Reason and Freedom, and proposed a means to institutionalize these
ideals in a new university organization. 7 Hegel, reaping the institutional
success of the university revolution at Berlin, is conscious of living in a
time after Reason has finished a forward step in political and religious
institutions. Hegel is no reactionary, but a careful progressive. It is this
quality of moderate reasonableness that the Idealists in general offer in
place of religion for a time of growing secularism.
When the university reform is adopted in England, the U.S., and
elsewhere, the same kind of religious transition occurs. Clerical control
of higher education is displaced by lay control. Green is in the first
generation of British dons who no longer are required to be clergy.
Bradley made a point of parking his bicycle in the college chapel at
Oxford. The American colleges, previously centers of denominational
piety, now become cosmopolitan research centers. During the transition-
al generation a half-way house had considerable appeal: a philosophy
which touts its independence from theological tradition, but nevertheless
by reason itself founds basic metaphysical and ethical principles that do
much of the same work as the Biblical God.
In one respect, the Idealisms of the later university reforms are more
limited than the Idealist systems in the original university revolution in
Germany. Fichte and his followers were moving into an organizational
vacuum, not only in theology, but in virtually all of the academic disci-
plines. The reformed university, as an organization claiming to cover all
the fundamental areas of knowledge, would be bound to incorporate all
the modern, secular disciplines, many of which had been developed in
non-academic settings. The Philosophical Faculty was in the process of
156 Randall Collins
expanding into all the areas of arts and sciences; all could be regarded as
branches of moral or natural philosophy. When Kant showed how a
transcendental critique could reveal the necessary categories underlying
any valid form of knowledge, and Fichte demonstrated how the
dialectical relationships among the categories of understanding could be
used to deduce all phenomenal principles, a path was opened up for
philosophers to enter all manner of specific fields. In the more limited
vorsion of this claim, that worked out by the Neo-Kantians later in the
19th century, the philosopher merely laid bare the categories by which
any understanding could occur in a field such as history or aesthetics. In
the more radical version, a philosopher like Schelling could step in and
deduce the basic laws of nature; for instance, at just the time when
Galvani and Volta were discovering the principles of electricity, Schelling
could plausibly claim to deduce positive and negative electrical fields
from the dialectical polarities of Reason. Hegel could attempt to do
something similar for the newly emerging academic disciplines of politi-
cal, social and art history.
The philosophers' ambitions to supply the substantive theories of
specific disciplines were a product of that historical moment, when the
university was becoming the home to the research disciplines. In the fol-
lowing generation, as the specialized disciplines expanded their number
of university chairs, and agitated for independent budgets and faculty
appointments, the claims of Naturphilosophie and of Hegelianized
history were repudiated. When the British, American, and Italian uni-
versities got around to their reforms, in the 1870s or later, the Idealism
that accompanied these reforms was of a narrower kind that the original
German Idealism. It was more strictly limited to being a halfway house
between religion and secularism, avoiding claims to legislate the prin-
ciples of any specific science or scholarly discipline. Bradley, who always
protested against being considered part of an English "Hegelian school"
presented a narrower dialectic, without claims of historical progressions
or scientific derivations; it is purely a logical argument for the overriding
reality of the Absolute within which all human concerns are ultimately
resolved and given meaning. It is a religion within the bounds, and by
the tools, of pure reason.
There is a revolt against Idealism in every national academic system in
the generation after the university reform. This is no surprise; intellectual
life is a continuing series of conflicts, carried out with the tools forged by
one's predecessors. In addition, secularization everywhere eventually
won a complete victory within the academic world. The claims of
religious specialists were reduced to that of one specialty on a par with

any other. After the older generation died out, even a sentimental respect
for religious tradition no longer had much influence. The younger
generation of intellectuals, unconcerned about the sensibilities of their
academic grandparents, took as its intellectual capital the weaknesses
presented by the Idealist half-way house. The Germans, who first
underwent the Idealist revolution, were the first to repudiate it. After
Hegel's death come Feuerbach and Marx. In England, Bosanquet and
Bradley become the targets for Moore and Russell. In America, Royce
and the religious-pragmatist James are superceded by C. I. Lewis,
Stevenson, and Quine.
Nevertheless, philosophy everywhere flows in channels initially cut by
the Idealist revolution. Although flamboyant Idealism has been
repudiated, philosophy has not gone back to the style of thinking of the
lay thinkers of the Enlightenment or of the utilitarians. Academic philo-
sophers are now irreparably technical; and even in internecine polemics
when they deride "philosophy" and call for its death, they continue to
hold onto the turf colonized by the initial German Idealists.
All academic philosophers since about 1800 have been post-Kantians.
That is to say, they all do "critical" philosophy, taking for granted that
ontological claims must pass through an epistemological filter; and all
search for what there is in the mind, or to depersonalize it further, in the
semiotic process, which shapes the nature of what is taken to be
knowledge. Kant taught philosophers to use the argumentative weapon
of asking what it is that must necessarily be presumed for an argument
to be made at all; virtually all subsequent philosophy might be described
as "transcendental" in the strict sense, however much later philosophers
might despise the terminology.
It is no surprise that after the downfall of the more ambitious Idealist
metaphysics, there should be a conscious revival movement of Neo-
Kantianism. The networks of philosophical movements, right through
the 20th century, have been to a large extent offshoots of the Neo-
Kantians: this includes such rival branches as the phenomenologists and
existentialists; Fregean logicians and the Vienna Circle positivists; and
also the semiotic structuralists, hermeneuticists and postmodernists.
More broadly, this means the philosophical tools forged in the original
academic revolution still mark out the turf of academic philosophy. The
original effort to delimit and then to take over the territory of theology
has been outdated. What remains are the techniques initially used for
that battle. Philosophers learned that the most widely applicable
158 Randall Collins
weapons in argument are those which probe the ground beneath the
argumentative weapons of all other specialists. Philosophy claims the
most general right of the autonomous intellectual community to carryon
its arguments, and to judge the validity of everything else. This makes
the same claim in intellectual terms that the academic revolution did
organizationally: the autonomy of intellectuals to run their own affairs,
and to bring all the world under the scope of their judgement.
Two Great Transformations of the Bases of Intellectual Production
Is there a Great Transformation of intellectual life in the period

1750-1850? Yes; in fact there are two. These are not the only
transformations of the fundamental conditions of intellectual production
that have ever happened in Europe; an earlier one, around 1550-1650, had
created a distinctive offshoot of intellectual communities which shifted to
high-consensus and rapid-discovery in some restricted fields of
mathematics and natural science. This earlier "scientific revolution" did
not create natural science, but only gave it its peculiar dynamic in contrast
to other modes of intellectual organization. But this "scientific revolution"
was not such an upheaval of intellectual life as it has been made out to be
in retrospect. For the most part the new science was easily enough made
compatible with the dominance of theology; nor did it challenge the
prevalence of literary modes over scientific ones (as Heilbron shows; see
Footnote 3).
The two great transformations which occured in our period were the
university revolution, and the shift of literary production from patronage
bases to the commercial marketplace. The university transformation had
an enormous effect upon philosophy, and indeed upon all of the tra-
ditional disciplines, for it freed them from dominance by theologians. At
the same time it gave them control of an organization once shaped in the
heart of the church, and thus an organizational base with high social
prestige and internal autonomies founded upon the medieval guilds. The
university revolution was intellectuals taking control of their own base;
the Idealist philosophies of the moment of transition were ideologies of
exultation, just as post-Idealist thought is self-confidently technical and
beholden to no-one. For better or worse, the entire ethos of the higher
intellect in the period following from the German university revolution is
that of the institutionally-protected specialist in esoteric disciplinary
abstractions.
The other great revolution took place in more diffuse fashion. With
the university revolution, we can trace the precise institutional struggles
in Germany and the moment of their spread to other societies. The shift
from patronage to the literary marketplace happened more or less
simultaneously in Enqland and France, hitting Germany to a lesser
degree (although not without admixture to the Idealist period, as we see
in the ambivalence about technical philosophy on the part of Goethe,
the first big German commercial literary success). Russia and other
societies experience their upsurge of commercial literature somewhat
later. Thus we might roughly divide societies into those which were early
in the university revolution (notably northern Germany), and those
which had delayed university revolutions but shifted early and forcefully
into the literary marketplace. In France, as Heilbron (op. cit.) shows, the
shift in the base of literary production had a dramatic quality, due to the
1789 Revolution; this suddenly undercut the aristocratic salons which
had undergirded intellectual life, throwing intellectuals either into a
search for state patronage (which did not give many opportunities for
the literary mode), or into the commercial marketplace for journalism
and books. It is because of this painful transition that France became
home of the archetypal alienated intellectual, resentful of better pro-
tected non-literary intellectuals in the official academies and UOl-
versi ties. 8
The alienated literary intellectual and the technically abstract aca-
demic specialist: these are the two types produced by the twin trans-
formations in the conditions of modern intellectual life. In some ways,
one might say the university revolution was the more far-reaching,
insofar as science as we know it took off into its higher levels of
specialized production when it became based in university disciplines. On
the other hand, life in the modern academic world has its costs, well
known to its own members; thus the prevalence of the academic mode of
intellectual production goes along with a certain amount of academic
self-hatred, and with a current of envy or even adulation for the literary
intellectual who happens to be successful on the market. Not of the
merely "commercial" success, to be sure; but of the writer who manages
to be simultaneously an "intellectual" by academic standards, while
transcending specialties and speaking successfully to a wider audience. It
is a rare and unstable combination. This tension of ideals constitutes the
condition of modern intellectual life, right on down to our own period of
"post-" or "hyper-" modernity.
160 Randall Collins
Notes
I. Greater detail about the networks of philosophers, their career paths and academic/
intellectual bases is provided in my work in progress, The Sociology of Philosophies: A
Global Theory of Intellectual Change. Sources for what appears in this paper are given
there. An earlier version appeared as Randall Collins, "A Micro-Macro Theory of
Creativity in Intellectual Careers: the Case of German Idealist Philosophy,"
Sociological Theory 5 (1987) 47-69.
2. In France, a mixture of various non-academic bases existed throughout the century.
Voltaire and Rousseau, although popularized by the new publishing market, relied for
material support primarily upon old-fashioned individual patronage; Voltaire at one
point also received some collective patronage at Friedrich the Great's Academy.
Montesquieu, Helvetius, d'Holbach, and Turgot were self-supporting aristocrats,
although their intellectual interests were shaped by contacts with the circles around the
new publishing enterprises.
3. lohan Heilbron, The Rise of Social Theory (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995).
4. The historical change in terminology is revealing. In the 20th century, especially in the
Anglophone world, "college" is colloquially synonymous with "university." In the
18th century and earlier, "college" meant generally what we today would call a
"secondary" school.
5. I put aside some cases which further complicate the argument. A few non-academic
individuals have become famous in philosophy even after the academic revolution in
their nation: e.g., Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Sartre, Camus. But most of these were
academic hybrids, drop-outs from academic careers (Sartre teachinq in a Iycee was
pursuinq a typical French academic career, like that of Bergson). And we see in their
work a shift back towards a literary mode, a dedifferentiation of the intellectual role
and a revolt against the technical level of philosophy along with this move away from
an academic base.
6. I omit discussion of how earlier non-academic philosophers such as Descartes and
Spinoza ended up creating metaphysical systems. Generally speaking, this was against
their expressed intentions; they were part of the scientific revolution, that is to say the
movement of rapid discovery research scientists, which their general arguments were
intended to justify. These philosophers were unable to replace philosophy with science,
because the very act of arguing for the foundations of science, and any continuation of
these arguments by their successors, recreates the turf of philosophy. Why thinkers
like Descartes stayed on the abstract level whereas the 18th century philosophes or 19th
century utilitarians limited their issues to topical lay concerns, cannot be explained of
course by their material bases, since all of them were non-academics. Briefly, the 17th
century thinkers were inwardly oriented toward their own network, especially the part
of it which was carrying out the autonomous researches of physical and mathematical
science; whereas later non-academic philosophers are much more lay-oriented, because
of their bases in popular literary media and political movements.
7. Fichte bursts on the scene in 1794, a year after Christianity had been abolished in
France, and the Revolution had scrapped the Christian calender and proclaimed a new
era in world history beginning with the Year One. German political and religious
institutions were visibly quaking, a reform movement was gaining strength. Who could
foretell how far reform might go?
8. See also lean-Louis Fabiani, Les Philosophes de la Republique (Paris: Editions de

Minuit, 1988), and Christophe Charle, Naissance des "Intellectuels" (Paris: Editions de
Minuit, 1990).
THE LANGUAGE OF MERCANTILISM:
THE ENGLISH ECONOMIC DISCUSSION
DURING THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
LARS MAGNUSSON
Uppsala University
Introduction
In his seminal work Before Adam Smith. The Emergence of Political

Economy 1662-1776 (1980), Terence Hutchinson recognized the boom in
economic writing and thinking which occured in England during the
1690s. Mainly interested in the analytical progress made during this
period by authors such as North, Martyn and Barbon, he also noted a
change in literary format, the "discourse" or package, into which dis-
crete new analytical "unit ideas" (Arthur Lovejoy) were to be found.
Instead of mainly turning out small tracts dealing with the political
issues of the day, several writers struggled with the difficult task to
amalgamate ideas, theories and concepts which had been used in the
previous discussions into a more coherent "discourse of trade", an
encompassing synthesis of a theory of trade and commerce in general.
Obviously, the aim was to put forward general principles upon which
commerce and trade was instituted. l
This synthetic endeavour is perhaps best recognized in Josuah Child's
"textbook" A New Discourse of Trade (1693). This book was much more
than a mere extension of his Discourse of Trade published three years
earlier. In 1690 Child mainly repeated in a slim booklet his by then well-
known opinion that the interest rate ought to be kept down by statute.
The new edition of 1693, however, included much new material and
many more pages. In New Discourse Child seems consciously to have
sought to reveal a number of general principles regarding the role of
trade and commerce for economic development. As this work was
published in numerous editions over the next century, it is clear that it
was widely read. Other works with the same ambition which perhaps did
not achieve such overwhelming commercial success were published by
163
Modernity, 163-188.
164 Lars Magnusson
Charles Davenant, Nicholas Barbon, Simon Clement, Dudley North and

others. Another influential writer of this period - John Cary, the
merchant from Bristol who argued for more industrial protection - even
used the word "science" when attempting to present some general
principles regarding trade:
"In order to discover whether a Nation gets or loses by its trade, 'tis necessary first
to enquire into the Principles whereupon it is built; for Trade hath its Principles as
other Sciences have, and as difficult to understand ... "2
It is not very difficult to understand why the l690s particularly implied a

boom in economic writing and thinking. The Glorious Revolution had
turned the political landscape upside down. With the Stuarts many old
favourites fell in disrepute while others' fortune rose. Especially for those
rent-seeking Tories who hade flocked around the East-India company
the future definitely looked less bright. During the Restoration this
chartered company had been transformed into a joint-stock company.
At the time of 1688, as William Cunningham emphasised, it was an
organisation deeply imbedded within the political structure of a state
which better fitted the name Old Corruption than the one following it.
The company was " ... not only a trade monopoly but a political and
judicial power," according to Cunningham. 3 However, in the 1690s the
company received sharp opposition from competing merchants, wool
manufacturers and Whigs who looked with envy upon the privilegies
upheld by the company. As a result, many of its privilegies were recalled.
It was also a clear sign of the new situation when a rival "whig" East-
india company was set up in 1700. 4
Another major issue which stirred up much controversy during this
stormy period was the new recoin age project. Since the 1620s a number
of suceeding governments had not dared to take the very unpopular step
to debase the currency. At the same time, the chronic fear that circul-
ation would be dried up due to a shortage of money was well established.
This anxiety became even more pronounced after 1663, when the old
prohibitation against the export of bullion was dissolved. s To the extent
there really was a "shortage if money," it was probably more a conse-
quence of the tendency for old silver coin to become worned out in cir-
culation than of the alleged export of coin. Hence, the coins' actual silver
content decreased over time. In accordance with Gresham's law - well-
known at the time - this seems in practice to have led to newly minted
silver coin never going into circulation. As new coins contained more
silver, they would be melted down and sold as bullion - sometimes to
The Language of Mercantilism 165
foreigners - which in the public eye made this "drying up" even more
vicious.
In response, a new re-coinage project was launched in the beginning
of the 1690s. It encompassed the replacement of old and worn coins by
new coins which nominally, however, would contain a lesser silver con-
tent than previously. According to a plan made up by William Lowndes,
the introduction of the new coin implied a debasement of the silver
crown from 60 to 75 pence. However, not the least due to John Locke's
intervention, this attempt was halted. Instead the old standard was
preserved. During the next years this would result in a severe deflation
which worsened a trade crisis already in existence. Hence, considerating
this plus the heated debate around the establishment of the Bank of
England in 1694, it is perhaps no wonder that the 1690s must have been
a fruitful decade for economic debate and speculation.
However, these discussions dealing with practical economic issues can
not in themselves explain the specific discursive content of the literary
works - broadsides, pamphlets and whole books - in which these "eco-
nomic" matters were discussed. Thus in order to understand the "boom
of the 1690s" we must also take into account the prevailing intellectual
milieu and the development of concepts and ideas which formed the basis
of the synthetic attempts made during this decade.
First, in order to grasp these synthetic endeavours it is necessary to
point out that the late seventeenth century saw the fulfillment of a natural
scientific approach to economic phenomena which of course had emerged
earlier during this century. The idea that the commercial economy ought
best to be regarded as an independent body with its own laws of motion
was the most important result of this approach. Reading the economic
literature of this period it is amazing to notice how often the human body
and its functions were used as metaphors in order to depict the economic
process. 6 For example blood was very often compared with money and its
circulation a precondition for trade/human motion and strength. Or in a
slightly different manner the writer John Pollexfen stated that: "Trade is
the Body Politick, as Blood to the Body Natural.,,7 Furthermore, when
referring to the idea that a country is entitled to grow poor from an ill-
regulated trade John Cary used the following metaphor: "For as in the
Body Natural, if you draw out Blood faster than the sangufying parts can
supply, it must necessarily wast and decay.,,8 Most certainly, such
references can be multiplied almost endlessly.
More importantly, however, the growing application of the approach
and vocabulary of natural science into the domain of economic and
166 Lars Magnusson
political life made fashionable the use of quantification and empirical

investigation. Moreover, closely related to this was the idea that the
empirically regarded regularities of commercial society - its ups and
downs - to some extent at least could be described and explained in the
same manner as the laws of the natural world: as systematic and part of
a "natural" process. A further conclusion, which at least some would
draw, was that the "laws" of commerce could only be manipulated to a
certain limit. If the politicians interfered too much in its natural
operations, this sensitive machinery would be destroyed with the decay
of trade and wealth as its pitiful result. From this point of view, it can be
no mere coincidence that some of the most important economic writers
during the 1690s - Barbon, Petty, Locke, etc - were trained physicians
and must be regarded as being well acquainted with the contemporary
natural scientific literature. Simultaneously, the gradual breakthrough of
a philosophy of logic which built on Cartesian principles and the
subsequent dismantling of Aristotelian formalism must have played a
compelling role in the same direction. 9
Secondly, such imperialistic tendencies of natural scientific language
also merged with a moral philosophy of natural law that was highly
influential during this period. The attempt to connect these languages is
clearly discernable in much of what John Locke wrote. But it can also be
traced in the writings of for example Charles Davenant and Nicholas
Barbon. From the lively discussion dealing with natural law during the
seventeenth century, the belief of many economic writers in the existence
of a "natural system" of trade relationships would in a general sense be
enforced. However, this influence is explicit only with some writers. Thus
for example Barbon's insistence on the subjective foundation of ex-
change relations and price is close in line with the ideas of Hugo Grotius
and, especially, Samuel Pufendorf. As is well known, Pufendorf had
based his value theory on a solid subjective basis. His conception of
value stemmed from his general theory of man as a social creature
guided by sociabilitas. lO
Hence, especially during the 1690s new ideas and viewpoints gathered
from previous economic discussions melted together with new approaches
to science and methodology in order to establish a "science of trade."
There can surely be no doubt that as a systematic science economics took
a great leap forward during these years. Nothing of this magnitude was in
fact achieved again until the second half of the eighteenth century.
A Science of Trade
We can thus discern during the seventeenth century the emergence of an

economic literature which dealt with a common set of problems with the
help of a common terminology. Since the days of the Physiocrats and
Adam Smith its appearance has often been regarded as the apex of the
"mercantile school" of economics. However, as Professor Judges pointed
out so long ago it is doubtful whether "mercantilism" really constituted
a "school" with a single theoretical creed. Nor did these "mercantilist"
writers necessarily agree on political matters. Some of them defended
protectionist legislation while others emphasised the necessity of
establishing free trade, either partially or in total. A third group seems
not to have been able to make up its mind on this matter, and with
Roger Coke stressed as self-evident that "".all Beneficial Trade ought to
be made free."ll
Against this background it is more fruitful to perceive the mercantilist
literature as a genre with a common set of topics and, to some extent at
least, a common vocabulary. It certainly dealt with many different
"economic" issues, but it is important to note that protectionism versus
free trade in general was not a key focus in any of them. While discussing
whether the interest rate should be fixed by law, defending or castigating
the East India Company etc these writers developed a common language
or vocabulary. They made use of the balance-of-trade idea to elaborate
on the role of foreign trade for economic growth and development. They
cultivated some common views about money, the role of supply and de-
mand and the notion of an independent economic realm with laws of its
own. Over time such economic discussions created a common language
which was developed further during the eighteenth century.
Thus to some extent the eighteenth century only implied a gradual
and contino us development of an economic language inherited from the
preceding century. Gradually, concepts and theoretical propositions
were used in a more coherent way. With regard to value and price theory
there were no definitive disruptions until Ricardo. In monetary theory
there was certainly a clear continuity from Rice Vaughan in the 1630s up
to the "classical" orthodoxy which Joseph Harris put forward in the
1750s.1 2 Slowly also the classical notion of interest rates as being
dependent on the real rate of profit was gaining ground. We can trace it
already in Nicholas Barbon's writings in the 1690s and during the
eighteenth century it matured in the hands of for example Massie and
Hume.
168 Lars Magnusson
Also in other respects we must certainly stress continuity rather than

rapid transformation and change. The view that "the economy" was a
"self-equilibrating system" was of course further developed during the
eighteenth century - but as we argued it was certainly a part already of
the "mercantilist breakthrough" of the 1620s. Moreover, the view that
growth to some extent was linked to a positive net inflow of bullion from
abroad would disappear during the eighteenth century. However, al-
ready in the 1690s this idea was heavily attacked by authors such as
Child, Davenant and Barbon who stressed the role of employment and
manufactures for growth. Instead of disappearing, this viewpoint was
even further emphasised by eighteenth century writers such as Tucker,
Hume - and Smith. Certainly, many of the authors disagreed upon the
means to establish and further improve manufactures. However, it is
possible already during the seventeenth century to discern free trade
positions in the discussion.
Hence, slowly over time a synthesis, appeared which we in analogy
with John Cary's terminology might call "a science of trade." Thus it
was in the discussions on economic topics preceding the "boom of the
1690s" that the supply and demand approach of Mun and Misselden was
further sharpened. It was also in these discussions that the view that the
commercial economy must be percieved as a "natural" system was car-
ried further.
Since Adam Smith it has been emphasised that the "favourable
balance of trade" performs a key role in the formation of a specific mer-
cantilistic discourse. To some extent this is certainly true. Thus this
doctrine was returned to over and over again in economic texts during
this period. As Bruno Suviranta has emphasised this "catchword" was
"good to think with" in the sense that it focused on the role of foreign
trade and commerce for national economic growth and development. 13
This was certainly an issue which most of the economic pamphleteers
and debators took an active interest in during this period. Thus whether
they discussed the role of the French wine import, the East India
company or the impact of high rates of interest the "national" interest
was hailed. However, this concern was neither a child of the seventeenth
century nor an exclusive British speciality. Hence, in most of Europe
during the sixteenth and seventeenth century particular national dis-
courses emerged which dealt with how the nation state should be made
rich and powerful. In several of them the positive role of a net surplus of
money emerging from foreign trade was mentioned. This was the case
for example in Italian and English treatises dealing with the subject.
However, as is well known after a more than a century of controversy

on the interpration of mercantilism, it is not so easy to interpret the
favourable-balance-of-trade doctrine. 14 It seems certain that its meaning
was not so clear even for the contemporary public. First, it seems to have
implied different things for different writers. Secondly, at least in
England, its content changed radically over time. Hence, by the end of
the seventeenth century it had developed into a "labour balance" or
"foreign-paid-income" doctrine which stressed the importance for the
state to have much value-added production (manufactures) within its
borders rather than to import money or bullion for free from foreigners.
However, this doctrine continued to be used because it seemed to focus
on a key device for propelling national economic growth and
modernisation: foreign trade.
The Dutch Example
For the seventeenth century the rise of the Dutch republic indeed seemed
like a miracle. 15 Kings and politicians in the rest of Europe pondered
over how this small republic had been able to prosper and become so
powerful during the seventeenth century. Contemporary observers seem
to have been most impressed by the fact that this small tract of land was
able to house such a plentiful population. Moreover, as a large
population was looked upon as a corner-stone of political power and
military strength, the achievement of the Dutch republic was both feared
and envied as an example to learn and copy from.
How then had this rise to prosperity been achieved? In England's
Treasure of Forraigne Trade (1664) Thomas Mun presented his answer in
a manner highly usual at this time:
" ... for it seems a wonder to the world, that such a small Countrey, not fully so big
as two of our best Shires, having little natural Wealth, Victuals, Timber, or other
necessary amunitions, either for war or peace, should notwithstanding possess
them all in such extraordinary plenty, that besides their own wants (which are very
great) they can and do likewise serve and sell to other Princes, Ships, Ordance,
Cordage, Corn, Powder, Shot and what not not, which by their industrious trading
they gather from all the quarters of the world."16
Thus it was not because of an exceptionally productive agriculture that

this nation had grown so much in plenty. According to William Petty -
the economist and political arithmetician who liked to be exact in
170 Lars Magnusson
matters such as these - :" .. .it is hard to say, that when these places were
first planted, whether an Acre in France was better than the like quantity
in Holland and Zeeland; nor is there any reason to suppose, but that
therefore upon the first Plantation, the number of Planters was in
Proportion to the quantity of Land."1?
Instead, it was commonly agreed that it was trade and industry that
had brought the Dutch republic to its present wealth in men and power.
In 1744 Sir Matthew Decker estimated that: "Trade maintains in Hol-
land seven times more People than the Land deprived of it could
subsist."18 Some sixty years previously Josuah Child defined the key to
the Dutch success: "The prodigous increase of the Netherlanders in their
domestick and foreign Trade, Riches and multitude of Shipping, is the
envy of the present, and may be the wonders of all future generations."19
Furthermore, according to Nicholas Barbon: "The Greatness and Riches
of the United provinces, and State of Venice, consider'd with the little
Tract of ground that belongs to either of their Territories, sufficiently
Demonstrate the great Advantage and profit that Trade brings to a
Nation."2o
When William Temple published his highly influential and often cited
Observations upon the United Provinces of the Netherlands (1673) the
Dutch and the English were at war for the third time in a decade. He
dwelled upon the rise of Holland in the following fashion:
"Tis evident to those, who have read the most, and trave!'d farthest, that no
Country can be found either in this present Age, or upon record of any Story,
where so vast a Trade has been managed, as in the narrow compass of the Four
Maritime Provinces of this Commonwealth: Nay, it is generally esteemed, than
there does to all the rest of Europe ... Nor has Holland grown rich by any Native
Commodities, but by force of Industry; By improvments and Manufacture of all
Foreign growths; By being the genera! Magazine of Europe, and furnishing all
parts with whatever the market wants or invites."21
First, according to Temple, the Dutch had emerged as successful

tradesmen because of their sound political institutions - their "Con-
stitutions and orders." Celebrating the free constitution of the Dutch
republics he stated: " ... as Trade cannot Arise without mutual trust
among Private Men; so it cannot grow or thrive, to any great degree,
without a confidence both of Publick and Private Safety, and conse-
quently a trust in Government, from an opinion of its Strength, Wisdom
and Justice .. .'>22 Furthermore, the liberal Dutch constitution admitted
immigration of non-conformist dissenters into the country. This lead to
many able traders and manufacturers moving into the country and
provided for an open and competetive atmosphere. Consequently,
"mercantilist" writers who were inclined to speak in favour of more free
trade alleged that a higher degree of economic freedom was an im-
portant factor behind Holland's rise to prosperity. Thus the author of
Britannia Languens (Petyt) stated in 1680: "In this the Dutch have a
further advantage upon us, since they allow free Ports, free Trade, and
all other National Freedoms to Forreigners; whereby their People of all
sorts, their Navigation and Stocks of Trade, have increased continual-
ly. "23
William Temple also mentioned a second cause behind the Dutch
miracle: a large population. He said: "I conceive the true original and
ground of Trade, to be great multitude of people crowded into a small
compass of Land, whereby all things necessary to life become dear, and
all Men, who have possessions, are induced to Parsimony; but those who
have none, are forced to industry and labour. .. "24 Hence, a great
population according to Temple served as a necessary condition for the
rise of trade and industry as it made people more industrious and thrifty.
As a next step, naturally, more industry and trade made a further growth
of population possible. For Holland this spiral process of population
and economic growth meant that " .. no other known country in the
world, of the same extent, holds any proportion with this in numbers of
people."25 Somewhat earlier - in the 1620s - Thomas Mun had
proclaimed much of the same message:
"As plenty and power doe make a nation vicious and improvident, so penury and
want doe make a people wise and industrious: concerning the last I might instance
divers Commonwealths of Christendom, who having little or nothing in their own
Territories, do notwithstanding purchase great wealth and strength by their
industrious commerce with strangers, amongst which the United Provinces of the
Low Countreys are now of the greatest note and fame: For since they have cast off
the yoke of the Spanish slavery, how wonderfully are they improved in all humane
policy?"26
Several writers placed the success story of the Dutch Republic into a
historical conjecture which stressed the civilisatory function of trade.
According to Child for example, only trade and increased commun-
ication would serve to cultivate" ... the unsociable Tempers of many bar-
barous People." Hence, trade and commerce was looked upon as creat-
ing the very fundament for a Commonwealth by providing a mental
framework of mutuality and cooperation. In fact, when saluting the role
172 Lars Magnusson
of trade and communication for modernity, he seems not far from what
Hume and the Scottish enlightment would emphasise some half a
century later. Moreover, it is important to note that his historical sketch
was not untypical even during his own time:
"Thus we see how a great part of the People of this nation, who have no Propriety
in the Soil thereof, yet cultivated and Improving the same to the best advantage
and applying the produce thereof, to be imployed in manufactures and transferring
the same from one to another in a way of Traffick and Commerce obtain a distinct
and peculiar interest in the General Wealth of the Nation."27
Hence according to this view, trade created civilisation and economic
growth. At the same time it was generally agreed upon that foreign trade
per se had not created Holland's favourable position. It was on the
contrary emphasised that trade carried out in an improper manner
would lead to the impoverishment of a nation rather than to riches and
power. Most importantly, if foreign trade led to a negative balance of
trade, this would certainty suggest increased poverty and instability. But
if foreign trade was carried out in a fashion which lead to a positive
balance of trade, this would most certainly multiply its wealth and
powers.
However, as we noted, the formula that a positive balance of trade
helped to enrich a country carried different meaning among different
writers. According to Mun it was especially the ability of the Dutch to
carryon a trade from port to port which had led to such a positive
balance. Thus the Dutch Republic had established itself as the magazine
or "Store-house of wares for most places of Christendom." This was a
practice from which the Dutch had drawn great profits, according to
Mun. Furthermore, it was such activities which caused a " ... wonderful
increase" of their" ... Wealt, Shipping, Mariners, Art, People and thereby
the publique Revenues and Excizes." 28
However, according to Mun, a favourable balance of trade would
only have beneficial effects if the inflow of bullion was used to increase
the stock of trade. For other writers, it was not the inflow of money or
bullion due to a positive balance of trade as such that had propelled
Holland's rise. Instead Josuah Gee in 1729 emphasised for both Holland
and England that " .. .it was by the Labour of their Poor employed in
manufactures, and exporting them to other Countries" that the two
countries hade become prosperous. 29 It is clear that Gee here refered to a
"doctrine" often called the "foreign-paid-incomes"- theory. In its most
simplistic version it only said that it was beneficial for a certain country
to export goods which contained as much added value as possible while

imports, to the extent such were necessary at all, should be brought in as
raw materials. It was especially in a paper titled "General Maxims in
Trade" written by Theodore Janssen that the new "doctrine" was fully
spelled out. 30
According to Janssen, the following trades were disadvantagous to a
nation: 1) A trade " ... which brings in things of mere Luxury and Pleas-
ure," 2) a trade which hinders the consumption " ... of our own wares," 3)
a trade " ... which supplies the same goods as we manufacture," and, lastly,
4) " ... the importation upon Easy terms of such Manufactures as are
already introduc'd in a country."31 Moreover, he presented the following
general principle:
"That every Country which takes off our finished manufactures, and returns us
unwrought Materials to be manufactur'd here, contributed so far to the Employment
and Subsistence of ouyr People as the cost of manufacturing those Materials."32
However, although the discussants disagreed upon the most effective

causes behind the rise of the Dutch prosperity they nevertheless seem to
have agreed that its riches went hand in hand with national strength and
power. That power and the kind of plenty that emerged from trade and
industry were two sides of the same coin was in fact explicitly stressed by
most mercantilist writers. Paradoxically, this has not stopped the issue of
power versus plenty as the motive force in mercantilist ideology from
becoming a standing topic in the scientific debate. 33 Hence, opposing
what he interpreted as murky historicism, Jacob Viner especially stressed
that the mercantilists never regarded power in itself but power and plenty
as the end of their efforts. 34 Although it might be questioned whether
Schmoller, Cunningham or Heckscher really regarded power as the sole
aim of mercantilist propagators, Viner's argumentation is most certainly
valid. There are in fact numerous instances to be cited in support for his
view. Thus in a context discussing the effects of the Navigation act
Josuah Child in 1693 explicitly stressed: " ... that Profits and Power ought
jointly to be considered."35 Furthermore, Charles Davenant propounded
that the aim of economic inquiry in general " ... had always been and shall
ever be to show how the wealth and Strenght of England is to be secur'd
and improv'd ... "36 In another tract he asked:
"Can a nation be safe without strength? And is power to be secured but by riches?
And can a country become rich any way, but by the help of well-managed and
extended traffique?"37
174 Lars Magnusson
As Davenant the writer Lewes Roberts had answered these questions

negatively half a century earlier :" ... for that which produceth Riches
doth consequently also beget strength and safety."38
According to most mercantilist writers, therefore, trade and
manufactures were a precondition for military strength and national
power. At the same time national power was regarded as a precondion
for the accumulation of wealth. Hence, according to Davenant, "trade"
tended to "follow power." The historical account had shown, he
thought, that trade was first entertained " ... by little states that were
surrounded by neigbours in strength much superior to them." Unable in
the long run to defend themselves such small countries had become the
prey of greater nations which in most cases had led to the decay of their
trade and commerce: " ... one battle swept away what had been gathered
by the industry of many ages."39 Thus trade necessitated power - but at
the same time power could not exist without plenty and trade.
Economics as a discourse
Leading scholars such as Quentin Skinner and John Pocock have

emphasised the need to at least partly reformulate the task of a modern
history of political thought: namely to take an increased interest in the
historical texts themselves. Hence they have suggested that we must look
closer at the level of performance instead of putting all our emphasis on
the intentions of writers and/or their social environment. We must better
understand the vocabulary used by historical writers and the structure of
their language. In many cases this language - meanings of words which
may since long have been lost - presents a key to a better and more
exhaustive understanding of what past authors wanted to say.40
Also within the history of economics there have been attempts to
move away from a history of economic ideas to the history of economic
language or discourse. In several cases this has implied a critique of the
methodology which still dominates the mainstream history of economic
thought. 41 Within this tradition, a majority of scholars - often econ-
omists by training - have treated their subject as a history of economic
"analysis" rather than of "ideas" - to use Schumpeter's famous
distinction. This has implied that they have emphasised the development
of economics as primarily an "internal" affair: the successive develop-
ment of knowledge and the gradual perfection of theories and analytical
instruments. Mark Blaug is perhaps the most outstanding example of
this approach. When criticising older theorists his standards are those of
modern economic theory, he has explicitly declared. And further in the
same fashion:
" .. .it must be insisted [that] great chunks of history of economic thought are about
mistakes in logic and gaps in analysis, having no connection with contemporary
events. And so .. .I have tried to write a history of economic analysis which pictures
it as evolving out of previous analysis, propelled forward by the desire to refine, to
improve, to perfect, a desire which economists share with all other scientists."42
Such an "internal" - or according to Roger Backhouse "absolutist"43 -

history of economic doctrines of course have certain advantages. It is
clear that a discussion of economic texts to some extent at least must
deal with how new ideas appear and how discussions among experts lead
to the perfection of concepts and analytical tools. However, this
methodology has another side which is very problematic. It neglects the
historical dimension of ideas and doctrines; the "relativist" version of the
history of economic thought according to Backhouse. Most seriously,
this methodology insinuates that most old economics is best treated and
made intelligble from the standpoint of modern economics. From this
follows that the construction of doctrinal development serves the implicit
or explicit task of defending modern theories. And it was such a history
of economic ideas which the historical economist Ashley scornfully
attacked as " ... a museum of intellectual odds and ends, where every
opinion is labeled as either a surprising anticipation of the correct
modern theory or an instance of the extraordinary folly of the dark
ages."44 As a consequence of this methodology, economic writers are not
only put into frameworks totally unintelligble to themselves. Further-
more, as ideas are interpreted in the light of modern theorizing this leads
to their coming to hold quite different meanings than when originally
articulated. Certainly, if one is interested in the historical significance of
specific ideas or doctrines they can only be understood within their
proper historical context.
In the literature on the history of economic doctrine such unhistorical
procedures are customary. This might not be so odd as the method to
read intellectual history backwards has a long past with celebrated
expositors. Early on for example David Ricardo, James Mill and J. R.
McCulloch made Adam Smith the progenitor of what was largely their
own creation, "classical political economy," by more or less conciously
neglecting those aspects of Smith that contradicted their style and
methodology.45 Marx was another anachronistic writer who fabricated a
176 Lars Magnusson
tradition which connected him with Petty, Smith and Ricardo - in order
to point out the revolutionary impact of the labour theory of value. A
more recent example is Keynes who in General Theory reinterpreted
seventeenth century mercantilism in order to fit it into his own line of
thought.
In order to move from such a position to a history of economic
language or discourse, a radical shift towards a more historical reading
of economic texts is necessary. If we return to the general problem,
Pocock has stressed that in order to understand what a certain author "is
getting at" we must begin by recognizing the specific discursive tradition
he is involved in. This means to recover a specific language and treat our
author" ... as inhabiting a universe of langues that gives meaning to the
paroles he performs in them."46 Thus, according to Pocock, it is the
historian's task to learn to recognize the diverse idioms of language or
discourse " ... as they were available in the culture and at the time he is
studying." As any discourse, or language, reflects a specific political,
social or historical context within which it is itself situated, language also
" ... selects and prescribes the context within which it is to be recognized."
Language is self-reflective; it supplies the categories, grammar and
conceptual framework through which experience is articulated. 47
This does not necessarily suggest that Pocock prescribes an elevated
ontological status to "language" or that an author must be reduced into
" ... a mere mouthpiece of his own language."48 Instead the relation
between language and experience is processual and interactive. This
means that language changes. Hence when language is used in acts of
communication, as paroles, this will necessarily eventuate in smaller och
larger modifications in langue over time. 49
Understanding mercantilism as a literary genre, a series of written
statements, including a specific language, has important ramifications.
First it puts in question Judges often quoted remark, that mercantilism
never was a "living doctrine." Certainly, if such a "doctrine" is an agreed
set of principles and solutions building on a common methodology - a
box of theoretical and methodological tools - it is perhaps right to say
that the mercantilist writers never shared a "living doctrine." On the
other hand, nobody with at least some first hand knowledge of the
immense economic literature from the early seventeenth century
onwards, can avoid feeling at home when browsing through a succession
of tracts and pamphlets. Authors such as Mun, Misselden, Child,
Barbon, Law and Davenant struggled with the question how the nation
can grow rich (as Holland!), what might be considered to constitute the
riches of a country, the importance of money, etc. They used a common

vocabulary of concepts and discussed a specific set of questions and
issues. They were both implicitly and explicitly arguing with each other
when trying to find new answers to a well known territory of
problematics.
The lengthy debate on mercantilism and its interpretation since the
nineteenth century has to a great extent been centered on the question of
how to relate mercantilist texts to economic reality. Thus it is well
known that Eli Heckscher in his famous work on mercantilism took the
extreme position that mercantilist ideas - and policies - did not rely on
any "true" empirical knowledge of economic reality whatsoever. 50 As a
reaction to this a number of economic historians tried to explain the
peculiarity of mercantilist thinkers by referring back to specific con-
ditions prevailing during the Early Modern period. However, to percieve
mercantilists texts as pure reflections of economic reality is without
doubt to fall into the reductionist trap.51 It is difficult from this point of
view to make intelligable why the same kind of ideas seem to have
sprung out of widely different economic, political and social environ-
ments. 52 Quite clearly, "mercantilist" ideas were applied to a number of
different practical problems in different socio-political frameworks.
Therefore, it is difficult to make sense of suppositions - as for example
made by Schumpeter53 - that the mercantilist literature should be
regarded primarily as a common-sense response to pracical problems.
After all, also "commonsense" responses have their own discursive rules
of the game which an author must adhere to in order to be rightly
understood. Hence, we cannot understand writers such as Mun if we do
not recognize that they used simplified models or visions of how they
believed that the economic machinery operated in a general sense. They
did not simply "describe." They also invented and constructed the very
same categories by which they can make their complex reality intelligble.
Secondly, it is clear that the seventeenth century saw the emergence of
what the cultural historian Peter Burke has called "literal mindedness."54
It included an increasing awareness of the difference between literal and
symbolic meanings, but also the replacement of a more concrete form of
thought for a more abstract. Thus paradoxically, the seventeenth century
saw the emergence of empiricism at the same time as abstract and
general categories were increasingly employed. Certainly, the economic
literature during this period is characterized by a tendency to use more
complicated categories and to base arguments upon stylized facts.
Especially the use of stylized facts and abstract catagories stands out in
178 Lars Magnusson
this context. Hence when we talk of "common-sense" in this context we

tend to obscure a very important historical process of cultural and
literary change taking place during this period.
Hence, a mere glance at the rich economic literature during the
seventeenth and early eighteenth century is enough to convince us that it
also included a new attitude to facts and the empirical world. After all,
these writers lived in a period which experienced what the historian
Keith Thomas has named "the decline of magic" and the rise of a new
empiricist worldview and methodology. 55 Thus they followed the
rational scientific programme of Bacon and explicitly made it a
condition that arguments should be based on facts. They also percieved
that economic arguments should be based on the principle of logic. The
notion of cause and effect was especially emphasised. Writers such as
Misselden and Mun, and later on Petty, Davenant, etc., were clearly
influenced by a rational attitude towards facts and arguments. This does
not of course imply that they succeeded or that they were free from
prejudices or value judgements. But this certainly implied a new attitude
and a new way to argue.
Thus, the relationship between economic texts and the contemporary
economic "reality" is very difficult to disentangle. As a part of a specific
discourse they inhabited their own territory and followed their own set
of rules. The paroles of their discourse were uttered through a specific
langue which provided special significance and meaning. As the
"economy" is an intellectual construction and cannot be detected in
"reality," it also designated its own privilegied territory. As argued
previously, this does not mean that mercantilist language was unaffected
by the tensions and developments of an outside reality. Rather, we must
once again stress the interrelationship between language and such
"realities." However, this most certainly implies that it is impossible to
reduce the mercantilists visions and ideas to be a mere mouthpiece of a
reflective "reality." This relationship is certainly much more complicated
to trace.
Languages, no doubt, are put together by inherited concepts, words,
intellectual tools and artefacts. To some extent they make up their own
rules. But they are at the same time used for communication purposes.
This implies that to the extent that the "realities" which language
confronts change, language must change too. But this may take some
time. Therefore, old interpretations of concepts are used alongside new
interpretations - until the dissonance becomes too obvious.
The Peculiarities of Mercantilist Discourse
Since Adam Smith it has been usual to regard the mercantilistic writers
as the propagators - for which purpose they construed their famous
"balance of trade" theory - and progenitors of protectionism. It is only
in this sense that they were truly original. Consequently, Smith blamed
the mercantilist writers for centuries of protectionism, monopolistic
devices and corruptive economic policies. These wasteful policies could
all be traced back to same source, he argued. Its cause was the popular
Midas fallacy, which Mun and his followers had not been able to see
through, of believing that money was equvivalent with wealth.
Heckscher blamed the prejudice upon a "fear of goods"; a figment of the
mind accruing from the rise of monetary arrangements and the decline of
natural economy. Basically, however, also Heckscher was ready to define
mercantilism as a system of policy: as protectionism in a very general
sense. According to him, of course, mercantilism turned out to be a
common-sense answer to a timeless set of economic problems which
emphasised economic nationalism and protective measures. This is
primarily the reason why he so strongly pressed the viewpoint that
"mercantilism" had nothing to do with economic reality whatsoever.
However, economic ideas constitute only one of many factors behind
the formulation of concrete policies. It is certainly mistaken to ascribe a
total primacy of doctrines or ideas over policies. Not least the more
recent discussion with regard to British mercantilism has done much to
clear up miss apprehensions of this kind. Thus it has been emphasised
that it is wrong to see mercantilism as a mere defense for a certain
economic policy. Hence, most of this literature cannot at all be regarded
as a mere defence of protectionism or of the traditional regulative
policies which the Crown pursued during the seventeenth and early
eighteenth centuries. Quite to the contrary, many of the mercantilist
writers were highly critical of such policies. We can here refer to Barbon,
Child, Davenant or Petyt - the presumed author of Britannia Languens
highly praised by McCulloch for his "free trade" tendencies. 56 It should
be remembered that one of the objectives of Mun was to attack the old
policy of prohibition against the export of gold and silver - a serious
assault against the interests of the East India Company. However, it
would also be wrong to attribute this critical attitude of govermental
policy only to partisans of this company's interest. 57 Such a critical
attitude was also shared by others who were not partisans of this special
(rent-seeking) group interest.
180 Lars Magnusson
Hence I will argue that the British "mercantilist" discourse which

emerged in the seventeenth century implied an important break with the
past in a number of ways. Hence it is in the following points that it
reveals its true orginality:
I. The mercantilistic literature implied the emergence of an explicit and
fundamental discussion on how wealth was created as well as
distributed. A discussion in principle on such issues hardly occured
before the seventeenth century - at least not in England. The group of
economic writers of this period was mainly made up of practical men
discussing acute practical problems - as has so often been emphasised
by commentators who have retained a sceptical attitude towards the
notion of "mercantilism" as a coherent "doctrine." But also when
they struggled with concrete economic problems they did so within a
framework where new principles were developed which touched on
the question of how the "wealth of nations" could be achieved.
2. Further, the mercantilist "revolution" implied the application of, in
want of a better name, a Baconian scientific program in which logical
argumentation should prevail. It was emphasised that such arguments
should be based on discrete facts with regard to for example the state
of international trade, the balance of trade and payments, etc.
H was in the 1620s, in the first editions of his Essays, that Bacon
presented his new perspective to a wider audience. It is certainly
difficult to detect an explicit or direct influence by Bacon on the
mercantilist writers. When Misselden in the early 1620s cites and
make reference to philosophical works it is mostly Aristotle and other
classical thinkers he mentions. Moreover, his discussion on matter,
form and essence in The Circle of Commerce is unmistakably
Aristotelian. 58 However, references to Aristotle were customary at the
time and do not tell us much in particular about an author's real
standpoint. On the other hand, particularly Misselden's reference to
the controversial "famous logician of France" Ramus, shows that he
was well aquainted with the radical opposition against Aristo-
telianism. Moreover, at an early stage Bacon had been influenced by
Ramus and saw his own work in line with this older master. 59 Refer-
ring to Ramus Misselden says that: " ... we must not be so curious in
our Distibutions that in striving for the Method we lose the
Matter ... "6o Surely, it must be read as a critique of the formalism and
empty definition making of the Aristotelian school and as such in
being in the spirit of Bacon. Hence in Novum Organum Bacon pointed
out that Aristotle" .. .imposed innumerable arbitrary distinctions upon
the nature of things; being everywhere more anxious as to definitions

in teaching and the accuracy of the wording of his propositions, than
in the eternal truth of things."61
Hence, from this basis Mun and Misselden argued for more
induction and less deduction. They wanted to establish their vision of
the economic process upon a sound empirical basis. Thus they argued
that they were neither learned nor great thinkers. "This matter is
much too high for me ... ", Mun says in one instance. 62 Moreover,
when dedicating his 1622 treatise to his royal superiors Misselden
described his subject as a very humble one indeed. It is, he asks,
perhaps too low for a king to devote his time to.63 In his first tract
defending the East India Company, Mun asks to be forgiven for per-
forming his task: " ... for want of learning ... without varietie of words
or eloquence: yet it is done with all integritie of truth, in every
particular, as I shall be readie to make proofe upon all occasions,
which may be offered."64
Rather than as instances of mere humbleness, such examples must
clearly be envisaged as statements propunding an empricist method-
ology. At the same time, we should not be deceived by their method-
ological program. It is too simple to say that they based their concept-
ualisation of the economic world on discrete empirical facts. It is
especially misleading to interpret Mun's England's Treasure by
Forraign Trade in such a fashion. It portrays a very abstract economic
world of balancing forces ruled by market relations. For example, he
takes no account of the extent to which short-run factors such as
monetary disturbances might disrupt the self-regulating order of
supply and demand.
However, there are also other clear linkages between Mun,
Misselden and the Baconians. 65 First, especially with Mun, the so-
called "panometery" stemming from Bacon which implied that every-
thing should be measured in figures is clearly visible. Further, in a
general way this new attitude to the study of economy and society is
connected with the increasing use of the phrase "balance." In a
general sense, this was connected with an increased use of methaphors
collected from natural science in order to portray processes in society.
Such borrowings which became notorious especially in the middle of
the seventeenth century have often been connected with the
breakthrough of a Baconian program for universal science. Most pro-
foundly, in this way the view was established that also society and the
economy were structured by laws and general principles detectable by
182 Lars Magnusson
Man. From there the further idea that these "natural" mechanical
forces would work better if they were left to themselves was not late
to emerge.
3. Most writers in the British mercantilist tradition argued on the basis
of a "material" interpretation of man and society. In contrast to the
sixteenth century the moral implications were kept in the background.
Man was most often regarded as an egotist. In much of the literature
the idea appeared that selfishness under certain circumstances could
serve social goals. As usual this view was not new, of course. As Odd
Langholm has argued, such ideas were proposed as early as the
fifteenth century.66 Certainly, mercantilists writers were never able to
agree on the practical implications of this viewpoint. However, most
of them were ready to accept under certain circumstances that private
vices could be manipulated to bring about public benefits.
4. Perhaps the most important part of the "mercantilist revolution" was
the view that the economy should be understood as a system. As such
it is understood as an independent "social" territory with its own
distinctive laws. Its central place was the market for goods, money
and exchange bills. How economic agents acted on such markets
created conditions for how the economic system worked. Market
processes linked together economic variables such as prices, wages,
interest rates, monetary value and exchange rates.
This was undoubtedly a great step in relation to the kind of
"economic literature" which had been usual in the beginning of the
seventeenth century - at least in Britain. The heated discussion in the
early 1620s between Edward Misselden - and behind him Thomas
Mun - and Gerrard de Malynes is perhaps one of the most famous in
the history of economic thought. 67 It was in this discussion which dealt
with the "true causes" of the contemporary economical crisis in
Britain, that Misselden and Mun put forward their famous balance of
trade theory as well as propagated for the idea that the economy must
be understood as a process which first and foremost implied that the
crisis stemmed from a negative balance of trade. In contrast to this, the
orthodox interpretation of the crisis - with Malynes as its main
propagator - stressed monetary factors, especially speculation and
usury by foreigners as the true cause of the crisis. There is no doubt
that Malynes in his views was highly influenced by the Schoolmen and
Canonists of older origin. 68 Still at this time "the usury question" was
fought over with bitterness. According to Malynes, there existed
several forms of foreign exhange with money. In its most pernicious
form it was carried out by exchange bills (cambio sicco) or through the
means of credit (cambia fictio).69 It was such activities that he
condemned most furiously and located to small groups of foreign
bankers in London as well as in Antwerp. The main reason for his
wrath was that monopolistic speculation and usury were involved in
such "dry" and "fictious" exchangeJo Repeatedly Malynes attacked
such "illegitimacies." As a monpoly he defined " ... a kind of Commerce
in buying and selling, changing, or bartering, ursurped by a law, and
sometimes, but by a person, and forestalled from all others to his or
their private gaine, and to the hurt and detriment of all other men."7l
Among the forms of monopolistic behaviour he included the
practices of a small group of exchange dealers who speculated to keep
the value of the currency down. As " ... some merchants are so farre
wide from the knowledge of the value of Coynes" they lured the
merchants to change their money at an unfavourable rate. All this
was detrimental to the merchants and the Commonwealth as such, he
thought. For Malynes "the abuse of Monopoly" was a form of
usuryJ2 It was "biting usury" according to his vocabulary. Thus in
reality "dry" and "fictious" exhange was a concealed form of usury.
In Saint George for England (1601) he described in an allegorical form
usury as the dragon which would destroy all that was precious in
England: "charitie," "equality" and "concord." The dragon was " .. the
chiefest head and cause of rebellion and variance in countries." He:
" ... overtroweth the harmonie of the strings of the good government of a com-
mon-wealth, by too much enriching some, and by oppressing and impover-
ishing some others ... when as every member of the same should live contented in
his vocation and execute his charge according to his profession."73
5. Moreover, a distinct feature of mercantilist writers from Misselden

and Mun onwards was their insistance upon the idea that the
interplay of supply and demand on the market for money and goods
created the foundation for economic progress as well as for decline.
According to Barry Supple, Mun was "the economist of a com-
petetive era."74 As such, both he and Misselden clearly recognized the
all-importance of the market mechanism. Thus according to Mis-
selden: " ... Merchants of experience know, that commonly one
commidty riseth, when another falleth; and they fall and rise, as they
are mor or lesse in request and use."75 Certainly, the market was a
place where " ... every man is nearest to himself."76 However, both
Mun and Misselden were eager to point out that such egotism was
184 Lars Magnusson
domesticated by the forces of the market. Therefore, bankers or

exchange dealers could not willy-nilly carry out their feats in order to
hurt the public. Although characterised by uncertainty, the market
was a place of order. The impersonal forces of the market structured
the behavioural regimes of different agents. To function properly this
order had to be recognized as a "natural thing" and therefore freely
"have [its] course.'m
Both Mun and Misselden applied this market mechanism to price
formation in general. The forces of supply and demand created the
cheapness or dearness of goods. By conditioning the actual price of
"food and rayment", they at the same time proportioned the wages of
the poor. 78 Demand and supply also ruled the exchange of bills and
money with other countries. Furthermore, they both supposed that
demand and supply conditions decided when it was profitable to
export money instead of remitting exhange bills; i.e., the actual level
of the so-called export points. In this context Misselden wrote: "Now
if the gain of the carying out of our money be 10 or 15 per Cent to the
stranger, then the Exchange by his owne rule must bee set so much
higher to answer the sayd gaine & prevent the exportation."79
Particularly Mun was full of scorn against those who thought that the
laws of the market could be easily manipulated by merchant
monopolists, bankers or kings. For example from this passage we can
grasp the continuity which occured in economic thinking from the
"mercantilists" up until Adam Smith:
"But let the Merchants exchange be at a high rate, or at a low rate, or at the
Par pro pari, or put down altogether; let Forraign Princes enhance their Coins,
or debase their Standards, and let His Majesty do the like, or keep them
constant as they now stand; Let forraign Coin pass current here in all payments
at higher rates than than they are worth at the Mint; Let the Statute for
employments by Strangers do his worst; let Princes oppress, Lawyers extort,
Usurers bite, prodigals wast, and lastly let merchants carry out what money
they shall have occasion to use in traffique. Yet all these actions can work no
other effects in the course of trade than is described in this discourse. For so
much Treasure only will be bought in or carried out of a Commonwealth, as
the Forraign trade doth over or under ballance in value."8o
Notes
I. T. W. Hutchinson, Before Adam Smith. The Emergence of Political Economy

1662-1776, Ch. 5. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988). For a more extended treatment of
the themes discussed in the present contribution see my Mercantilism: The Shaping of
an Economic Language (London and New York: Routledge, 1994).
2. John Cary, An Essay Towards Regulating the Trade and Employing the Poor of this
Kingdom (London, 1717), p. 2.
3. W. Cunningham, The Growth of English Industry and Commerce in Modern Times, II:
The Mercantile System (New York: Augustus M. Kelley), p. 262 ff.
4. W. Cunningham, p. 265 ff.
5. This reform is defended in Advice of his Majesty's Council of Trade, Concerning the
Exportation of Gold and Silver in Foreign Coins & Bullion. Concluded 11 December
1669. Included in Old and Scarce Tracts on Money (ed. J. R. McCulloch) (London,
1856).
6. For this see also W. Cunningham, The Growth of Industry and Commerce in Modern
Times, II: The Mercantile System (New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1968), p. 380 f.
7. John Pollexfen, A Discourse of Trade and Coyn (London, 1697), p. 108.
8. John Cary, An Essay on the State of England in Relation to its Trade, its Poor, and its
Taxes for carrying on the Present War against France (Bristol, 1695), p. 1 f.
9. Dudley North is most outspokem about his general influences, see the preface to his
Treatises on Trade (London, 1691).
10. See for example T. W. Hutchison, Before Adam Smith, p. 87 ff.
II. Roger Coke, England's Improvement. In Two parts (London, 1675), p. 47.
12. Joseph Harris, An Essay Upon Money and Coins I-II (London, 1757-1758).
13. Bruno Suviranta, The Theory of the Balance of Trade in England (Diss) (Helsinki,
1923).
14. See Lars Magnusson, Mercantilism: The Shaping of an Economic Language, Ch. 2.
(London: Routledge, 1994).
15. Simon Schama, The Embarrasment of Riches (Berke1y: University of California Press,
1988), p. 323.
16. Thomas Mun, England's Treasure by Forraign Trade [1664) (New York: Augustus M.
Kelley, 1986), p. 74.
17. The Economic Writings of Sir William Petty (ed. C. Hull) [1899) (New York: Augustus
M. Kelley, 1986), p. 250.
18. Matthew Decker, An Essay on the Causes of the Decline of the Foreign Trade [4th ed.
1751) (New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1973), p. 109.
19. Josuah Child, Brief Observations Concerning Trade and Interst of Money (London, 1668),
p.3.
20. Nicholas Barbon, A Discourse of Trade (London, 1690), preface.
21. Willam Temple, Observations upon the United Provinces of the Netherlands (1673)
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932), p. 128 f.
22. W. Temple, p. 131.
23. Brittannia Languens or a Discourse of Trade (London, 1680), p. 77.
24. W. Temple, p. 129.
25. W. Temple, p. 131.
26. Thomas Mun, Englands's Treasure by Forraign Trade, p. 73 f.
186 Lars Magnusson
27. J. Child, A Discourse of the nature, Use and Advantages of Trade (London, 1694), p. 8 ff.
28. Mun, p. 75.
29. Josuah Gee, The Trade and Navigation of Great Britain [1729] (London, 1738 (4th
ed.», p. 104.
30. On the British merchant discussion see E. A. J. Johnson, Predecessors of Adam Smith
(New York: Prentice Hall, 1937), p. 142 ff.
31. The British Merchant, vol, I, p. 4 f.
32. The British Merchant, vol. I, p. 23.
33. See L. Magnusson, Ch. 2.
34. Jacob Viner, "Early English Theory of Trade", part 1-2. Journal of Political Economy
38 (1930); and Jacob Viner, "Power versus Plenty under Mercantilism," World
Politics, 1 (1948).
35. J. Child, A New Discourse of Trade (London, 1693), p. 93.
36. Charles Davenant, An Essay upon the Probable Methods of making a People Gainers in
the Ballance of Trade (London, 1699), p. 6.
37. C. Davenant, An Essay on the East India Trade (London 1697), in The Political and
Commercial Works of that Celebrated Writer Charles D 'Avenant, vol. I (London, 1771),
p.86.
38. Lewes Roberts, The Treasure of Traffike or A Discourse of Forraigne Trade (London,
1641), p. 55. See also T. Mun. England's Treasure by Forraign Trade, p. 70, Samuel
Fortrey, Englands Interest and Improvement (London, 1673), p. 218, Britannia
Languens, pp. 243, 371,457; The Economic Writings of Sir William Petty, p. 271; and
Josauh Gee, p. 147.
39. C. Davenant, Discourse on the public Revenues ond on Trade, part II (London, 1698),
in Works, vol. I, p. 350.
40. See Quentin Skinner, "Social meanings and the explanation of social action", in Peter
Laslett, W. G. Runciman and Quentin Skinner (eds.), Philosophy, Politicis and Society.
Oxford (Oxford University Press, 1972); Quentin Skinner, The Foundation of Modern
Political Thought, vol. I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978); J. G. A.
Pocock "The Machiavellian Moment revisited: A study in History and Ideology",
Journal of Modern History, 53 (I) (1981) and J. G. A. Pocock, Virtue, Commerce and
History (Cambridge University Press, 1985).
41. For such a critique, see for example Keith Tribe, Land, Labour and Economic
Discourse, Ch. I. (London: Routledge, Kegan and Paul, 1978) and Lars Magnusson,
"Mercantilism and reform mercantilism: the rise of economic discourse in Sweden
during the eighteenth century," History of Political Economy 19 (3) (1987).
42. Mark Blaug, Economic Theory in Retrospect (Homewood Illinois: Richard D. Irwin
Inc., 1968), pp. I and xi. See also p. 681 ff.
43. Roger Backhouse, Economists and the Economy. The Evolution of Economic Ideas i600
to the Present Day (Oxford: Blackwells, 1988), p. 4 f.
44. W. J. Ashley, An introduction to English Economic History and Theory, vol. II (New
York: G. P. Putnam), p. 381.
45. See T. W. Hutchinson, 1978, Chs. 1,2.
46. J. G. A. Pocock, 1985, p. 5.
47. J. G. A. Pocock, 1985, p. 9, 12.
48. See J. G. A Pocock, 1985, p. 5.
49. See Stanley Fish Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretative Com-
munities (Cambridge, Mass. Cambridge University Press, 1980); J. G. A. Pocock, 1985,
Ch. I, p. 5.
50. Eli Heckscher, Mercantilism, vols. I-II (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1955).
51. As for example with Joyce Appleby, Economic Thought and Ideology in Seventeenth
Century England, Ch. I (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978).
52. See for example A. W. Coats, "Mercantilism. Yet again", i Piero Roggi ed., Gli
economisti e la politica economica (Naples: Edizione Scientifiche Italiane, 1985), p. 33.
53. J. A. Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis (London: George Allen & Unwin,
1972), p. 335 ff.
54. Peter Burke, Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Italy, Ch. 16 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. 1987) and by the same author, The Fabrication of Louis
XIV (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992), p. 128 ff.
55. Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (London, 1971).
56. For a longer list see William D Grampp, "The Liberal Elements in English
Mercantilism." The Quarterly Journal of Economics 4 (1952).
57. See Magnusson, Op. cit., Ch. 3.
58. Misselden, The Circle of Commerce, pp. 8 ff, 11, 41.
59. For an overview see R. W. Church, Bacon (London 1884) and P. M. Urbach, Francis
Bacon's Philosophy of Science (Peru Illinois, 1987).
60. Misselden, p. 72.
61. John M. Robertson ed., The Philosophical Works of Francis Bacon (London, 1905),
p.271.
62. Mun, A Discourse of Trade, p. 49.
63. E. Misselden, Free Trade, intro.
64. Mun, p. 49.
65. On this see M. Beer, Early British Economics (London: Allen & Unwin, 1938),
p. 136 ff.
66. Langholm, 1992, p. 564.
67. For a recent overview see L. Magnusson, Mercantilism. The Shaping of an Economic
Language, Ch. 3.
68. See also E. A. Johnson, Predecessors to Adam Smith, Ch. III, and De Roover, "Gerard
Malynes as an Economic Writer", in J. Kirschner (ed.), Business, Banking and
Economic Thought in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Chicago: Chicago
University Press, 1974), p. 350 ff.
69. For these terms see R. H. Tawney "Introduction", in Thomas Moore, A Discourse
Upon Usury (London: G Bell & Sons, 1926), p. 60 ff. For a contempory definition of
"dry exchange" see Th. Wilson, A Discourse upon Usury, p. 395. It is practiced, he says
" ... when one doth borrowe money by exchaunge for a strange Region, at longer or
shorter distaunce of time, to serve his turne the rather therby, not myndynge to make
anye reall payment abroade, but compundeth with the exchanger to have it returned
backe agayne accordyng as thexchaunge shall passe from thence to London."
70. De Roover makes an important point when he says that Malynes did not object to
exchange dealings "at rates set by market conditions." Rather his objection was that
exhange in such form concealed usurious activities on parts of monopolist bankers.
See De Roover, "Gerard de Malynes as an Economic Writer", p. 356.
71. Malynes, Consuetudo, p. 214.
72. See Malynes, The maintenance of Free Trade, p. 69.
73. Gerrard de Malynes, Saint George for England, Allegorically described (London, 160 I).
74. Supple, Commercial Crisis and Change, p. 215. For other statements of the same kind
see E. A. Johnson, Predecessors of Adam Smith, and Joyce Oldham Appleby,
188 Lars Magnusson
Economic Thought and Ideology in Seventeenth Century England (Princeton: Princeton

University Press, 1978).
77. Misselden, p. IDS.
78. Mun, p. 62.
80. Mun, p. 87.
NATURAL LAW AND THE ORIGINS OF
NA TIONALOKONOMIE: L.H. von Jakob
KEITH TRIBE
Keele University
The supreme purpose of a rational being is: that it renders itself manifest, not
only through reflection, investigation and cognition, but through acts, i.e., that it
determines, autonomously, upon its actions by the application of rational laws.
Man, at once a sensuous being, has need of sensibility in all actions that
might occur in the material world of which he is a part. Inclinations mediate
the transformation of sensibility into actions; inclinations are determined by
feelings.l
Until the twentieth century, the Continental tradition of university
economics was one that located the subject as part of teaching in law,
with those who taught it sometimes attached directly to the Faculty of
Law, or sometimes in a separate Philosophical Faculty. Functionally this
made little difference: the lectures were almost exclusively attended by
future lawyers and state officials for whom attendance was a prerequisite
to their formal qualification in law. In Germany as elsewhere, economics
enjoyed a fixed, if subordinate, place in the curriculum; the only way to
qualify academically as "an economist" was to study for a doctorate,
and the object of those who did so was generally not to practice in the
world of commerce or of public administration, but to teach in the
university. There were differences of course between countries: in France
the place of economics within the legal curriculum was only securely
established later in the century, whereas in Germany Nationalokonomie
had become entrenched, without great controversy, in the first two
decades of the century.
The reason for the lack of controversy more usually associated with
the emergence of a new university discipline was that it had simply taken
over the place hitherto assigned to the cameralistic sciences. This body of
discourse had aspired throughout the eighteenth century to replace Law
as the academic basis for state service, on the grounds that its focus on
wealth and the means to render states prosperous and populous was
189
Modernity, 189-205.
190 Keith Tribe
more relevant than a legal training for the future administrators of the
eighteenth century territorial state. This aspiration met with distinctly
patchy success, and nowhere did it succeed in displacing the pre-
eminence of Law; but by the end of the century it had found a place in
the general education of the student, there were a significant number of
academic chairs and an extensive textbook literature.
It was at this point that the intellectual rationale for this body of
teaching collapsed, suddenly and quite completely in the decade bridging
the turn of the century. This was not under the impact of Revolutionary
Wars, although these certainly caused a great deal of physical disruption
to universities; it was the result of the assault upon the older,
eudaemonistic Natural Law tradition by the proponents of Critical
Philosophy. This assault was just gaining momentum around 1795; by
1805 it was all but complete. Although textbooks in the cameralistic
tradition still appeared, and, it must be assumed, Professors continued as
always to read out their old lectures, the teachings of Smith and Say now
found a definite place within the university, within the new Fach of
Nationalokonomie. If we are to understand this sudden emergence of
classical political economy within the German legal curriculum, it is
necessary to consider the manner in which the Kameralwissenschaften
could transform themselves into that modish new discourse,
Nationalokonomie. In this essay the problem will be approached through
the intellectual biography of a leading figure in this process, who, for
most of his life, studied and taught at the University of Halle, apart from
the years between 1806 and 1816 when, following the Prussian defeat at
Jena, the University was closed and its professors forced to seek
appointments elsewhere. 2
Ludwig Heinrich von Jakob 3 was an early exponent of Critical
Philosophy, and played an active role in the recasting of Natural Law in
the spirit of Kant's "Copernican Revolution." In 1801 he began lecturing
on "politische Oekonomie oder Staatswirtschaft nach Sartorius"4; he
took part in an unsuccessful attempt to establish a fifth, economic,
faculty at Halle in 1804; he translated Say's Traite d'economie politique
into German, and in 1805 published his own Grundsiitze der National-
Oekonomie oder National- Wirthschaftslehre which was in some respects
modelled on Say's book, and which played a major part in the
establishment of a new Nationalokonomie in Germany; this textbook
reached a third edition in 1825. Jakob therefore played a key role in the
transformation of economic discourse in Germany at the turn of the
century.
Natural Law and the Origins ofNationalokonomie: L.H. von Jakob 191
When Jakob entered the University of Halle in 1777 as a student of

classical philology it had already, together with the University of
Frankfurt an der Oder, become a principal route into the Prussian
bureaucracy, consequent upon reforms of 1755 and 1770 which had
made university study a prerequisite for a career as a state official. 5 All
students had to devote some time to the study of philosophy, and in
Halle this meant above all Wolffian Natural Law, which also dominated
the teaching of those law students who aspired to a career in the state
bureaucracy. Characteristic of the Wolffian system was a eudaemonistic
conception of the Staatszweck, in which it was the task of the state to
bring about the welfare and common good that men were, through their
own unaided efforts, incapable of realising. Underwriting this moral
imperative laid upon the state and its officials was the doctrine of limited
Untertanenverstand, that the broad mass of the subjects of the state
lacked insight into their best interests and the means of realising them;
consequently it was the task of an enlightened, rational state elite to
guide an essentially unreasoning mass. 6 Thus Wolffian Natural Law
provided an intellectual legitimation for far-reaching administrative
action, in which moral perfection was to be defined and created by the
state, rather than being a duty laid upon autonomous individuals.
Stated in this way of course the challenge which the new Critical
Philosophy of the 1780s presented to existing doctrines can be readily
identified. Kant's focus on the condition of tutelage is emphasised in the
opening lines of his essay "Was ist Aufklarung?:"
Enlightenment is the relinquishment by men of a tutelage for which they themselves

are to blame. Tutelage is the inability to make use of one's own understanding
without the direction of others. This tutelage is self-inflicted if the cause of the
same lies not in a want of understanding, but rather in a lack of the decisiveness
and courage needed to govern oneself without the help of others. Sapere aude!
Have the courage to make use of your own knowledge! This is the slogan of the
Enlightenment.?
Concurring with the Wolffian tradition, Kant conceived the natural state
as one characterised by isolation, insufficiency and neediness. It was this
condition of neediness that impelled the formation of civil society, and
made possible the initiation of a civilising process in which needs could
be met through the joint activities of its members.
Here Kant diverged from the prevailing doctrines of Practical Philo-
sophy, which required the presence of a governing authority which
would actively guide the members of civil society towards the realisation
192 Keith Tribe
of their common good. Wolffian doctrine conceived the state on the

model of a household ruled benignly by a patriarch, with respect to
whom servants, children, pets and wives were in a condition of tutelage.
For the good of all, the members of the household had only to heed the
directions of the patriarch: as members of the household their sole duty
was obedience to these instructions. It was this condition of tutelage that
Kant addressed in his essay on the Enlightenment, extending the
epistemological argument of the Critique of Pure Reason to the prevail-
ing conceptions of need, welfare and happiness. The creation of a stable
order within which human needs could be identified and satisfied was no
longer seen as the prerogative of a state and its administrative apparatus;
instead, in the condition of "unsociable sociability," order would be
created by the dynamic, antagonistic relationship between mutual
dependence and individual need.
The universities of Frankfurt an der Oder and Halle had also, much
earlier in the century, been the first to establish chairs in the cameralistic
sciences, that group of sciences developed during the eighteenth century
as a pedagogy of state administration. The academic fortune of this new
discipline fluctuated throughout the century, although the number of
treatises published on the Kameral-, Polizei- und Staatswissenschaften
grew from year to year. Its manifest purpose, as a systematic training for
future state officials, was never realised: it met with resistance from
bureaucratic incumbents who adhered to a belief in training alongside
practical men directly concerned with state business, and, once this
resistance was overcome, entrants to state administration came with a
university education in law, not the new "sciences of the state." As a
purely vocational subject, it could be assumed that the failure of the
cameralistic sciences to establish themselves as an obligatory preparation
for state employment would herald its swift demise within the university;
but it continued to survive, as an additional subject at an elementary
level, taught in the range of obligatory introductory subjects covered by
Philosophy Faculties.
Much of the cameralistic literature was purely practical, concerned
with courses of husbandry, the organisation of mines, civil architecture
and urban trades. Where writers sought to articulate a general view of
the nature of the state and the organisation of economic activity they fell
back upon Wolffian themes: common purpose in the creation of wealth
and happiness was the work of the state, no autonomous mechanism was
identified through which society might organise its activities, and the
maintenance of economic order involved a constant work of supervision
and anticipation. The manner in which the cameralistic sciences

recapitulated the basic principles of Wolffian natural law was under-
written not only by the fact that lecturing in both subjects took place in
the Philosophy Faculty, through which all students had to pass; they
were frequently expounded by the same professors. Darjes, for example,
who in mid-century taught first as Professor of Moral und PoUtik at
lena, and then as Professor of Laws at Frankfurt an der Oder, was a
prominent cameralistic writer, whose Erste Grande der Cameralwissen-
schaften first appeared in 1756 and then was republished in 1768.
Although Cameralism can be reconstructed as an autonomous discipline
which in many respects opened a space within the university for the
economic sciences of the nineteenth century, it was rarely popular
enough to warrant the appointment of specialised exponents. Instead,
chairs that had been established in several universities were either left
unfilled for years, or permitted to lapse.
The Halle chair in the cameralistic sciences established in 1727 had
been placed in the Law Faculty, since the incumbent, Gasser, was in any
case already a professor of law at Halle. Before his death in 1745 he had
ceased lecturing on the oeconomic sciences; but the course was
nevertheless reassigned in 1746 to Stiebritz, and the chair moved to the
Philosophy Faculty, where he was Professor. The tasks of the chair were
defined at this time as instruction on edicts, patents and economic policy
matters, their application to the affairs of commercial administration, and
in addition trading agreements, tariffs and commercial1aw. 8 However, the
fact that Stiebritz also taught Hebrew and practical theology suggests that
he was very much a tyro in the subjects assigned to him, and a review of
teaching made in 1768 concluded that he was (still) ignorant of his
material. 9 Indeed, a survey of the Prussian universities made in 1770 noted
that, while lectures on the cameralistic sciences did take place in several
universities, they were mostly unattended. lO When Stiebritz eventually
vacated the chair - he died in 1772 - both Schreber and Dohm had hopes
of appointment, which in either case would have introduced some new life
into the teaching at Halle. 11 Instead, for the third time the chair was
reassigned to an incumbent, l.C.F6rster, Professor of Weltweisheit and
whose chief claim to fame is a history of the Halle saltworks, published
posthumously in 1799. 12 He was in turn succeeded in 1783 by G. F. von
Lamprecht, an unpaid auBerordentliche Professor who was at least
conversant with the material he taught, and who published in 1787 his
own textbook on Technologie, having lectured according to Beckmann's
textbook for some years. He was joined by lohann Christoph Riidiger,
194 Keith Tribe
whose interest in languages did not prevent him taking an interest in the
more technical aspects of the cameralistic sciences. By the 1790s teaching
in the cameralistic sciences at Halle had settled into a routine in which
Lamprecht taught Technologie according to his own textbook, while
Rudiger concentrated upon the cameralistic sciences according to Justi
and Sonnenfels. Rudiger continued with his teaching on Cameralistik
until his death in 1822, without, it appears, significantly modifying his
material.
It is evident from this summary of teaching in the cameralistic
sciences at Halle that the longevity of German Professors played a not
unimportant role in the survival of lecture courses; and that the
incompetence of incumbents and a lack of students were not generally
deemed sufficient impediment to the continuation of teaching in a
particular subject. It was into this context that Critical Philosophy was
introduced in the 1780s, providing adherents with a new language with
which to address the relationship of social organisation and human need.
Many of the early adepts of Critical Philosophy taught the compulsory
initial courses in the Philosophy Faculties; and even if they did not
themselves deliver lectures on the cameralistic and oeconomic sciences,
the relationship of human need to sociability and the organisation of
civil society had clear implications for the orthodox views upon eco-
nomic activity, wealth and welfare. In the course of the 1790s some of
those teaching the cameralistic syllabus adopted the new language
wholesale, converting the nostrums of cameralism and police into the
now fashionable jargon. For example, a textbook presenting a "system
of applied economic doctrine in general" included the following
comments on the human subject:
... he is not merely subordinate to necessary regularities (mechanism), but also to

purposefulness (technicism), and yet another particularly conceivable form of
causality not explicable on the basis of mechanism and technicism alone - the
formative impulse of the same; and since he is both endowed with reason, and is at
the same time end in himself, he is also in a condition of free lawlikeness, or under
the laws of liberty; he is animal and pure reason at once, and should be SO.13
By the later 1790s some teachers whose task it was to represent the
subject matter of cameralism to students began to revamp their lectures
and textbooks with the assistance of this new, quite impenetrable,
jargon; proof, if any more be needed, of the marginal position that
cameralism now enjoyed within the university.14 However, this generally
went little further than the superimposition of a Critical vocabulary
upon an essentially unchanged Wolffian conception of welfare and

happiness. Practitioners who adopted this pedagogic strategy do not
seem to have met with a great deal of success; they certainly did not be-
come direct contributors to that new apprehension of the relationship of
human needs, wealth and welfare that became known as National-
okonomie.
The refoundation of German economic discourse was effected in a
more direct way, by adepts of the new Critical Philosophy who under-
stood the challenge that it presented to Wolffian Natural Law, and who
switched their attention to the realm of political and economic theory.
Kant himself articulated a critique of the entire staatswissenschaftliche
tradition in 1793 when he argued that:
A government formed upon well-intentioned principles that confronts the people

as a father does his children, that is a paternalistic government (imperium
paternale), where the subjects are compelled to behave passively as minors unable
to distinguish between what is really useful or harmful to them, awaiting simply
the judgement of the head of state as to how they ought to be happy, a condition
desired by the ruler and to be expected simply from his benevolence: this is the
greatest conceivable despotism (an order in which all liberty of subjects, who
therefore have no rights, is abolished). IS
No longer is it the activity of government that creates and maintains

order, in which the welfare of the citizen is constantly overseen and
organized by the state (whose officials are the agents of Reason). The
seat of reason has shifted to the citizen; and instead of a comprehensive
Staatswirthschaft we are about to see the development of a Wirtschafts-
lehre which limits Staatswirtschaft to the domain of public finance.
Wirtschaftslehre constructs economic processes around the needs of the
person, such that the economy itself becomes the organizing principle of
social life. Instead of the endless work of economic administration that
typifies the conventions of cameralistic discourse, the economy itself
becomes a self-constituting process and the form of order of civil society.
When in 1871 Carl Menger published his Grundsiitze der Volkswirth-
schaftslehre, he defined as "goods" "utilities ... related to the satisfaction
of human needs." A long footnote was appended to this statement,
beginning with Aristotle's conception of goods, proceeding on through
Forbonnais, Le Trosne and Say; and listing as the first relevant German
authors Soden, Jakob and Hufeland. Jakob's definition of a good is
among these the most pithy: "Everything that serves the satisfaction of
human needs.,,16 Jakob played a key role in the reorganisation of
196 Keith Tribe
German economics around the conception of human need, although he

only began teaching a course on "po1itische Oekonomie und Staatswirt-
schaft nach Sartorius" in 1801. 17 Up to this time he had been primarily
concerned with establishing a new Natural Law upon Critical principles,
exemplified by his Philosophische Rechtslehre oder Naturrecht of 1795. It
will help us assess the specific contribution made by this new Natural
Law if we pause to consider the structure of the book that Jakob first
used as a textbook, Sartorius' Handbuch der StaatswirthschaJt zu
Gebrauche bey akademischen Vorlesungen. If an enthusiasm for Adam
Smith were sufficient for the generation of Nationalakonomie, then we
might reasonably expect Sartorius to have played a key role in this, as
one of the first and most articulate Smithians. As it turns out, this
surmise is not substantiated by developments in the first decade of the
nineteenth century; many cameralistic writers adopted Smith's Wealth oj
Nations, but none of them contributed significantly to the creation of a
conception of human need, economic activity and welfare that was to
survive as the core of German economics for more than a century.
Sartorius' textbook carries the subtitle: Nach Adam Smith's
Grundsatzen ausgearbeitet, for it is principally a condensed version of
Wealth oj Nations based on lectures that Sartorius had delivered in
Gattingen since 1791 as a Privatdozent in the Philosophy Faculty. A
preface explains that Sartorius had become convinced of the truth of
Smith's principles, and considered it his duty to make them better
known. Following shortly upon the second translation of the Wealth oj
Nations into German by Garve and Darrien,18 Sartorius was one of the
earliest and best-known exponents of Smithian political economy.
Gattingen had never embraced the cameralistic sciences, even in the half-
hearted way that we have seen in Halle; during the 1750s Justi had
taught there briefly, but the StaatswissenschaJten in Gattingen were
dominated by Politik, Technologie and Statistik, not by the Kameral- und
PolizeiwissenschaJten. In this context Smith's book was understood less
as a treatise on a new "system of natural liberty" than as a rather long-
winded outline of enlightened economic policy.
Books I and II of Wealth oj Nations are dispatched by Sartorius in 90
pages of summary, in which each paragraph of the summary corres-
ponds to a chapter or a part of a chapter from the original; only the
section on banks is given a disproportionate amount of space. 19
Discursive sections of Wealth oj Nations are reduced to bare pro-
positions; for example, the argument concerning the human propensity
to exchange is suppressed entirely. Once the summary reaches the end of
Natural Law and the Origins ofNationalOkonomie: L.H. von Jakob 197
Smith's Book II, Sartorius interposes a section which summarises the

principles of Books III to V as if they were part of a cameralistic treatise
on Staatswirtschaft - the title runs "Of State Economy, or the Rules
which the Government of a State must Pursue, so that Individual
Citizens might be placed in the Position of being able to Create for
Themselves a Sufficient Income, as well as Providing the Same for Public
State Expenditures." Here, although freedom is the means, a
eudaemonistic conception of welfare is the objective. This shift towards
an older German conception of the state, its tasks and objectives, is
continued into the treatment of public finances, where the arguments of
Smith's Book V are reviewed according to Staatszwecke.
In 1806 Sartorius published a revised edition of the Handbuch, in
which he confessed that his initial enthusiasm for Smith had waned, and
he now saw more clearly
... faults in the presentation, in the method, in the order, in its prolixity, in
repetitions, and in the obscurity of the original... 2o
He went on:
He views phenomena from different perspectives, develops their causes hesitantly,
often in different places, in a fragmentary manner; and has paid little attention to
the systematic course, the nature of his nation, even though a system in the
strongest sense, in the treatment of these matters would be sorely needed. 21
In treating "public needs," that is, Smith's Book V, the language of

Staatszweck is abandoned entirely; but it is evident from the foregoing
citation that Sartorius has trouble with Smith's "system of natural
liberty": specifically, he fails to see such a system in Wealth of Nations at
all. Sartorius was not alone in complaining that Wealth of Nations was
too prolix, that it lacked a system; this was a persistent complaint from
the first appearance of a translation in 1776. 22 Perhaps this complaint
should be understood as a failure to comprehend the system according
to which the text was constructed; a measure of the distance between the
conception of "natural liberty" and one built upon the deliberate gen-
eration of wealth and happiness on the part of an enlightened state.
How Jakob used Sartorius' textbook is not known; but he did in 1805
publish his own textbook, which he intended as a replacement in his
lectures for that of Sartorius. An evaluation of this textbook is com-
plicated by the fact that its composition must have coincided with
Jakob's reading of Say, whose Traite appeared in 1803, Jakob's trans-
lation following in 1807. We need to bear this in mind when comparing
198 Keith Tribe
Jakob's Grundsiitze with Sartorius' Germanised Wealth of Nations, and

of course with the text upon which all three turned, Smith's Wealth of
Nations.
Jakob noted in the Preface to his Grundsiitze that he had used
Sartorius' Handbuch for some years, but that he had come to the view
that some of Smith's ideas were obscured by the form of presentation
adopted. He had, therefore, determined upon producing his own
textbook:
My intent in so doing was to entirely exclude investigations into police and

financial matters, laying bare the essential element (das Reine): how is wealth
created in a nation, how is the increase of the same promoted and obstructed, how
are the parts of the same distributed among the branches of the people, and how is
it consumed? What are the general laws according to which this all takes place? It
is quite evident that Police and Finance also pay a role here. For both can exert a
considerable influence upon national property. But these sciences will not be
presented in themselves; for only the influence of Police and financial operations
on national wealth will be dealt with.23
Many of Jakob's contemporaries made comparable prefatory state-

ments, only to proceed on to assimilate political economy to a con-
ventional understanding of the scope and purpose of the Staatswissen-
schaften. Jakob's conversion is however more secure, for he proceeds to
redefine the state and its affairs in a manner that denies it a decisive role
in the formation and distribution of wealth. The expression "State," he
argues, can only be used to refer to public affairs; Staatsvermogen is
therefore merely a part of the Volksvermogen separated off from national
property and for use in pursuit of public and common ends. State
property is administered by the government, but it does not have control
over national property.
Staatswirthschaftslehre can be in fact nothing other than financial science or
Policey, insofar as care for public order is part of good public economy.24
How does this intent translate into the principles of Nationalkonomie,

and what relationship is established to political economy on the one
hand, and the cameralistic sciences on the other?
The most striking initial feature of Jakob's book is its plan of organ-
isation. At the end of the "Einleitung," he states that Nationalokonomie
deals with three principal issues:
1. The formation and increase of national wealth.

2. The principles of the most advantageous distribution of national
wealth among the members of society.
3. The consumption of national property and the various effects of the
same. 25
Or, in other words, the trImty of Production, Distribution and

Consumption introduced by Say in the second edition of his Traite. 26
Say had already stated in his first edition that Smith distinguished
Politics as the Science of Legislation from a Political Economy dealing
with the formation, distribution and consumption of wealth27 ; but this
first edition was divided into five books, dealing in turn with Production,
Money, Value, Revenue and Consumption. Jakob on the other hand not
only stated that Nationa/okonomie dealt with the production, dis-
tribution and consumption of wealth; his book is divided up in this way
too. Viewed from this perspective, the sequence of chapters in Jakob's
1805 textbook more closely resemble the order in which material is
treated in Say that in Smith.
In addition to this, the restriction that Jakob places on the function of
the state with respect to the dynamics of a national economy is
foreshadowed in Say's "Discours preliminaire," where Say argues that
the progress of national wealth is not directly dependent upon any
particular form of government -
... a state can prosper if it is well administered .... The forms of public admin-
istration themselves only influence indirectly and accidentally the formation of
wealth, which is almost entirely the work of individuals. 28
In the preface to his translation of Say's Traite, Jakob suggested that

Say's text was more simply organised than that of Smith, the concepts
and material being more clearly arranged. He translated the economie
politique of the title as Nationa/okonomie, and appended a note on this to
the introduction, maintaining that his usage was unambiguous and
conveyed the sense intended by Say.
The terms politische Oekonomie and Staatswirthschaft were, noted
Jakob, both in common use in the German literature, and often used
interchangeably. There were however good reasons for using the term
Nationa/okonomie as the most accurate rendering of economie politique:
Staatswirthschaft constantly recalls the administration of the government's income
(Bewirthschaftung des Einkommens der Regierung), and restricts the concept ever
on those principles observed by the government in relation to national wealth.
200 Keith Tribe
This was too narrow for Say's purpose:

His work includes all causes ofN.R., whether arising from the government or from
private forces. Palitische Oekonomie would certainly not be confused with Palitik
in German. For we understand by political sciences all those sciences which deal
with the common welfare; nevertheless, it is very easy to associate with this
expression the exclusive influence of the government. The expression Natianal-
Oekanamie or Natianal- Wirthschaft indicates very clearly and distinctly the essence
of all those principles that must be set in motion among a people for the
production of goods (Bediirfniftmittel), for their increase, and for their appropriate
distribution and use; it indicates the laws according to which private persons,
voluntarily and in common, as well as public persons, must work so that the
nation might be brought to the highest degree of welfare. 29
This elaborates on comments made in the opening pages of the
Grundsatze; and Jakob returned to this theme in introducing the third
edition, in which he stated that it was German writers who had first
introduced a degree of system into the theory of national wealth, the
Grundsatze being one of the first such attempts. 30
We have already seen that Menger had listed Jakob as one of the first
German writers, together with Hufeland and von Soden, to elaborate a
conception of utility as economic goods capable of satisfying human
need. Following an introductory section of the Grundsatze which
associated the conduct of a secure and happy life with access to the
means for the satisfaction of needs in a civil society, and then reviewed
the "History and Literature of National Economy" in five pages, Jakob
begins the exposition of his principal theses with discussion of concepts
of national property and national wealth. He opens thus:
One distinguishes the person from his property very exactly, and
understands under the latter the proper concept of its own external
objects, serving the satisfaction of human needs. The person is the end
(Zweck), property the means. 3l
Not only then does Jakob begin his exposition with national property;
ZweckmafJigkeit is determined in relation to the person, not the state.
This point of departure enables Jakob to develop his account of wealth
in terms of labour and needs, whereas Say opens with a discussion of the
course of the product through different spheres of production -
agriculture, manufacture and commerce. 32 These are by no means
incompatible: but Jakob's approach implies that human need and
economic activity are constantly linked throughout his treatment of
Nationalokonomie. This couple - human need and economic activity as
the constitutive moment of economic order - becomes established as a
central parameter in German economic writings of the nineteenth

century; it also accounts for the general lack of interest on the part of
German economic writers in the classical preoccupation with the
measure and standard of value.
Menger identified Jakob, Hufeland and von Soden as the principal
originators of Nationalokonomie. All of these writers made use of a form
of reasoning drawn from Natural Law - Jakob and Hufeland as
proponents of the new Critical Philosophy, Soden as a retired Prussian
official who, impressed by Smith's Wealth of Nations but (as usual)
finding it too prolix and disorderly in its presentation. Unlike many of
those who shared this reaction to Smith, Soden in his retirement turned
to the new Natural Law, so that we find him in the early pages of the
first of several volumes arguing that Nationalokonomie was
... the Natural Law of sociable mankind with respect to the maintenance and
promotion of its physical welfare, and in the same way that the Law of Nations
outlines the laws according to which nations, in the reciprocal condition of co-
existence, must adhere in every respect; so Nazional-Oekonomie provides the
principles which (comprehending in fact the concept of several nations) must be
adhered to, such that every member of every nation achieves the highest possible
degree of physical welfare, and maintains this position.
I call this Nazional-Oekonomie partly in order to avoid the confounding of state
and nation, partly to properly express its independence, that is, to prevent its
confusion with Staats- Wirthschaft. 33
The form of reasoning for the adoption of the neologism

"Nationalokonomie" is here entirely congruent with Jakob; alth6ugh it
transpires that Soden is pre-occupied with the role of matter in the
reproduction of economic order, and succeeding volumes tend to wander
away from the more directly pedagogic concerns of contemporary
academics such as Jakob. However, what is striking here with Soden is
that he does not, as was common at the time, simply recuperate a more
traditional conception of Staatszweck and Staatswirtschaft as the
argument develops; the introduction of Natural Law arguments, if
adequately digested, serve to undermine entirely this older tradition, so
that at most elements of its survive in a subordinate position.
Hufeland's background was more similar to that of Jakob, except that
he had generally taught in the Law, rather than Philosophy, Faculty, at
Jena from 1790, and then at Wiirzburg and Landshut. In the first
volume of his Neue Grundlegung der Staatswirthschaftskunst he stated
clearly his belief that Staatswirthschaft, as hitherto dealt with, had
202 Keith Tribe
become far too extended. Instead, he proposed, Staatswirthschaft should

concern itself only with those goods and process that private persons
could not themselves conduct - and he added "The French frequently
call this science Oeconomie politique."34 He went on to discuss the
terminology introduced by Soden and Jakob, suggesting that it would
perhaps be more appropriate to express "NationaI6konomie" in Ger-
man, substituting for this alien construction Volkswirtschaft. The
contrast between this, and the implications of the term Staatswirtschaft,
suggested Hufeland, would be quite plain. 35
The transformation effected around 1805 of German economic dis-
course into National6konomie, or, as Hufeland presciently suggested,
Volkswirtschaftslehre, was to prove a permanent shift, moving economic
argument away from the language of Staatszwecke to the economic
structures created for the satisfaction of human need. This
transformation was certainly associated with the reception of Smith's
Wealth of Nations, but it was not sufficient to take over elements of
Smith's arguments for a writer to be counted among the "new econ-
omists." It was the reorganisation of Natural Law that proved decisive,
and this was effected by a transfer into established courses of the
Philosophy Faculty of a few writers deeply influenced by Critical
Philosophy, not by the modish adoption of its terminology. But even this
assault 'was insufficient to displace what might appear to be a discourse
whose time was well past: vocationally redundant, and now intellectually
superseded.
In fact during 1805 Jakob published another pedagogic text, a small
booklet entitled Ueber Cursus und Studien-Plan fur angehende
Cameralisten. Alongside his lectures on Naturrecht and National-
6konomie, Jakob still taught an introduction to the cameralistic sciences,
and this 1805 outline presented an overview of the various modes in
which cameralistic studies might be presented. The relationship of this
practical and vocational training to National6konomie is clearly
articulated by Jakob:
The mechanism through which the wealth of the land is increased or decreased has
to be thoroughly studied by every cameralist. This is a new science, which has
quite definite principles, and which can be called politische Oekonomie, or more
exactly, National-Oekonomie, National- Wirthschaftslehre. 36
Most of the topics that Jakob though necessary for the budding student
of cameralism - who, he ruefully admitted, was probably a student
seeking the least demanding subject available,37 turn out to be technical
- physics, mathematics, Statistik, finance and technology. These subjects

did not presuppose a doctrine of Staatszweck; although they had formed
the staple of idealised cameralistic courses since the early eighteenth
century, the presumption of state activity as the dynamising element in
economic activity had simply been excised and replaced with the "new
science." This shift is also apparent in K.H.Rau's outline from 1823,
where a course which appears at first glance to be in the cameralistic
tradition of the eighteenth century rapidly moves over into a
consideration of needs and their satisfaction. 38 Cameralism survived in
name alone into the nineteenth century; its associated connections with
the state and welfare were rapidly displaced by the new
NationalOkonomie, which then in turn provided the basis on which Carl
Menger composed the work which was to prove the founding moment of
the Austrian School of economics.
Notes
I. L. H. Jakob, Ueber das Moralische Gefuhl (Halle: Francke u. Bispink, 1788), pp.9-IO.
2. In fact the university reopened in May 1808 but many of the staff were absent, and it
only had 174 students. A transfer of resources from the universities of Rinteln and
Helmstedt, which remained closed, improved the situation somewhat, although many
of the students were serving in the Prussian army. It finally was decreed in July 1813
that the University should be dissolved; but this was nullified by Napoleon's defeat at
Leipzig, the university reopening in November 1814, with lectures beginning in
January 1814. O. Lehmann, "Die Nationalokonomie an der Universitat Halle im 19.
Jahrhundert," Dissertation, Halle (Saale) 1935, pp. 20-21.
3. Born 26. February 1759, Wettin, Saalkreise; died 22. July 1827. Appointed au/3er-
ordentlicher Professor of Philosophy 1789, promoted to ordentlicher Professor in
1791. In 1807 he took up an appointment at the University of Kharkov; and was in
1809 appointed adviser to the Russian Government on financial reform, in addition to
which he began drafting a Criminal Code. He returned to Halle in 1816 as Professor
der Staatswissenschaften, where he taught until his death.
4. W. Kahler, Die Entwickelung des staatwissenschaftlichen Unterrichts an der Universitiit
Halle (lena: Gustav Fischer, 1898), pp. 35-36.
5. In 1755 Cocceji introduced an Entrance Examination for Justizbeamten, and this was
in 1770 extended to Verwaltungsbeamten, making a period of study at university
necessary as preparation for these examinations: E. Hellmuth, Naturrechtsphilosophie
und burokratischer Werthorizont (Gottingen: Vanderhoeck & Ruprecht, 1985), pp.
111-115.
6. Hellmuth, Naturrechtsphilosophie und burokratischer Werthorizont, p. 175.
7. I. Kant, "Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklarung?", Werke, vol. VIII (Berlin:
Walter de Gruyter, 1968), p. 35. Kant's essay was first published in the Berlinsche
Monatsschrift in December 1784.
204 Keith Tribe
8. H. Kathe, "Geist und Macht im absolutistischen PreuJ3en. Zur Geschichte der

UniversiUit Halle von 1740 bis 1806," Dissertation, Faculty of Philosophy, University
of Halle-Wittenberg, 1980, p. 86.
9. Kahler, Die Entwickelung des staatwissenschaftlichen Unterrichts an der Universitiit
Halle, pp. 22-23.
10. " ... nur leider zu den mehresten dieser Collegiorum keine Zuhorer und Lehrbegierige
sich linden" - cited in Kathe, "Geist und Macht im absolutistischen PreuJ3en," p. 86.
II. Christian von Dohm was at this time barely 21 and a student of law in Leipzig, but in
the following few years he was to be a co-founder of Deutsches Museum, and was then
in 1776 appointed Professor of Finanzwissenschaft und Statistik at the Kassel
Collegium Carolinium. Daniel Gottfried Schreber had been a Professor at Leipzig
since 1764, and was one of the leading cameralistic writers of the I 760s.
12. Kathe, "Geist und Macht im absolutistischen PreuJ3en," p. 89.
13. J. A. Vollinger, System einer angewandten Wirthschaftslehre aberhaupt (Heidelberg,
1797), p. 3, §4. The book continues in this vein for 584 pp.
14. See for example J. A. Vollinger, GrundrifJ einer Allgemeinen kritisch-philosophischen
Wirtschafts-Lehre (Heidelberg, 1796); F.K. Gavard, Prolegomenen far eine reine und
angewandte Staats6konomie, 2 pts. (Nurnberg, 1797); P.E. Klipstein, Reine Wirth-
schaftslehre (GieJ3en, 1797).
15. I. Kant, "Uber den Gemeinspruch: Das mag in der Theorie richtig sein, taugt aber
nicht fUr die Praxis", Werke, vol. 8 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1968) pp. 290-291.
16. C. Menger, Grundsiitze der Volkswirthschaftslehre, Gesammelte Werke Bd. I, J. C. B.
Mohr (Paul Siebeck) (Tubingen, 1968), p. 2, citing L.H. von Jakob, Grundsiitze der
National-Oekonomie oder National-Wirthschaftslehre, §23. Menger dates this as 1806,
but the three editions appeared in 1805, 1809 and 1825.
17. Kahler, Die Entwickelung des staatwissenschaftlichen Unterrichts an der Universitiit
Halle, p. 36.
18. This was published by Wilhelm Gottlieb Korn, Breslau in four volumes between 1794
and 1796.
19. G. Sartorius Handbuch der Staatswirthschaft zu Gebrauche bey akademischen
Vorlesungen, Nach Adam Smith's Grundsiitzen ausgearbeitet, J. F. Unger (Berlin, 1796)
pp.50-64.
20. G. Sartorius, Von dem Elementen des National-Reichthums, und von der Staatswirth-
schaft, nach Adam Smith, J. F. Romer (Gottingen, 1806), p. IV.
21. Sartorius, Von dem Elementen des National-Reichthums, p. VII.
22. A. Smith, Untersuchung der Natur und Ursachen von Nationalreichthamern, trans. J. F.
Schiller, 2 Bde., bey Weidmanns Erben und Reich (Leipzig, 1776), 1778.
23. L. H. Jakob, Grundsiitze der National-Oekonomie oder National-Wirthschaftslehre,
Ruffsche Verlagshandlung (Halle, 1805), pp. V-VI.
24. Jakob, Grundsiitze, p. VI.
25. Jakob, Grundsiitze, p. 12, §20.
26. J.-B. Say, Traite d'economie politique, 2nd. ed. (Paris: A.A. Renouard, 1814), 2 vols.:
Livre I: De la production des richesses; Livre II: De la distribution des richesses; Livre
III: De la consommation des richesses.
27. J.-B. Say, Traite d'economie politique (Paris: Deterville, 1803), vol. I, pp. i-ii.
28. J.-B. Say, Traite d'economie politique, p. ii.
29. L. H. Jakob, editorial note to J.-B. Say, "Abegekurzte Vorrede des Verfassers," in his
Abhandlung aber die National6konomie, vol. I Ruffsche Buchhandlung (Halle, 1807),
Natural Law and the Origins ofNationalokonomie: L.B. von Jakob 205
pp. VII-VIII.
30. L. H. von Jakob, Grundsatze der National-Oekonomie. oder Theorie des National-
Reichthums, 3rd. revised edition, im Kommission bei Friedrich Ruff (Halle, 1825),
p. III.
31. Jakob, Grundsatze. p. 13, §21.
32. J.-B. Say, Traite d·economie politique, Livre I, Ch. 1.
33. F. J. H. von Soden, Die Nazional-Oekonomie. vol. I (Leipzig, 1805), p. 11.
34. G. Hufeland, Neue Grundlegung der Staatswirthschaft, vol. I, (Gie/3en: Tasche U.
Miiller, 1807), p. 10.
35. Hufeland, Neue Grundlegung der Staatswirthschaft, vol. I, pp. 13-14.
36. L. H. Jakob, Ueber Cursus und Studien-Plan fiir angehende Cameralisten. Ein Pro-
gramm zur Ankiindigung seiner philosophischen. politischen und cameralistischen
Vorlesungen, Ruffsche Buchhandlung (Halle, 105), p. 16.
37. Jakob, Ueber Cursus und Studien-Plan. p. 6.
38. See my discussion of this in Governing Economy. The Transformation of German
Economic Discourse 1750-1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp.
189-190.
MATHEMATICS, ADMINISTRATIVE REFORM AND
SOCIAL SCIENCES IN FRANCE AT THE END
OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
ERIC BRIAN
Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales
Institut National d'Etudes Demographiques
During the last decades of the Old Regime in France, four areas of
knowledge and practices related to the genesis of social sciences were
significantly reshaped, if not created. First, 1772 saw the first permanent
annual survey organised on a systematic basis by the State admin-
istration. Second, the period 1772-1774 can be considered as the begin-
ning of analytical theory of probabilities that was to reshape the
understanding of the calculus of probabilities and its application in both
social and natural sciences after the publication of Laplace's treatise
forty years later. 1 Third, 1770-1780 was a period of intense innovation in
differential and integral calculus among the geometers at the Paris
Academy of sciences. Fourth, the same period is regarded as one of in-
creased intensity in the publication of works on political economy and
population in France.
These four movements were not only contemporaneous but deeply
intertwined. This observation is illustrated by the question of the
numerical factor required to evaluate the size of a population, given the
corresponding average annual number of births (Ie multiplicateur des
naissances). Given the lack of any systematic survey the technique was
familiar to French political arithmeticians who published during the
1760s and 1770s. 2 After Messance [1766]3 and Moheau [1778],4 the
choice and justification for one convenient multiplier (and for a set of
similar coefficients) has been openly discussed as an issue of political
economy, within other forums, through the Parisian press. Condorcet
has contributed to this debate from a mathematical standpoint. 5 Laplace
attempted to formulate a mathematical solution. 6 He published a
memoir among the volumes of the Academy which was an introduction
to an Essai pour connaftre la population du Royaume in the same works.
207
Modernity, 207-224.
© 1998 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
208 Eric Brian
This very Essai consisted of compilations resulting from the permanent

survey established in 1772.7
During the last decades of the Old Regime the context of this cir-
culation of technical and conceptual tools from administration to science
and back is well known. According to Charles C. Gillispie, the scientists
provided the government with various tools as a counterpart to the
institutionalisation of some of their activities. 8 But precisely, how did
this exchange operate in the cases of population and probabilities? To
address this question and to evaluate the kind of processes at work in
these transformations, it is necessary to focus on the discussions of the
application of mathematical analysis to the moral sciences during the
second half of the eighteenth century, to the renewal of the calculation
on population during the same period, and to the interplay between
these movements. 9
The Crisis in The Application of Mathematical Analysis to the

Calculus of Probabilities
Condorcet's manuscripts dealing with the exercise of his scientific

speciality show his attachment to one method of reasoning among the
various arts de penser practised or taught as such by scientists and
teachers of his time. lo In the same way as D' Alembert, he conceived of
mathematical analysis as an art of discovering truths characterised by
the systematic of the decomposition of any idea to be considered, and by
the power of abstraction of formulas. l1 This predilection was more a
part of his skill as a geometer than any adhesion to a formalised doc-
trine. It may be considered as a set of mental habits - a habitus, to use
Panofsky's notion l2 - rooted in ancient mathematics and in Cartesian
geometry, but largely enriched during the process of the collective
continental translation of Newton's works and thus by the recent
developments in integral calculus. 13 D' Alembert, himself a witness and
initiator of this process, was clearly reluctant to turn such a skill into a
set of explicit rules. 14 Younger mathematicians - such as Bossut,
Lagrange, Condorcet, Laplace or Monge l5 - shared the belief that
analytic method was essential to mathematical ability,16 even if they
disagreed in their conceptions of what constituted analysis. 17
What appears as an analytic habitus may be accurately characterised
by the analogies which appeared in the comparison of four techniques
familiar to the geometers: the habit of drawing systematic tables to
Mathematics, Administrative Reform and Social Sciences in France 209
express the decomposition of a given idea, the practice of writing, the

composition of mathematical memoirs,18 and finally the know how
involved in the reduction of an integral. 19 A basic constituent of
mathematical expertise was the geometer's ability to conceive of a
systematic decomposition of the operations to be executed, eventually
drawing an outline on a sheet of paper using a classification schema.
This way of working was taught as the essence of mathematical
knowledge in some Jesuit schools before the diffusion of Newton's works
in France. 2o Later in the eighteenth century, according to Condorcet, it
was used intensively by Euler for heuristic purposes. 21 D'Alembert
himself provides the most widely published illustration of this technique
in Le Systeme figure des connaissances humaines. 22
A comparative study of the classifications of mathematical or
scientific activities (e.g., "the divisions of mathematics") proposed by
various French specialists during the eighteenth century23 reveals that,
among the Parisian geometers during the second half of the century (as
opposed to before 1730, for instance), the progressive degrees of
abstraction involved in mathematical operations were largely considered
as the principle of construction used for this kind of classifications. 24
Simple facts had to be abstracted into quantities, and quantities into well
defined measures, allowing their comparison. Such a fine underlying
measure was the necessary condition for the application of a formula
(e.g., the construction of a convenient differential equation). The laws
reduced in mathematical equations were assumed to emerge from those
various stages of abstraction. This progressive and rather ideal
elaboration, from physics to physico-mathematics, to "mixte" mathe-
matics, and finally up to pure mathematics, was one of the main issues
upon which the geometers' technical attention focused. Their specific
skill was the ability to play from physical facts to formal generalisation
and from formulas to their potential application. 25
To solve a problem a geometer had to elaborate some formalism and
to develop the necessary calculus on the registers of integral and
differential calculus improved during the century. But to establish this
formalism, he had to construct a measure, a comparability with which to
settle the abstraction, playing with the possible decomposition of the
problem at hand. In this context the word denombrement took on a
precise meaning: it referred to the practical and mental operations
involved in the decomposition, so that what remained at the extremity of
each branch of the tree that could have represented it were "simple
things" by which a quantity could easily be defined.
210 Eric Brian
This explains D' Alembert's reluctance to apply analysis to the cal-

culus of probabilities, which may be summarised as a criticism of the
over-generalisation induced by the calculus itself.26 Such a theoretical
position, held by one of the leading mathematicians of the time,27 was
misunderstood if not ridiculed 28 by most of his contemporaries,
particularly by Daniel Bernoulli in the controversies over vaccine (i.e.,
the application of probabilities to medicine) and the paradox of
Petersburg (i.e., their application to the moral sciences). D'Alembert's
position was not restricted to the calculus of probabilities in particular,
but was in fact a general statement reflecting his conception of
mathematics. 29 D'Alembert refused to admit that, as far as one is
comparing observations of human beings, each singular case can be
granted for a Cartesian "simple thing."
Scrutinising the correspondence among a small network of geometers
including Lagrange, Laplace and Condorcet, as well as the early works
of Condorcet and Laplace, it can be shown that: (1) the scientific legacy
endorsed by the two young mathematicians was thereby carrying a
potential scientific disqualification at the beginning of the 1770s; (2) in
response of what appears as an objective situation, the parallel works of
Condorcet and Laplace, and their increasing competition from around
1772, could be understood as attempts to establish an analytic theory of
probabilities in response to D'Alembert's objections.
But this enterprise, bearing in mind my comments on the analytic
habitus and D' Alembert's position, was not "simply" the elaboration of
renewed mathematical devices. A complete reorganisation of mathe-
matical knowledge was also at stake. To cut a long story short, Laplace
gave priority to the development of technical tools, while Condorcet
attempted to work out what might today be referred to as the
"epistemological settings" of such a theory, or in his words its "meta-
physical" justification. 3D Around 1774, Laplace also developed some
tools,31 but their metaphysical justifications were irrelevant in terms of
Condorcet's metaphysical standpoint. 32 In the context of the rising
conflict between the two disciples of D' Alembert, it seems that Laplace's
improvement pushed Condorcet towards systematic doubts about any
application of calculus to the physical or moral sciences. 33
A Long Term Renewal of the Administrative Knowledge on Population
The letters exchanged between Condorcet and Turgot before the summer
1774, the period of Turgot's access to the Contr6le general des Finances,
show that the intendant of Limousin was early on among the very first
readers of the young geometers' works on probabilities. 34 Condorcet's
interest in issues of jurisprudence, as discussed in Beccaria's Dei delUti e
delle pene [1764], is attested to date from 1767. 35 His discussion with
Turgot in early 1771 should be seen against the background of the
Maupeou affair, a paroxysm in the conflict between absolutism and
Parliament, and was devoted to exercise of justice. 36 Paying a close at-
tention to Condorcet's and Lapace's references to the works of Bayes
and Price published in Philosophical Transactions ... (1763-1764) suggests
that Turgot was at the origin of this cardinal quotation in Laplace's
technical contribution. 37
As a result of his exchanges with Turgot, Condorcet expressed a
theoretical position concerning the civil utility of calculations on
mortality which appears as a synthesis of D' Alembert's doubts about the
application of probabilities to the moral sciences and of a position re-
sembling that of Turgot: 38 from the standpoint of an individual human
being D' Alembert was correct, but the application of probabilities to the
moral sciences was justified from the standpoint of state action.
"Ces determinations de la vie moyenne peuvent servir avantageusement pour les
Etats mais sont presque inutiles pour chaque homme."39
Montucla, the pioneer in the history of mathematics, was himself an

administrator and assistant of Turgot in his early empirical works in
political arithmetics and physiocratic economy.40 A few decades later he
put forward the opinion of the enlightened administration on this civil
utility:
"Nous avons dit au commencement de l'artic1e XXXVII que la theorie de la
probabilite est non seulement une des plus curieuses, mais des plus utiles; nous en
avons donne quelques exemples. Mais cette utilite parait surtout dans l'application
de cette theorie a un grand nombre de problemes politiques ou economiques et de
contrats civils. Tous les Etats de I'Europe ont ete obliges dans ces derniers temps,
par leurs besoins ou leurs folies politiques, d'emprunter [... ]"41
This formed the immediate background of Condorcet's inqumes

before and during Turgot's nomination to the Contr6le General des
Finances. But in confronting these views the scientist faced the
212 Eric Brian
manifestation of a long-term process which affected the practical

conditions under which the magistrature and more specifically the
reformists administrators considered the question of population.
Three kinds of documents were produced under absolutism in order
to estimate population during the eighteenth century: memoires prepared
during surveys organised by the government for various reasons,42
dictionaries and systematic compilations prepared for administrative or
commercial motifs,43 and special investigations undertaken by indi-
viduals. 44 These documents reveal the growing influence of the college
scientific culture upon these works throughout the century. They also
show a tension between a trend of confinement in administrative circles
on the one hand, and a trend towards open publications engaged in the
public debates on political economy on the other. 45
One particular survey, I'enquete Terray, carried out between 1772 and
1789 by the Contr61e General des Finances and the provincial intendants,
was conceived and developed as a machine, allowing year by year and
parish by parish estimates and checks of variations in the number of
births, marriages and deaths for the whole country (comprising around
40,000 parishes). This survey formed the basis of all the new calculations
on population published during the last quarter of the eighteenth
century.
In 1784, these materials were compiled and computed after various
cross-checks with the general geodesic map of France prepared by the
Cassini family at the Academy of sciences. This final work, carried out
by La Michodiere, was a response of the administrator in charge of the
permanent survey to the publication of some partial conclusions by
Necker in his De l'Administration des finances de la France (1784). La
Michodiere's enterprise can be understood as an additional step in the
penetration of scientific culture into administrative procedures, even if
the work was deliberately kept outside of the scientific milieu till 1785.
A detailed analysis of the archives remaining from what we today
might call a secondary analysis of Terray's survey shows that crossing
the administrative identification of the parishes and their geodesic
locations made visible various inconsistencies of these two systematic
descriptions of the kingdom. For the first time, its administrative order
was redefined and made adequate to an order of another kind, which
appeared to the protagonists as a natural order and established by means
of geodesic construction. 46
An Historical Conjunction
In the mid 1770s, Condorcet, then assistant Secretary of the Academy of

sciences, was aware of the State's concrete needs. On the contrary, his
colleague Laplace appears as a technical expert. 47 Indeed, Laplace in fact
provided the fundamental mathematical tool of inverse probabilities in
his "Memoire sur la probabilite des causes par 1es evenements."48
After Turgot's disgrace in May 1776 and after his death in 1781, this
set of reflections became for Condorcet a philosophical and political
legacy.49 During the following years he completed his (unpublished)
treatise on integral calculus and was extremely active as Secretary of the
Academy of sciences. This charge encompassed the writing of various
syntheses of the work of his peers, including prefaces, summaries and
e/oges which appeared in the official publications of the Academy.
Since its creation in 1666, and clearly after its reorganisation of 1699,
the Academy of sciences formed an organic part of the monarchy: in the
Company people of science were supposed to work for utility under-
stood as the common interest of the monarchy and of mankind. 50 This
function was continuously renewed throughout the century due to the
tension between the needs of the government and the autonomy of
scientific activities. It developed a specific manifestation after 1765 when
the absolute monarchy, in permanent conflict with Parliament,
considered scientific training and expertise as an alternative in the
formation of the Nation's elite. 51
But this definition and its recent actualisation was problematic be-
cause of a contradiction between two social characteristics of the
academic institution: on the one hand, the Company was strictly
organised into six divisions (i.e., Geometrie, Astronomie, Mecanique,
Anatomie, Chimie and Botanique) which accorded to some notion of
scientific utility at the end of the seventeenth century; on the other hand,
the power of censorship of academicians and of the Academy upon
scientific publications expanded to a position of quasi-monopoly by the
end of the eighteenth century. The contradiction laid in the fact that
during the second half of the eighteenth century, there existed a domain
of knowledge outside of the traditional scope of the Academy but which
was of immediate utility for the government and increasingly catered for
by hundreds of publications professing more and more accurate
expertise: political economy. 52 The proceedings of academic meetings
during the last third of the century reveal various indicators of this crisis,
such as attempts to renew the rules of the Company, or to change the
214 Eric Brian
names of the classes, or tensions among members with respect to their

connections with public and political debates. 53
In this context, Condorcet's interest in the application of analysis to
the calculus of probabilities, understood as a necessity for civil appli-
cations, appears as an attempt to redefine the utility of the Academy on
the basis of a new conception of mathematical analysis and its potential
application. The same context of a crisis of civil utility at the royal
Academy of sciences was, in a similar way, a factor of the conception of
scientific renewals in chemistry shared by the young generation of
chemists led during the same period by Lavoisier, himself directly
involved in administrative activities. 54 Within the Academy, this was the
significance of Condorcet's analytical activism.
Among various concordant sources, one of Condorcet's manuscripts
clearly expresses his vision of mathematical analysis around 1785. In
analytical fashion, he drew a classification of the applications of analysis
where the various divisions of the science are now displayed system-
atically, not along one scale corresponding to degrees of abstraction, but
on a two-dimensional map, crossing this first criteria inherited from
D' Alembert with a new one inspired by Turgot's Lockian metaphysics: 55
the accessibility of natural laws to human mind. This way of
understanding analysis allowed him to integrate, as a mental exercise,
the collective work of his fellows geometers, particularly the formal
developments due to Laplace. The new classification allowed Condorcet
to embrace the diversity of the techniques he knew: "non-infinitesimal
analysis" and its application (considered as the most accessible to human
mind); "infinitesimal analysis" encompassing integral calculus, different-
ial equations and their application to mechanics and astronomy (a
"little" less accessible because of their differential definition); "unde-
termined analysis," mainly the analytic theory of probabilities, divided
between the kind of calculations Laplace was developing and the classic
calculus of combinations. 56
The position of Condorcet as Secretary of the Academy of sciences, in
charge of the publication of the Company in the context of the renewal
of its activity, gave a scientific authority and an audience to his personal
conception that may be evaluated through a study of what appears
retrospectively as a policy of scientific production and publication. Its
first stage was the creation of the rubric "analyse" among the disciplines
explicitly identified in the prefaces of the volumes published by the
Academy of sciences. 57 This may be interpreted as the institution-
alisation of mathematical analysis through the accumulation of a corpus
of memoirs, written in most cases by academicians of D'Alembert's

circle. 58 This does not mean that the collective work was done without
tensions: for instance, a comparative study of the introductions of
Laplace's memoirs and of Condorcet's accounts found in the prefaces of
the academic volumes clearly shows the on-going competition between
these two mathematicians.
The New Analysis and Its Application to Administrative Reform
The 26 memoirs published under the rubric "analyse," and some others
published after the disappearance of all rubrics (in HARS&M 1783),
fitted perfectly with Condorcet's view of a new analysis that could solve
the crisis of application after the expression of D' Alembert's emblematic
doubts. For instance, the various contributions of Condorcet himself
dealing precisely with the calculus of probabilities ~ memoirs that are
generally considered to be quite idiosyncratic ~ can be interpreted as
attempts to complete the puzzle constituted by the others, with special
attention given to the metaphysical discussions neglected in Laplace's
calculations. The same corpus can also be read through a different code,
provided, this time, by Condorcet's account of Turgot's political
programme published under the title Vie de Monsieur Turgot [1786].
These combined logics explain contributions dealing with differential
equations or calculus of probabilities which were directly oriented
towards the application of analysis to administrative reforms. Such as:
~ Condorcet's methodological proposal for the evaluation of remaining

feudal rights considered as a direct application of his conception of
the calculus of probabilities. 59
~ Monge's geometrical contribution to road construction for the
improvement of taxes in kind. 6o
~ Laplace's analytical justification of the multiplicateur des naissances61 ;
the related memoirs by Morand 62 ; La Michodiere's compilations
published under the dummy authorship of du Sejour, Condorcet and
Laplace. 63
~ Tillet, Bossut, Desmarest, du Sejour and Condorcet's report on a
project for the establishment of a cadastral survey.64.
~ Borda's memoir on polls given and criticised to accompany the
publication of Condorcet's Essai sur l'application de I'analyse a la
probabiUte des decisions rendues a fa pluraUte des voix [1785].65
216 Eric Brian
The academic memoirs were carrying an official consecration. 66 In the

Parisian atmosphere of scientific fashions depicted by Darnton67 and
Gillispie,68 the progress of analysis received some audience in
enlightened circles if not public opinion. 69 Thereby, the publication of
Condorcet's Essai sur l'application de {'analyse a la probabilite des
decisions rendues a la pluralite des voix [1785] may be interpreted as a
second phase in the attempt to edify an enlightened opinion in the
matters of application of analysis to the political and moral sciences. 7o A
third step, urged on by the political crisis of 1788 and the preparation of
the General Estates, was the publication of the Essai sur la constitution et
les fonctions des assemblees provinciales [1788, republished in 1789].
These two essays, together with the pseudo-biography Vie de Monsieur
Turgot [1786] composed a complete treatise on an enlightened and
scientifically shaped policy.
The estimation of the population was one application of the new
analysis. At the end of June 1785, Laplace required large sets of
observations on births to apply his attempts at the calculus of
probabilities to the classical question of the sex-ratio at birth. Dionis du
Sejour, himself a member of the royal Academy, mathematician,
magistrate, and directly engaged in discussions on probabilities from
1774, met with La Michodiere who provided the Academy with
compilations prepared on the basis of Terray's surveys, themselves
computed on the basis of Cassini's maps. But these documents did not
distinguished between genders since Necker's instructions of 1778. The
intendants were asked to suppress any distinction of this kind in order to
reduce the time spent by the local administration on this task. So
Laplace shifted is interest to an issue of public utility, the estimation of
the multiplicateur needed to compute the population on the basis of the
number of births. He proposed a formal criteria to define the size of the
population under study so that the value of the coefficient could be
considered as known with a limited probable error, thereby solving the
problem highlighted by Condorcet in his critique of Moheau's
Recherches et considerations sur la population de la France [1778].
Laplace's memoir was published in the volume HARS&M for the year
1783 [1786], and its connections with other memoirs published under the
rubric "analyse" can easily be shown. The same paper introduces the
first part of the Essai pour connaftre la population du royaume published
in six sections under the names of Condorcet, Laplace and Dionis du
Sejour, so that it could appear officially as a study prepared by members
of the Academy. But in fact the materials and their presentation were La
Michodiere's. In addition, it should be noticed that the choices of the

multipliers taken by La Michodiere were inconsistent with Laplace's
results. All these elements show that the publication was essentially the
manifestation of the conjunction of the scientific and administrative
interests of the protagonists. The publication is actually incomplete. Its
use as it could have been understood at the time is not completely clear
today. But the point was that administrative arithmetics was not only
possible, but justified from a mathematical standpoint.
For this reason, the publication of the Essai pour connaftre fa
population du royaume can be seen as the prototype of statistics as
understood and developed during the nineteenth century, characterised
by a potential but legitimate interdependency between mathematical
analysis, calculus of probabilities and administrative procedures.
Conclusion
The historical possibility of legitimate mathematical calculations on

matters of population can be interpreted against the background of two
long-terms processes both related to the autonomisation of the State
from the absolute monarchy in France.?1 The first concerned scientific
activities, mainly the renewal of mathematical analysis and its
application; the second, the administrative techniques and requirements
related to the knowledge of population. The intricate interrelation of
these two processes was possible for various reasons. From a structural
standpoint the major reason was that these two processes were part of
the same movement of autonomisation of the State in the context of a
well known transformation of the uses of books by the social elites
concerned, mainly of books on science and political economy. But a
good deal of conjunctural factors were important, for instance the late
financial and scientific politics of the monarchy, demographic
phenomenas among the scientists at the Academy of sciences or among
reformist administrators. Some characteristics, including very concrete
mathematical choices, had come from singular conditions as Condorcet's
and Laplace's focus on particular technical and metaphysical inter-
rogations. 72 As a result of this conjunction during the two last decades of
the Old Regime, some scientific transformations can be observed. First,
the increasing consecration of a specific method, mathematical analysis,
as conceived among D' Alembert's disciples, and its institutionalisation in
a corpus of reference encompassing strict formal developments and,
218 Eric Brian
among other uses, applications to political issues of the time. Second, the
preliminary stage in the formation of a specific theory, the analytic
theory of probabilities, in Condorcet's and Laplace's memoirs published
by the Academy of sciences.
These were only rough or fantastic outlines of actual administrative
procedures which, in fact, had slowly emerged during the Revolutionary
and Napoleon periods. But a major accomplishment during the 1780s
had been the elaboration of the mental categories needed to make
possible these further developments. In a few words, this period was a
crucial moment of a longer term process of transformation of the social
division of labor between science and administration, dependent on the
autonomisation of the State from its monarchic and absolutist origins,
opening the horizon of a legitimate calculability and predictability in
social sciences.
Condorcet himself tried to carryon the prophecy of the political
changes embedded in these objective changes, and this could have
appeared to his contemporaries as pro domo advocacy.7 3 What the future
reserved to these political prospects is another and complex story, but
the transformation was sociologically deeper than the theoretical
satisfaction it could offer to enlightened scientists and administrators at
the end of the Old Regime. The corpus of academic analysis was the
basis of mathematical teaching in Revolutionary schools (Ecole
Normale, Ecole Poly technique) and the stage was set for the
administrative innovations of the next decades. As far as the calculus of
probabilities is concerned, at the end of the eighteenth century the
transformation of the moral and political sciences into what would
become partially institutionalised at the end of the nineteenth century as
social sciences cannot be understood, it seems to me, without considering
the wide configuration of other disciplines as a whole and their con-
nections with at least other areas of social expertise (for instance
administration). Such a perspective is necessary to identify long-term
underlying processes of change such as those affecting the social division
of labor among various specialities. 74 The interpretation I have proposed
helps to understand the complexity and variations in the practical and
theoretical connections between social or political arithmetics, social
mathematics, social physics, probabilities, statistics, political economy,
etc. between the 1790s and the 1840s: most of the theoretical
propositions elaborated during this period can be seen as attempts to
deal with the outcome of the social transformation I have examined.7 5
Notes
1. See Charles C. Gillispie, "Probability and Politics: Laplace, Condorcet and Turgot,"
Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 116, nO I, Feb. 1972 ; Keith M.
Baker, Condorcet. From Natural Philosophy to Social Mathematics (Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1975); Pierre Crepel and Bernard Bru, Condorcet.
Arithmhique politique. Textes rares ou inedits (1767-1789) (Paris, I.N.E.D., 1994).
2. Various examples can be found among four thousand references in Jacqueline Hecht
et Claude Levy, Economie et population. Les doctrines franfaises avant 1800.
Bibliographie generale commentee (Paris, I.N.E.D., 1956). Innovative approaches to
the study of this literature are put forward by Jean-Claude Perrot, Une histoire
intellectuelle de I'Economie politique (Paris, ed. E.H.E.S.S., 1992).
3. Messance, Recherches sur la population des generalites d'Auvergne, de Lyon et de
Rouen ... , Paris, 1766. This work was undertaken under the authority of the intendant
La Michodiere.
4. Moheau, Recherches et considerations sur la population de la France, Paris, 1778 (recent
edition: Paris, I.N.E.D., 1994). This one has been inspired by another provincial
intendant, Auget de Mont yon.
5. Bernard Bru, "Estimations Laplaciennes. Un exemple: la recherche de la population
d'un grand empire, 1785-1812," in Jacques Mairesse (ed.), Estimations et sondages.
Cinq contributions a l'histoire de la statistique (Paris: Economica, 1988). See also Pierre
Crepe! and Bernard Bru, Condorcet. Arithmhique politique ... , op. cit., Eric Brian,
"L'Age d'or de I'arithmetique politique fran~aise", Population (I.N.E.D.), n° 4/5,1994,
pp. 1099-1106. These publications give an account of the polemic between Moheau
and Condorcet in the Mercure de France (5 juillet 1778 - 15 avril 1779).
6. Laplace, "Sur les naissances, les mariages et les morts ... ," HARS&M, 1783, pp.
693-702. The abreviation "HARS&M, year" is used for "Academie royale des
sciences, Histoire de I'Academie royale des sciences. Avec les memo ires de mathematique
et de physique [. .. ] tires des registres de cette Academie. Annee ... , Paris, Imprimerie
royale," generally published three years later (e.g., in 1786 for HARS&M, 1783).
7. HARS&M, 1783-1788. For an overview of the period see Andrea Rusnock,
"Quantification, Precision, and Accuracy: Determinations of Population in the Ancien
Regime", in M. Norton Wise, The Values of Precision (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1995), pp. 17-38.
8. Charles C. Gillispie, Science and Polity in France at the End of the Old Regime
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980).
9. This paper will examine the study presented in Eric Brian, La Mesure de I'Etat.
Administrateurs et geometres au XVllle siecle (Paris: Albin-Michel, 1994),462 pp. in
the light of various discussions held at S.C.A.S.S.S, Uppsala. This book comments on
developments, provides reference to materials and more detailed analysis.
10. Most of his papers are available at the Bibliotheque de l'Institut de France, Paris.
Henceforth, the abbreviation "ms" will refer to this collection.
II. D'Alembert, art. "Analyse," Encyclopedie, t. I, pp. 400-401; Condorcet, ms. 883, f.
207-208, published in La Mesure de I'Etat, op. cit.
12. Erwin Panofsky, Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism, Latrobe, The Archabbey
Press, 1951. This notion of habitus is commented by Pierre Bourdieu in his postface for
Architecture gothique et pensee scolastique (Paris: Minuit, 1967).
13. Euler, D' Alembert, Clairaut, and Fontaine were among the contributors to this
220 Eric Brian
collective work.
14. D'Alembert, "Discours preliminaire," Encyclopedie, t. I.
15. They happened to use the term "analysis" to refer to those who shared their know
how.
16. Roshdi Rashed, prefacing Sciences a l'epoque de la Revolution Franr;aise. Recherches
Historiques (Paris: Blanchard, 1988). Note that these conceptions are not identified
simply as what today is considered to be mathematical analysis.
17. These subjective affinities (which may be taken as objective ones if we consider the
high level of collective control among these specialists), together with the diversity of
theoretical explications, are to confirm the interpretation in term of habitus.
18. As for instance those of Laplace or Condorcet published in HARS&M.
19. This set of problems was and remains cardinal in integral calculus.
20. See R. P. Louis Bertrand Castel, Mathematique universelle abregee (Paris, 1728).
21. Condorcet, "Eloge d'Euler," published in HARS&M 1783 and also given as a preface
to Lettres de M. Euler a une princesse d'Allemagne ... , Paris, 1812, vol. 1, pp. XXXVIlI-
XXXIX.
22. Fourth appendix of the "Discours preliminaire," Encyclopedie, t. I.
23. Those published by Castel or D'Alembert; the attempts of Condorcet in manuscript
form; the outlines of classification appearing in Montucla's Histoire des mathematiques,
in Bezout's and Bossut's Cours de Mathematiques or in La Caille's Ler;ons. These
classifications were analysed using a method inspired by Jack Goody, The
Domestication of the Savage Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977).
24. In addition to the transformation of mathematical practice induced by the development
of the integral calculus, a second factor that could help to explain the strength of, let us
say, D'Alembert's orthodoxy in this matter, may be the consolidation of the authority
of the Paris Academy of Sciences on French scientific publications. See Roger Hahn,
The Anatomy of a scientific Institution. The Paris Academy of Sciences, 1666-1803
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971).
25. Today mathematics is generally considered as primarily divided into pure and applied.
Concerning the practice of mathematics up to the end of the eighteenth century, this
division appears anachronistic, even if the notion of the application of a mathematical
calculation was thought.
26. See D'Alembert's article "Croix ou pile" in Encyclopedie, t. IV, p. 513. See Michel
Paty, "D'Alembert et les probabilites," in Roshdi Rashed, Sciences a l'epoque de la
Revolutionfranr;aise (Paris: Blanchard, 1988), pp. 203-265.
27. A scientific and institutional lead. See for instance Rene Taton, "D'Alembert, Euler et
l'Academie de Berlin," Dix-huitieme siecle (Paris: P.U.F., n° 16, 1984), pp. 55-68.
28. One century later Henry Poincare returned to some of D' Alembert's objections, see
"Le calcul des probabilites," in La Science et l'Hypothese (Paris: Flammarion, 1968),
pp. 191-213 (reed.).
29. Michel Paty, "D' Alembert et les probabilites," op. cit., and "Rapport des
mathematiques et de la physique chez D'Alembert," Dix-huitieme siecle (Paris: P.U.F.,
n° 16, 1984), pp. 69-79.
30. I have tried to show that the differences between these two approaches were rooted in
two different practices of mathematical work, and by the tension between two distinct
institutional positions, see La Mesure de l'Etat, pt. I, Ch. 5.
3!. See Laplace's memoirs published in the vol. VI and VII of the Memoires ... presentes a
l'Academie ... par divers savants ... (Paris, 1774 and 1776).
32. See Condorcet's accounts of Laplace's memoirs published in the prefaces of the same
volumes.
33. These doubts are expressed by Condorcet in a manuscript on probability identified by
Keith M. Baker as the one he worked on in 1774 and later: ms 875, ff. 84-99. The very
section of this manuscript to which I am referring to has been corrected from
Condorcet's hand a little later. See ms 875, f. 99, copy ff. 108-109. For more detailled
considerations on Condorcet's papers see Pierre Crepel and Bernard Bru, Condorcet.
Arithmetique politique ... , op. cit.
34. This correspondance is dispersed among several publications and manuscripts fonds.
See Pierre Crepel and Bernard Bru, Condorcet. Arithmetique politique, op. cit.
35. Letter of Condorcet to Frisi, June 10th, 1767. Uppsala Universitetsbibliotek,
Collection E. Waller.
36. See Charles Henry, Correspondance inedite de Condorcet et de Turgot (Paris:
Charavay, 1883), letter LXI (April 6th, [1771]); and Gustave Schelle, Oeuvres de
Turgot ... , t. III, pp. 513-514.
37. Laplace, "Memoire sur la probabilite des causes par les evenements," Memoires ...
presentes a I'Academie ... par divers savants (Paris, 1774), vol VI, pp. 621-656.
Condorcet, ms 875, ff. 84-99.
38. For accounts on Turgot's metaphysics see Condorcet, Vie de M. Turgot (Londres,
1786), pp. 20-29 and Jean-Claude Perrot, "Equilibre et determinisme au XVII Ie siecle.
Etude de cas," Une histoire intellectuelle de l'Economie politique (Paris: Ed. E.H.E.S.S.,
1992), pp. 237-255.
39. Condorcet, ms Bureau des Longitudes, Z30, f. 6. Pierre Crepel improved Keith M.
Baker's reconstruction of this manuscript written in 1772 in "Le premier manuscrit de
Condorcet sur Ie caleul des probabilites (1772)," Historia Mathematica 14 (1987),
282-284.
40. See Gustave Schelle, Oeuvres de Turgot ... , t. II, pp. 440-441 (October 10th, 1765). On
Montucla see A.-S. Le Blond, "Sur la vie et les ouvrages de Montucla," in Montucla's
Histoire des mathematiques, vol. 4 (Paris: Agasse, 1802), pp. 662-672.
41. Montucla, Histoire des mathematiques, t. III, p. 406: "Introducing article XXXVII, we
said that theory of the probability is not only among the strangest, but among the
most useful; and we have shown a few illustrations of this property. But this utility is
more impressive than anywhere else in the application of this theory to a large number
of political or economic problems, and to civil contracts. All European state have
recently been forced to borrow, to cover their needs or political follies [... j".
42. These materials are generaly known as les memo ires des intendants, written during the
reign of Louis XIV. See Edmond Esmonin, Etudes sur la France des XVIIe et XVIIle
siecles (Paris: PUF, 1964); Bertrand Gille, Les Sources statistiques de l'histoire de
France (Geneve: Droz, 1964); Rene Ie Mee, Les Sources de la demographie historique
franfaise dans les archives pub/iques (Paris: Bibliotheque Nationale, 1967).
43 Denombrement du royaume ... (Paris: [Claude] Saugrain, 1709); Nouveau denombrement
du royaume ... , (Paris, [Joseph] Saugrain, 1720); Dictionnaire universel de la France ...
(Paris: [Claude Marin] Saugrain, 1726); Doisy, Le Royaume de France... (Paris:
Quillau, two publications in 1745 and 1753).
44. See for instance, Expilly, Dictionnaire geographique, historique et politique des Gaules et
de la France (Paris: Desaint et Saillant, 1762-1770); Messance, Recherches sur la popu-
lation (Paris: Durand, 1766); Moheau, Recherches et Considerations sur la population de
la France (Paris: Moutard, 1778) (recently published in Paris: LN.E.D., 1994).
222 Eric Brian
45. See La Mesure de l'Etat... , pt. II, Ch. 1.

46. See La Mesure de l'Etat ... , pt. III, Ch. 3.
47. Charles Henry, letter CXLVII (1774) op. cit. During the summer 1775, Condorcet
asked Turgot to release Laplace from his duties in order to prepare a "complete
treatise" on probabilities and their applications to political economy. See Pierre
Crepel, "Condorcet, la theorie des probabilites et les calculs financiers," in Roshdi
Rashed, Sciences Ii l'epoque de la Revolution fran~aise (Paris: Blanchard, 1988), pp. 307
and 314. This letter is ms 855 ff. 157-158. This does not mean that at the time
Condorcet could imagine the actual difficulties of this programme as other manu-
scripts reveal.
48. Published in Memoires de Mathematique et de Physique, presentes Ii L 'Academie des
Sciences par divers savants ... (Paris: Imprimerie royale, t. VI, 1774), pp. 621-656).
Account by Condorcet, pp. 18-19.
49. See Jean-Claude Perrot, "Condorcet: de I'economie politique aux sciences de la
societe," Revue de Synthese, IVe s., CIX, n° I, janvier-mars 1988, pp. 13-37. See for
instance Condorcet, Vie de Monsieur Turgot (Londres, 1786).
50. See for instance Alice Stroup, A Company of Scientists. Botany, Patronage and
Community at the Seventeenth-Century Parisian Royal Academy of Sciences (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1990). For a detailled analysis of this point see La
Mesure de l'Etat ... , pt. II, Ch. 2.
51. See Michel Antoine, Louis XV (Paris: Fayard, 1989), chap. XVI. The effect of this
polity inflexion can be observed in the transformation of scientific higher education in
France during this period, see Rene Taton (dir.), Enseignement et diffusion des sciences
en France au XVIIle siecle (Paris: Hermann, 1986), part. IV and V.
52. See Jean-Claude Perrot, "L'Economie politique et ses livres," Une Histoire intel-
lectuelle... , op. cit.
53. Other indicators can be considered to show a deep transformation of the notion of
utility the of sciences for members of the Paris Academy during the eighteenth
century. For a study of the transformations of experimental practices and reports, see
Christian Licoppe, Eprouver, rapporter et convaincre. Une etude du compte-
experimental Ii !'epoque moderne, Ph.D. (Paris VII, 1994).
54. On the preconditions of the transformation of chemistry during this period and on the
success of the notion of "revolution chimique" see Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent,
Lavoisier. Memoires d'une revolution (Paris: Flammarion, 1993). On an attempt of re-
form related to this generation of chemists, see Eric Brian, "Lavoisier et Ie projet
de classe de physique experimentale it I' Academie royale des sciences (avril
1766)," Academie des sciences, II y a 200 ans Lavoisier (Paris: Ed. Lavoisier, 1995), pp.
151-168.
55. See Turgot's article "Existence" in the Encyclopedie, and Condorcet's comment on it
in his Vie de M. Turgot.
56. The manuscript table is reproduced in La Mesure de l'Etat..., p. 219.
57. The prefaces dealing with analysis where written by Condorcet himself, as his
manuscripts reveal. He summarized his colleagues' memoirs, here and there adding
enthusiastic prophecies about what should constitute analysis.
58. The list of these memoirs is given in La Mesure de l'Etat..., pp. 357-360.
59. Condorcet, "Sur l'evaluation des droits eventuels," HARS&M 1782.
60. Monge, "Memoire sur la theorie des deblais et des remblais," HARS&M 1781.
61. Laplace, "Sur les approximations des formules qui sont fonctions de tres grands
nombres," HARS&M 1782, and "Sur les naissances, les mariages et les morts ... ,"
HARS&M 1783.
62. Morand, "Recapitulation des baptemes, mariages, mortuaires ... ," HARS&M 1771,
and "Memoire sur la population de Paris," HARS&M 1779.
63. "Essai pour connaitre la population du Royaume ... ," HARS&M 1783-1788.
64. "Rapport sur un projet pour la reformation du Cadastre de la Haute Guyenne ... ,"
HARS&M 1782.
65. Borda, "Sur les elections au scrutin," HARS&M 1781.
66. Roger Hahn, The Anatomy of a Scientific Institution. The Paris Academy of Sciences,
1666-1803 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971).
67. Robert Darnton, Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France (Cambridge:
Harvard, 1968).
68. Charles C. Gillispie, Science and Polity in France at the End of the Old Regime
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980).
69. It could be argued that cultural conditions were prepared for the reception of
Condorcet's programme among the elite at the end of the Old Regime, considering the
intellectual background given by the training of pupils in the colleges since the
reception of Newtonian physics in France. For such an analysis, see La Mesure de
l'Etat ... , pt. Ch. I. For a wider perspective on this cultural background, see Daniel
Roche, Le siixle des Lumieres en province. Academie et academiciens provinciaux,
1680-1789, (Paris: Ed. E.H.E.S.S., 1978).
70. This purpose is made explicit in the preliminary discourse and is implicit in the
organization of the essay.
71. On this approach, see Robert Descimon and Alain Guery, "Un Etat des temps
modernes?," in Andre Burguiere et Jacques Revel (eds.), Histoire de la France. 2.
L'Etat et les pouvoirs (Paris: Seuil, 1989), pp. 181-356.
72. This point should be developed with a comparison of Euler's works on population,
which is completely different from those of Condorcet and Laplace.
73. In La Mesure de l'Etat ... , pt. IV, Ch. 4, I have tried to show that the defense of this
standpoint was the motive of publications such as the Essai sur les Assemb!ees
provinciales of 1788, of his "Tableau general de la science qui a pour objet
I'application du calcul aux sciences politiques et morales," in the Journal d'Instruction
Sociale, June and July 1793, and of his "Fragment sur I' Atlantide ... ," a section of the
tenth epoch of his historical picture of the progress of human mind (written in
1793-1794). The changes in the priority given in 1788 to administrative reforms, in
1793 to methodology, and finally to the establishment of a scientific society, may be
understood as resulting from the transformation of the political and institutional
stituation in France, including his own: a programme of rational reforms was
convenient in 1788, a mobilization of the enlightened elite through the exposition of a
method could appear helpful in 1793, and a complete reconstruction of scientific
institutions was in any case necessary after the collapse of those that had previously
existed.
74. This consideration has been inspired by Pierre Bourdieu's note "Sur Ie pouvoir
symbolique," Annales, E.S.C., XXXII, n° 3, mai-juin 1977, pp. 405-411.
75. This observation brings us to the end of L. Daston's "classical probability" and to the
inception Th. Porter's "statistical thinking" (Lorraine J. Daston, Classical Probability
in the Enlightenment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988); Theodore M.
Porter, The Rise of Statistical Thinking, 1820-1900 (Princeton: Princeton University
224 Eric Brian
Press, 1986). For various studies of the connections between natural and social
sciences during the nineteenth century, see I. Bernard Cohen (ed.), The Natural
Sciences and the Social Sciences. Some Critical and Historical Perspectives (Dordrecht:
Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994).
FROM POLITICAL ARITHMETIC TO SOCIAL STATISTICS:
HOW SOME NINETEENTH-CENTURY ROOTS OF
THE SOCIAL SCIENCES WERE IMPLANTED
MICHAEL DONNELLY
University of New Hampshire
Statistics is in many respects a hallmark of the modern age, and a central

example of the novel discourses and cultural practices which gave rise to
the modern intellectual world. 1 It is at once a technology and basic idiom
on which all sorts of administrations and organizations depend; a funda-
mental tool for much scientific work, in virtually any field of empirical
science; a part of everyday consciousness in major and minor ways, when-
ever citizens judge the economic performance of governments, or teachers
and parents assess the academic achievement of students, or sportsfans
scan the charts and tables filled with rankings and percentages in a daily
newspaper. 2
No one would deny these facts, although some might be inclined to say
that they are obvious in an uninteresting way. Statistics have become so
familiar, and our ways of using statistics so ingrained, that they are simply
part of the taken-for-granted order of things. Statistics are likely to seem
as a result simply a convenient tool, a kit of neutral and highly formalized
techniques. Indeed the cynic would tend to say that statistics can be bent
to virtually any purpose, that statistics can be cited to different effect on
all sides of a question, as if they were like a form into which different
contents can be indifferently pressed. Even statisticians themselves are
liable to relegate statistics to the status of a tool; they are certainly con-
cerned about the sound application of their techniques, but they often
think of themselves as first and foremost technicians, preparing instru-
ments for others to wield.
This image of statistics - a set of tools we find available, ready to hand
- is not wrong; but as a way of understanding the longer-term develop-
ment of statistics as a field it is decidedly partial - in both senses of the
word. It reflects only a part of what statistics actually contributed to the
development of the social sciences, and it leaves the rather skewed im-
225
lohan Heilbron et at. (Eds.) The Rise of the Social Sciences and the Formation of
Modernity, 225-239.
226 Michael Donnelly
pression that those contributions were mostly technical. The way that
statisticians understand their field is itself an obstacle in the way of ap-
preciating the wider historical significance of statistics. The discipline of
statistics some time ago achieved its status as a branch of mathematics.
But what we know as modern statistics was in fact assembled historically
in piecemeal fashion, out of a wide array of practical applications. Indeed
it was the varied practical applications of the "numerical method" which
for long periods drove the field. In the early modern world, it started, one
might say, with gambling (the longstanding spur to probability theory),
and continued later with insurance underwriting; or with the perplexity of
judges about how juries weighed testimony and reached their verdicts;
and so forth. By all accounts the most powerful practical demand driving
the development of statistics was the hunger for numbers of the state and
civil society from the early nineteenth century onwards. It was those
political and social demands which enormously increased the scope of
social mathematics, and which led to institutionalized statistical bureaux.
Those demands, moreover, created the statist as an occupational cate-
gory, where before there had been only amateurs.
It is only over the last century for the most part that the statisticians'
techniques have been systematized as the core of the field. In the process
the techniques have been isolated and refined, and the content of the
specific questions that statisticians were actually attempting to answer has
accordingly fallen away as dross. The practical contexts in which
statisticians once worked are likely to be forgotten as well. There is hence
a considerable historical irony in thinking of statistics as pure, refined
technique. Moreover, the modern image of the statistical discipline ob-
scures a host of contributions which statistics has in fact given to other
fields - not only methodological, but more to the point, conceptual and
substantive contributions. Political arithmetic had formed already in the
eighteenth century much of the agenda of modern demography; likewise
early social statistics forged the way, prepared the ground, and suggested
a good deal of the content, oflater sociology.
If the present disciplinary image of statistics seems at odds in some
respects with its past, how then should we understand the relation of past
to present? Or, as Ian Hacking put the question some years ago, "how
should we do the history of statistics?"3 The answer is not as obvious as it
might seem, for a good deal depends upon what "statistics" is taken to be.
For a current-day professional statistician, what is at issue is likely to be
the lineage of the modern discipline statistics, formalized as it has become
as a branch of mathematics. If one were to ask a current-day statistician
From Political Arithmetic to Social Statistics 227
to characterize his or her discipline, the answer would come back

something like this: Statistics deals with the measurement of uncertainty.
It provides techniques for validating our observations in experimental,
and also non-experimental, sciences. The statistician is thus an under-
laborer who tries to offer guarantees for our data, and who tries to clarify
for us, and to formalize, the logic of drawing causal connections between
phenomena. In sum, the self-characterization of a modern statistician is
methodological. 4 Given that, it is hardly surprising that the history of
statistics in the modern mathematical sense goes back by and large only to
the late-nineteenth century - to the mathematical advances of Galton,
Yule, Edgeworth, Pearson et aP With the lineage of the discipline thus
secured, what came before is liable to be relegated to the less differentiated
or residual category of pre-history.
For the historian of the social sciences, by contrast, the history of
"statistics" is likely to stretch much further back. More importantly,
"statistics" itself is likely to be interpreted quite differently. The social
statistics of the early- and mid-nineteenth century was arguably the orig-
inal empirical social science. The early social statisticians, far from
limiting themselves to techniques for managing masses of observations,
had a far more ambitious agenda. If one were to go back to about 1840,
and ask the statistician to characterize the discipline, this time his
response would in fact be formulated not in methodological, but in
substantive terms: statistics then was simply the empirical science of
society. In the words of Dr. William Guy, writing in 1839: statistics
involved "the application of the numerical method to living beings, in all
their social relations."6 Or, as the prospectus of the Statistical Society of
London expressed its position, statistics were "facts which are calculated
to illustrate the conditions and prospects of society."7 In the early- and
mid-nineteenth century the etymology of the term was still very much
alive: statistics was State-istics, and statisticians were statists.
"Statistics" in this older sense left an important legacy. As Hacking
puts it, "Statistics has helped determine the form of laws about society
and the character of social facts. It has engendered concepts and clas-
sifications within the human sciences." Moreover, the statistical way of
thinking has been implanted in "a great bureaucratic machinery. It may
think of itself as providing only information, but it is itself part of the
technology of power in a modern state."8 In many respects the discipli-
nary history of statistics in which current-day statisticians have
formulated their past obscures these contributions; like other disciplinary
histories it has been conceived as a variety of de-contextualized "tunnel
history."9 It is, however, this latter, broader sense of statistics which is

fundamental for understanding the so-called great transition; on any
account statistics in that sense played a central and fundamental role in
the rise of the social sciences.
Social statistics appeared fairly suddenly, as an innovation (if not
entirely a creation) of the period, roughly, 1820-1850; indeed its sudden
rise allows an unusually clear opportunity for the sociologist of science to
observe and track the very formation of a new scientific discourse, before
it became fully codified and institutionalized.1O In the origins of social
statistics, virtually all the features which the "social studies of science"
practitioners tend to look for are there to be seen: a new domain being
charted out; new concepts, fields of evidence, and methods of proof being
invented and codified; a new rhetoric expressing and publicizing the po-
tentials of the new science; a network of scientists slowly crystallizing into
a new professional identity; and eventually new institutions emerging.
The central question to raise about these developments is simply, what
did it mean to think statistically in the early-nineteenth century?!! This is a
conceptual problem of considerable moment, which needs to be located
temporally from two directions, thinking ahead in time from the
eighteenth century, and backwards from the late-nineteenth century. On
the one hand, by contrast to the eighteenth century, there was something
decidedly new in the use of social or public numbers in the early nineteenth
century, so much so that one can speak of statistical thinking itself as an
innovation of this period.!2 On the other hand, that innovation didn't owe
much, if anything, to better mathematics; in fact, the early history of social
statistics preceded by two or three generations the mathematical advances
which statisticians think of nowadays as the foundations of statistics. By
the light of conventional disciplinary histories, the transition from political
arithmetic to social statistics hence belongs securely to the pre-history of
modern statistics. And yet it should seem curious in some respects to speak
of the early-nineteenth century as "pre-history," since that was in fact the
heroic phase of social statistics, what historians still refer to as the era of
"statistical enthusiasm."!3 It was likewise the moment when statistics came
decisively to the forefront in public discourse. Hence the problem: if the
early nineteenth century marked an innovation - the emergence of social
statistics as a new style of thinking - and yet this innovation considerably
antedated modern mathematical statistics, what then did it mean to think
statistically? If the statistical way of thinking emerged before its familiar
modern mathematical foundations were laid, on what, then, did those
earlier statistics rest?
The great accomplishment of the early social stallsllcmns was to

diffuse and popularize a statistical view of things. The key change, which
in time carried implications for a wide array of empirical sciences, lay in
the idea of population. Social statistics made familiar the practice of
thinking of a population as a system, which could be studied as a whole
through the frequencies of its collective phenomena - without that
aggregate being broken down into its individual constituents. The concept
of population challenged fundamentally the conventional understanding
prevailing until then of what statistical aggregates represented. At the end
of the eighteenth century, statistical tables were still generally taken to be
second-order summaries of a series of independently determined indi-
vidual events - on the model of drawings from an urn or the repeated tos-
ses of a coin. In some special cases, such as life-tables, there were
interesting regularities observable in the aggregate patterns; similarly the
long-observed stability in the ratio of male to female births provoked
much comment. In general, however, aggregate-level information was not
perceived as law-like or otherwise worthy of much interest. By contrast, in
the period after 1820, it was aggregate rates which suddenly received
disproportionate attention. Rates are of course composed by sets of
individual events, but they were given a new importance and treated
effectively as a new and separate order of facts. The conceptual changes
which were taking place were not always well understood at the time; but
in retrospect it is not difficult to sense the enthusiasm of contemporaries
for what seemed a revolutionary development.
Population in this sense was a genuinely novel and fertile idea, and one
without clear antecedents. Moreover it is important to remember that in
this case social science was in the scientific vanguard, developing
conceptions which later became fundamental in the biological and
physical sciences. In a phrase, Malthus came before Darwin, and Quetelet
before Clark Maxwell (social statistics before statistical mechanics). 14
What is at issue here is not merely an historiographical problem of
when to back-date the beginnings of statistics. The disciplinary history of
the field does indeed present certain obstacles to understanding what
came before. But more to the point, it is necessary to think of early social
statistics as a new mode of representation, not a toolkit of techniques but
a discourse about society in its own right. In this respect the contribution
of social statistics was to conceive a new sort of object, society as a
population, which could be the target of research, and ultimately of policy
interventions. Conceiving this new object involved breaking from earlier,
principally political, means of representing the community. It did not hap-
pen immediately or transparently. Nonetheless, a gradual process, which

could be described as making the social world thinkable for statistics, was
somehow working an important conceptual shift.
Historians have dated the beginnings of social statistics fairly precisely,
ca. 1820-1850, but of course they didn't come out of nowhere. There were
earlier and important traditions of social numbers. The census goes back
at least to classical antiquity, if not to the earliest civilizations. Across
history regimes of many sorts have tried to estimate how many men they
could bring under arms, or what tax revenues they could raise. By the
eighteenth century there were fairly sophisticated life tables - aggregate
information about births and deaths which made it possible roughly to
track population trends. The numbers involved were often defective,
which was itself a spur to early statists - the self-styled political
arithmeticians - to work out means of statistical inference in order to
arrive at a fuller and more accurate reckoning. Political arithmetic can
fairly be called "the taproot of modern statistics"; 15 and yet the influential
developments came later, in the transition from these prior traditions of
political arithmetic to early-nineteenth-century social statistics. The
representative political arithmeticians were figures of the late seventeenth
century: John Graunt (1620-1674), William Petty (1623-1687), Edmund
Halley (1656-1742), Charles Davenant (1656-1714). Their achievements
were considerable, and unusually sophisticated for their day; yet in many
respects they remained isolated achievements which successors admired
but failed widely to build upon and extend. Hence the judgment of
historians that political arithmetic quickly "faded from the scene"; "led
nowhere"; "stagnated"; "was left to linger in the dusk"; or simply
"petered out.,,16
It was instead a later generation, born in the years around the turn of
the eighteenth century, who whipped up enthusiasm for a new, rapidly
developing statistical enterprise: Adolphe Quetelet (1796-1874), Adolphe
d' Angeville (1796-1856), Andre-Michel Guerry (1802-1866), Dr. William
Farr (1807-1883), Dr. William Guy (1810-1885), Florence Nightingale
(1820-1910). These were no longer political arithmeticians, but social or
"moral" statisticians.
The shift from political arithmetic to social statistics involved, in fact, a
decisive and enormously consequential transformation. It is useful to try
to capture schematically what that transformation involved by examining
in turn: 1) the scale of statistics-gathering; 2) the conceptual framework to
which the numbers were referred - what was counted? what were the
numbers taken to be signs, symptoms and indicators of? and 3) how in the
end could the numbers be interpreted? These are rather general headings
but they are serviceable for simplifying a complex matter.
Consider, first, the growing scale of public counting. Ian Hacking has
used the phrase "avalanche of printed numbers" to characterize what was
going on ca. 1820 and after; he estimates something like a 300,000 fold
increase across the nineteenth century.17 Moreover, counting which had
often been private, amateurish, ad hoc, and periodic became public, pro-
fessional and bureaucratic, systematic and continuous. What explains
that huge growth in scale is of course for the most part the institution-
alization of statistical bureaux. That is an important social process in its
own right, but its central contribution to the new statistical way of
thinking may have been only inadvertent and indirect. What seems to
have happened is that the sheer accumulation of printed numbers
provided a material condition for the new social statistics. Some social
numbers (on births and deaths, for instance) had long been available; and
political arithmeticians continued across the eighteenth century to add to
the supply, often ingeniously drawing broad inferences from scanty date.
But it was eventually the piling up of more and more numbers (Hacking's
avalanche metaphor), in continuous time series, which seems to have been
.crucial in changing the way statisticians saw their statistics. By looking
hard at the new numbers they began to see new regularities which had
never before been apparent. They came to believe that their numbers
revealed a new order of reality.
What, secondly, was the basic frame in which these numbers were
arrayed? What were these numbers of? The shift here can be suggested
(albeit all too neatly and schematically) by highlighting the adjectives in
the transition from political arithmetic to social statistics. In a phrase the
focus shifted from information about the body politic to information
about the social body - the population. This was a fundamental trans-
formation which requires more extended and nuanced treatment than it
has yet received. To hazard a generalization: political arithmetic, and
much of eighteenth-century German university statistics as well, tended to
take the political realm or the commonwealth as its natural frame of
analysis, and the sovereign as its audience. In Charles Davenant's phrase,
political arithmetic was "the art of reasoning by figures upon things
relating to, and of interest to, government."18 The political arithmeticians
made their enquiries with an explicit "view to considerations of state
power."19 Edmund Halley, for instance, reflected directly on the "Political
Uses" of his 1694 life table drawn from the tables of births and funerals in
Breslau. Although the table undoubtedly contributed to actuarial science,
Halley was clear that the first aim of political arithmetic was "to show the
proportion of men able to bear arms in any multitude"; moreover, to
underscore his basic conception, he added that "the strength and glory of
a King [is] in the multitude of his subjects."2o The political motive was
likewise transparently clear in Sir William Petty's famous survey of
Ireland, carried out in the 1650s, which was essentially an inventory of
spoils for the victors - a count of lands, buildings, people, cattle designed
to facilitate the exploitation or appropriation of those resources. 21 Or to
cite an example from the continental tradition, an enumeration of the
Prussian people was proposed in 1787, whose purpose was to present
Friedrich Wilhelm II, on the occasion of his coronation, with a full
accounting of his wealth and power, numbering his people, their dwellings
and livelihoods. 22 Such examples do not, of course, exhaust the varieties
of political arithmetic; not all political arithmetic was so narrowly or
explicitly political in motivation. There is no need to exaggerate in any
event, since it is enough to sense in retrospect the shift in emphasis that
was involved. What made political arithmetic "political" were, in sum,
two elements: its not infrequently explicit political aims; and its implicit
conceptual frame of reference - the community conceived first and
foremost as a political realm and as a creation of political will. In this
second respect political arithmetic still shared something with the German
tradition of university statistics, an early form of State-science which was
not principally quantitative but which similarly arrayed its compendia of
facts and figures about human populations in an explicitly political
framework. 23
By contrast to political arithmetic, social statistics were plainly about
society, not specifically the political community. In this respect social
statistics shared the ideological animus of other social discourses in the
early nineteenth century.24 If the state had earlier been conceptually
superordinate over society, the point was now to insist on the autonomy
of society - on the order which emerged spontaneously from social
institutions. Moreover, the statisticians tended implicitly to reverse the
logical priority: it was not political will which constituted the community,
but the popUlation which constituted a society; and while society of
course included political institutions, the dynamics of society, far from
being the result of political will or coercion, might well be in many
respects beyond the reach of political control or direct manipulation. 25
This is of course not to imply that the propositions of the social statis-
ticians had no political implications, or that statisticians had no political
motives; on the contrary. Nonetheless, in the statisticians' own emerging
idiom, what they dealt with were "laws of social life," laws of population
or of the social body. This was a new frame of reference for arranging
social facts; it highlights, to use an over-worked phrase, the "discovery of
society."
Malthus is a useful figure to mark the transition. His propositions on
population growth outstripping the provision of resources were couched
in mathematical form (that is already a sign of the times, even if the
calculations were suspect); still more to the point was Malthus's con-
viction that laws of population had their own independent dynamic,
indeed were recalcitrant to political control.
The great pride of social statisticians was to have discovered hitherto
unsuspected laws of social life; and to discern through the regularities of
those laws a spontaneously generated order which was in many ways
more remarkable than the artificial realms of the legislator and the
sovereign. An English reviewer of Quetelet's Sur l'homme (1835) struck
the typical note of wonderment at this discovery: "[I]t might seem that
human actions would, if registered, present as vast a variety as the
caprices of the will, and that to discover any thing like a law in their
production would be more absurd than to investigate the rules of the
wind .... Yet, when we pass from individuals to masses, we find even in
those actions which seem most fortuitous, a regularity of production, an
order of succession, that can only arise from fixity of cause. "26 These were
sentiments which were becoming common in the 1830s and after. The
political significance of this supposed spontaneous order, and its
rhetorical emphases, were well caught later in a fable recounted by one of
the principal German moral statisticians, Adolph Wagner: imagine, he
suggested, a land ruled by an autocrat, who decreed at the beginning of
each year the number of marriages which should take place that year; the
number of suicides (and the number to be committed by each sex, by the
different professions, and by what methods); the number of crimes (and
the different crimes to be committed by young and old, male and female),
etc. In fact, to draw the obvious moral of the fable, no state, no autocrat,
has the power to accomplish such things; and yet, as Wagner concluded:
"the natural organization of human society compels precisely these
results" - as the tables of the social statisticians amply demonstrated, year
after year. 27
This raises, finally, the third element in the transition from political
arithmetic to social statistics: what had happened that allowed social
statisticians to begin speaking of social laws? How did they come to
interpret their numbers as the sign of law-like regularities? What did the
numbers of the social statIstIcIans represent, and how should they be

interpreted? In the answers to such questions lies the core of what social
statisticians thought they had discovered - what these laws of social life
were all about.
The point on which all this turned was the notion of regularity or
stability in the rates of phenomena. 28 Regularity was not itself a new
notion. The political arithmeticians had already discovered some striking
regularities in vital statistics, in patterns of births and deaths. Such
regularities were widely commented upon, and not infrequently compared
with the movements of heavenly bodies that astronomers had charted.
Already in the eighteenth century it was a commonplace, for instance,
that the number of boy babies born slightly exceeded the number of girl
babies, by a ratio calculated in the range 19/18 to 22121. This fact was
familiar; but what did it mean? There seemed to be a fairly obvious
functional sense to it, since men were more likely to die in wars; hence if
boys and girls were born in equal numbers, there would likely be an
imbalance in the proportion between the sexes. But how might that happy
result come about? Probability theory didn't seem to be of much help,
since it would be reasonable to treat the sex of babies as randomly
determined, like the heads or tails of coin-tossing, and thus equiprobable.
Some political arithmeticians adduced the actual imbalance in births as
proof of divine providence: the ratio violated the laws of probability and
fortunately so; it was proof of divine design. 29
The regularities in aggregate statistics which eighteenth-century statis-
ticians noted were, in fact, biological ones - births, deaths, marriages -
which drew a lot of attention but did not in themselves suggest a path to
discovering other regularities, much less social laws. What happened? The
shift was partly an artifact of the avalanche of printed numbers.
Statisticians were prepared a priori to look for regularities; that was part
of their basic sense of what science was about, and how it ought to
proceed. 3D The avalanche of numbers presented, fairly suddenly, a vast
and growing set of new numbers to reflect on. What was apparently key
was the appearance of continuous, annual series, rather than occasional
or periodic enumerations. The statistical series seemed to reveal the
existence of more and more regularities in social phenomena, more and
more instances of rates of phenomena proceeding stably over time; it was
like witnessing, as more than one observer noted, the emergence of a new
order from the midst of chaos. The observation, for instance, that the
number of dead (undeliverable) letters in the Paris post office remained
virtually constant from year to year was repeated almost ritually as a
marvelous fact. More remarkably, there appeared to be regularities

equally striking in the realm of "moral facts." Here the statistics of
deviance, which had been gathered for very different purposes, brought
forth an unexpected result. Even the statistics of homicide and suicide
looked astonishingly stable: what might be taken as the paradigmatic
expressions of impulsive, irrational behavior appeared to occur in the
aggregate (through what was evoked as the "law oflarge numpers") with
a strange and awesome, indeed awe-inspiring, regularity. In the city of
Paris, for instance, as the excellent municipal statistics revealed, the rate
of suicide in each quartier hardly varied year by year; even the means of
suicide (by drowning, poison, etc.) seemed remarkably constant in their
proportions. Or, as an English reviewer of Quetelet noted of murder
(which would seem of all crimes "to depend the least on human foresight,
would seem the most fortuitous"): "Yet experience proves, not only that
murders vary very little in their annual amount, but that the instruments
with which they are committed are annually employed in nearly the same
proportions."3l
In the face of these "astonishing" regularities, social statisticians
quickly claimed to have uncovered a new order of facts, which not only.
revealed unsuspected "laws" of social life, but also opened the way to a
new kind of science. A social physics seemed to be already in the making.
What did social statisticians make of these regularities? What
produced them? There was no clear, certainly no generally persuasive
answer. Yet social statisticians convinced themselves without serious
difficulty that they had indeed discovered a new order of facts; moreover,
if these social facts (rates of aggregate phenomena) were so stable, they
must, as most assumed, be the constant effects of some as yet unknown
constant causes. The general idea was that by looking at individuals
observers would see only a myriad of peculiarities, but in the aggregate
those peculiarities would cancel each other out, leaving only general,
common features - an idea later popularized among generations of
sociologists by Durkheim's analysis in Suicide.
If the contemporary statistical reasoning is reconstructed in this way, it
charts clearly the path that social or moral statisticians followed in creat-
ing "social facts." The next step was to subject the new facts to simple
statistical manipulations. Consider a straightforward example. Quetelet
comes upon a set of measurements - the chest dimensions of a group of
five thousand-odd Scottish soldiers. He plots the figures, and claims that
they trace what would later be called a normal distribution, the familiar
bell-shaped curve. He then takes the mean chest girth of the group to
represent its "type" -l'homme moyen of the group. So far this involves just
a bit of arithmetic. But note what l'homme moyen represents to Quetelet: it
is, he says, as if Nature had aimed at producing this type - the ideal value
for the group; in the event, the actual distribution occurred, dispersed
around the mean, because the soldiers for different "accidental"
circumstances in their lives failed to realize fully the ideal standard. 32
Of course l'homme moyen is, Quetelet admits, nothing more than an
"etre fictif." And yet it is hard to resist the conclusion that it is more
representative as a type of the species, and in some sense more real, than
any actual individual. There is no need to belabor the point. It was by
such arguments that Quetelet and others helped to create the new habits
of mind and new conceptual practices which make up the statistical view.
What is a mean? It is just a bit of arithmetic. But the number comes to be
also a way of representing a group, a whole population. Social statis-
ticians were at the threshold here, in this reconstruction, of representing
groups numerically, and hence of comparing groups numerically, without
any necessary reference to the particularities and peculiarities of culture,
history, language, geography.33 These are powerful techniques. They were
only conceivable based on the confidence that aggregate numbers reflect
or indicate something real, essential, and fundamental about populations,
something which no amount of observation individual by individual
could produce. It is in this sense that early social statisticians created a
new mode of representing the social universe, and hence a new object to
act upon. These were essential first steps, one may fairly say, in making
the world thinkable for statistics.
Notes
I. This is the revised text of a talk delivered to a conference on "The Great Transition:
Discourses on Society and the Rise of the Social Sciences (1750-1850)"' held at the
Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences, Uppsala.
2. For a wide-ranging discussion of the diffusion of probabilistic and statistical thinking,
see Gerd Gigerenzer et aI., The Empire of Chance: How Probability Changed Science
and Everyday Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
3. Ian Hacking, "How Should We Do the History of Statistics?," I and C [formerly
Ideology and Consciousness] 8 (1981), 15-26.
4. This is the point of view, for instance, of Stephen Stigler's The History of Statistics:
The Measurement of Uncertainty before 1900 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1986).
5. Indeed the beginning might even be fixed at a particular date - in 1877, for instance,
when Francis Galton clashed with the preeminent English statistician of the preceding
generation, the vital statistician William Farr, in a meeting organized by the British
Association for the Advancement of Science. Galton complained that among the
recent papers communicated to Section F (Economic Science and Statistics) of the
Association, "not a single memoir treats of the mathematical theory of Statistics." In
response Farr defended, as Karl Pearson later put it, "that old type of statistics which
had no theoretical basis," but perhaps considerable practical utility. It was clear that
Galton's was the scientific voice of the future. This was a moment, emblematically,
when refinement of technique supplanted practical policy as the guiding principle of
the field. See Karl Pearson, The Life, Letters and Labours of Francis Galton
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1924), vol. II, pp. 347-348.
6. William Guy, "On the Values of the Numerical Method as Applied to Science, but
Especially to Physiology and Medicine," J. Statistical Soc. 2 (1839), 45. See also, Guy,
"On the Original and Acquired Meaning of the Term 'Statistics'," J. Statistical Soc. 28
(1865), 478--493; and V. John, "The Term 'Statistics'," J. Statistical Soc. 46 (1883),
656--679.
7. Journal of the Statistical Society of London 1 (1838), 1.
8. Hacking "How Shall We Do the History of Statistics?," p. 15.
9. See L. Graham, W. Lepenies and P. Weingart (eds.), Functions and Uses of
Disciplinary Histories (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1983). My own aim here follows a more
contextualist maxim, which is well expressed by Peter Buck: "Particular statistical
theories and practices may have universal application in principle, but they bear the
imprint of the particular social arrangements they were meant to explain." See his
essay, "People Who Counted: Political Arithmetic in the Eighteenth Century," Isis 73
(1982), 28--45.
10. See Ian Hacking, "Statistical Language, Statistical Truth, and Statistical Reason: The
Self-Authentication of a Style of Scientific Reasoning," in Eman McMullin (ed.), The
Social Dimensions of Science (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press,
1992).
II. This paper presents only a bare synopsis of an answer. It draws from a wide field of
recent historical work which the interested reader should consult further. See in
particular, Ian Hacking, The Taming of Chance (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1990); Stigler's History of Statistics; Theodore Porter, The Rise of Statistical
Thinking 1820-1900 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986).
12. This is the common thesis, developed in rather different ways, by Hacking, Taming of
Chance and Porter, Rise of Statistical Thinking.
13. Harald Westergaard had described an "era of enthusiasm, 1830 to 1849," in his
Contributions to the History of Statistics (London: King, 1932), pp. 136--171.
14. See, for instance, Francois Jacob, The Logic of Life: A History of Heredity, tr. by
Betty Spillman (New York: Vintage, 1976), pp. 169-175; Theodore Porter, "From
Quetelet to Maxwell: Social Statistics and the Origins of Statistical Physics," in I. B.
Cohen (ed.), The Natural Sciences and the Social Sciences (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1994),
pp. 345-362; and John Theodore Merz, "On the Statistical View of Nature," in A
History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1912),
vol. II, pp. 548-626.
15. The phrase is Walter Willcox's, in his article on "Statistics," in the Encyclopedia of the
Social Sciences, vol. xiv, p. 357.
16. These are the summary judgments respectively of S. Bauer, "Political Arithmetic," in
Palgrave's Dictionary of Political Economy, vol. I (London, 1925), p. 26; J. Hollander,
"The Dawn of a Science," in J. Clark (ed.), Adam Smith 1776-1926 (Chicago, 1928), p.
8; H. Westergaard, Contributions, p. 44; J. A. Schumpeter, "The Common Sense of

Econometrics," Econometrica 1 (1933), 7; Schum peter, History of Economic Analysis
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1954), p. 31. See also A. M. Endres, "The
Functions of Numerical Data in the Writings of Graunt, Petty, and Davenant,"
History of Political Economy 17 (1985),245-264.
17. Hacking, Taming of Chance, p. 2.
18. Charles Davenant, "Of the Use of Political Arithmetic," in Charles Whitworth (ed.),
The Political and Commercial Works of Dr. Charles D'Avenant (London, 1771), vol. I,
p.138.
19. Buck, "People Who Counted," p. 29. Buck's interpretation of the shifts in late-
eighteenth-century political arithmetic is largely consistent with the view I have
suggested above: "[W]hat had been a scientific prospectus for the exercise of state
power became a program for reversing the growth of government and reducing its
influence on English social and economic life ... Until the 1750s it was taken for
granted that populations were political creations, dependent on assertions of sovereign
authority for their existence as aggregates open to statistical study ... But by 1800 the
logic underlying such exchanges had been reversed: F. M. Eden's Estimate of the
Number of Inhabitants in Great Britain and Ireland carried the epigraph 'THESE
CONSTITUTE A STATE'" (pp. 28-29).
20. Edmund Halley, "An Estimate of the Degrees of Mortality of Mankind drawn from
Curious Tables of Births and Funerals at the City of Breslaw," Philosophical
Transactions 17 (1693), 601; Halley, "Some Further Considerations on the Breslaw
Bills of Mortality," ibid., 656.
21. William Petty, The Political Anatomy of Ireland [1691], in Petty, The Economic
Writings (New York: Kelley, 1963), vol. I, pp. 121-231.
22. Hacking, Taming of Chance, p. 29.
23. On German university statistics see Paul Lazarsfeld, "Notes on the History of
Quantification in Sociology - Trends, Sources and Problems," in Harry Woolf (ed.),
Quantification - A History of the Meaning of Measurement in the Natural and Social
Sciences (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1961), pp. 147-203.
24. See, for instance, Gianfranco Poggi, "The Place of Political Concerns in the Early
Social Sciences," Arch. Europ. Sociol. 21 (1980), 363-371; Robert Wokler, "Saint-
Simon and the Passage from Political to Social Science," in Anthony Pagden (ed.), The
25. The obvious parallel with metaphors of the invisible hand in political economy has
hardly been explored.
26. "Objects and Advantages of Statistical Science," Foreign Quarterly Review 16
(1835-1836), 212.
27. A. Wagner, Die Gesetzmassigkeit in den scheinbar willkurlichen Handlungen vom
Standpunkt der Statistik (Hamburg, 1864), trans. by T. Porter and cited in Porter,
Rise, p. 169.
28. See Stephen Turner, The Search for a Methodology of Social Science (Dordrecht:
Reidel, 1986), pp. 60-9\.
29. The Prussian pastor Sussmilch, for instance, published a widely cited treatise on the
"divine order" reigning in demographic affairs. As V. John later characterized his
views, "Sussmilch looks upon God as the eternal and sure arithmetician who orders
everything temporal and nature according to measure, number, and weight"; John,
"The Term 'Statistics'," p. 669.

30. See John Herschel (unsigned), "Quetelet on Probabilities," Edinburgh Review 92
(1850), I-57. See also S. F. Cannon, Science in Culture: The Early Victorian Period
(New York: Dawson, 1978).
31. "Objects and Advantages of Statistical Science," p. 212.
32. See Hacking's discussion in Taming of Chance, pp. 105-114.
33. See Talal Asad, "Ethnographic Representation, Statistics and Modern Power," Social
Research 61 (1994), 55-88, for one way of drawing the implications of social statistics'
abstractive power.
CERTAINTY AND ORDER, LIBERTY AND CONTINGENCY.
THE BIRTH OF SOCIAL SCIENCE AS
EMPIRICAL POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
PETER WAGNERl
University of Warwick
What is it that makes human beings do what they do? And what is the
social outcome of what all the individual human beings do? These are
presumably key questions of any social science. The preceding chapters
have shown that the emergence, toward the end of the eighteenth
century, of what indeed came to call itself social science meant a deep
transformation in the range of possible answers that could be given to
these questions. One key element of the emerging conception has been
the idea that to leave human strivings on their own, without any detailed
moral commands and external agency to enforce those commands, may
not necessarily open social interactions to all contingencies but that a
certain predictability and stability could be inferred to passions and
interests. Another element, building somewhat on the former, was the
view that the social outcome of such human strivings, if left
uncontrolled, would not be disorder and warfare but that a well
intelligible and potentially stable order of social relations would emerge,
based on exchange in a very broad sense. 2
Regardless of its validity, one very peculiar feature of this thinking is
worth noting. Emphasizing the predictability and stability of human incli-
nations and their results is an eminently political move. It is a concern for
the practical order of the world, which was to be sustained by the identi-
fication of some theoretical order inherent in the nature of human beings
and their ways of socializing. It has become customary, and is accepted by
some of the contributors to this volume, to describe the intellectual
developments between 1750 and 1850 as a transition from political philo-
sophy to social science. However, political concerns do not disappear
from the rising social sciences, rather they are decisively transformed. In
this chapter, my objective is to trace this transformation of thinking about
politics in the social sciences over the long-term, indeed until the present.
241
Modernity, 241-263.
242 Peter Wagner
Rephrasing Foucault, I will first argue that, while the transformations

of the human sciences marked indeed a major "event in the order of
knowledge,"3 this event was decisively shaped by the experience of the
so-called democratic revolutions in North America and in France. The
restructuration of political orders and their modes of justification
created aporias which should accompany political thinking until the
present. Political philosophy in the aftermath of these revolutions has
often been seen as being on the decline. I will try to show that all the
transformed ways of understanding political matters that emerged
during the nineteenth century can be read as modes of dealing with the
postrevolutionary aporias. They were centered, affirmatively or
critically, on the liberal idea of the polity, but - as social sciences - they
insisted that liberal-individualist political philosophy on its own was
insufficient to understand a social order. 4
Seen this way, two main lines of postrevolutionary thinking can be
distinguished; the one emphasizing that politically relevant features of
social life pre-existed the formation of the polity and remained
important, the other one pointing out that the rules of the polity created
social structures which, in turn, determined political life. This reading
will show that the social sciences, as they developed over the past two
centuries, remained deeply impregnated with the problema tics of
political philosophy, even though they transformed it decisively. A final
section will be devoted to identify the key features of this transformation
- to see how sociological reasoning differs systematically from political
philosophy and what that entails for our understanding of political
matters.
Liberty and Certainty: The Aporia of a Science of Politics under

Conditions of Modernity
The pervasiveness of political issues in the early social sciences is plainly

evident in the preceding contributions to this volume. This thinking
followed up on, and went along with, the modern political philosophy of
liberalism, from Hobbes to Locke, Montesquieu and Rousseau; and it
tried to underpin those kinds of reasoning with explicit reflections on
human nature and on the question if and how human nature would lend
itself to a political order without externally imposed unity and rules of
action.
In political terms, however, these reasonings were marked by a
Certainty and Order, Liberty and Contingency 243
curious paradox. If the authors were - normatively - taking the stance of

liberalism in a very broad sense, namely defending the right of human
beings to self-determine their individual and social lives, they were
arguing at the same time that the free action of human beings would not
actually generate, as one might innocently assume, a very wide range of
possible individual and social forms and orientations of behaviour. They
seemed to argue that human beings given complete autonomy would
reveal themselves not to be free in a radical sense, but driven by a limited
number of well intelligible inclinations. One might even infer that it was
exactly this predictability and order that gave strong reasons - to these
authors themselves and to more hesitant others - to support the
normative project of liberty. And this linkage of freedom and
predictability became particularly important in the historical moment
when the externally imposed barriers to free deliberation were threatened
to be removed, the moment of the American and French Revolutions.
These revolutions gave institutional expression to the political aspect
of a broader culture of individual autonomy which is a key element of
modernity. In this sense, much of this era can be seen as a liberation of
human beings from imposed ties, but this liberation was far from
unproblematic. As Claude Lefort once described this feature of
modernity: "When he is defined as independent, the individual does not
[... ] acquire a new certainty in place of the old. [... ] The emergence of the
individual does not merely mean that he is destined to control his own
destiny; he also has been dispossessed of his assurance as to his identity -
of the assurance which he once appeared to derive from his station, from
his social condition, or from the possibility of attaching himself to a
legitimate authority."s Liberation is here interpreted as an increase of
contingency and uncertainty in the lives of human beings.
If this view were unequivocally valid, one should expect that a
philosophy of contingency - in Richard Rorty's style, for instance -
linked to a liberal-individualist political theory would dominate the
intellectual scence forever after the successful revolutions. However,
historically this was not at all the case. We have briefly mentioned above
the customary view that political thought declined throughout the
twentieth century, exactly at that historical point when the free and open
deliberation about the things people have in common could be seen to be
moving from the mere realm of discourse into actual social practice. To
quote just one recent author's view, "the historical moment, about which
we speak, emerges in such a way that the real rising of the political
instance entails its theoretical abatement."6
244 Peter Wagner
At the same time, one should also have expected any kind of
reasoning to fall out of fashion which assumed that the actions of human
beings were somehow shaped and controlled by forces beyond their
immediate reach. Social factors such as "station," "social condition," or'
attachment to an authority, to return to Lefort, should have played more
of a role for human social life, and for thinking about human social life,
before these revolutions than after. The beginning of modernity should
have been a deeply anti-sociological occurrence. Again, however, almost
the opposite turned out to be true. "Society" as the object of the social
sciences has rather been a "postrevolutionary discovery;" or, to put it
even more succinctly, "the sociological point of view constitutes itself in
the moment when the notion of liberty becomes the principal
articulation of the human world."?
What appears here as a paradox in fact reveals the aporia of political
thought after liberation. Very generally speaking, the social sciences are
to be regarded as exactly a part of the response human beings gave to
their new condition of - self-inflicted, one might say - contingency and
principled uncertainty. Being unable to rely any longer on externally
defined certainties, political thinkers started searching, sometimes almost
desperately, for regularities and continuities which exist without being
commanded. The social sciences have been a means to decrease con-
tingency.s
Earlier political thought had already recognized the inevitable
circularity of a reasoning in which unity should rise from diversity as
well as, at the same time, impose itself on diversity. At that time,
however, there was room to try to approach the issue by mere
conceptual construction and theoretical determination. As long as there
were barriers to the practice of liberty, every conceivable view on its
outcomes and consequences for the polity could be held. The mode of
reasoning was bound to change when those barriers were removed and
experiences were made and when practical issues, such as the founding of
political institutions, had to be tackled. The American and French
revolutions strongly suggested to study what held human beings
together, how they would actually organize their lives - individually, in
"associations" or "social movements," and in the polity and the "nation"
- and what kinds of regularities and orders could be expected, if people
were permitted to do so on their own, without imposed restrictions. This
is the search for social ties that is one major root of the social sciences,
and it is in this sense a politically motivated search.
However, if we see, with Hannah Arendt, politics as a part of those
human activities which are by their nature open, plural and diverse, then
such a cognitive linkage of free action and predictable outcome is
inconceivable. 9 Orderly outcomes can only result from planned or
routine activities, work and labour in Arendt's terminology, over which
certainty can be established before they are started. In contrast, political
action in a context of liberty must go along with contingency of out-
comes.
From an Arendtian view-point, thus, those early social scientists
established an impossible connection. If they were heading for a "social
science" trying to identify laws and regularities of human action and
societal development, then they necessarily abandoned the heritage of
political philosophy, the emphasis on creative agentiality, irreducible
diversity and the permanent possibility of unpredictable beginnings. The
discourse on politics was then bound to decline. However, even if some
of the emerging ways of thinking may have assumed so, things political
would not vanish. They can be detected, though often in submerged and
distorted forms, in the social sciences which do no longer call themselves
political.
Modernity and the Decline of Political Thought
The Emptying of the Political Space
At a closer look, it is not too difficult to understand the deep shock the
revolutions meant to political thinking. Political philosophy, even in
most of its liberal but prerevolutionary versions, had tried to
substantiate what people had in common and how they could regulate
those things. In most versions, the state had been the incorporation of
this realm of common regulation. The revolutions, however, robbed this
realm of most of its substance and instead emphasized the - democratic
- process through which common deliberations were reached. About
such processes, though, there is much less to reason in philosophical
terms. The liberal conception that things regulate themselves as soon as
atomistic individuals are endowed with the right and the capacity to
follow their own interests and passions makes political thought almost
superfluous - beyond some basic assumptions and rules as to how to set
up such processes (though, of course, this latter aspect proved to be
much less innocuous than it may have appeared to some of the
revolutionaries).
246 Peter Wagner
This change is most visible in the context of the foundation of the

United States of America. In their reaction against obtrusive and
illegitimate government, the Americans consciously tried to build
institutions so that "power may not actualize itself anywhere." The
"disembodiment of government ... goes along with a disentangling of
power, of the law, and of the knowledge of the ultimate ends of a
society." Many of the most important themes of earlier political philo-
sophy were simply ejected from reasonings about political institutions as
illegitimate. As Claude Lefort puts the "change that is at the origins of
modern democracy": "For the first time, the place of power is easily
recognized as being empty."IO As a consequence, American political
thought became further impoverished, as Gordon S. Wood noted. II
Even in the American context, this deliberate political construction
could not exorcise all concerns about unity. Throughout the nineteenth
century, the search for a preordained unity was continued, pursued most-
ly by Americans with some German intellectual background. 12 However,
such political science could not establish itself as a dominant paradigm
and was mostly abandoned after the end of the nineteenth century.
In Europe with its long-established statist institutions, the idea of
unity was not abandoned, but it was decisively transformed. As in the
US, the observation seemed undeniable that, once the reasonable will of
the human beings had been cast into institutions, the political order must
be seen as intrinsically satisfactory.13 In this organized context, however,
the fear that such new order which accepted human liberty might turn
out unsustainable was much greater than in North America. The idea of
an emptiness of the political space did not emerge; in the Enlightenment
combination of freedom and reason, the state was rather reinterpreted as
the incarnation of reason once the expression of human freedom fed into
its construction. This is, obviously, one of the central themes of Hegel's
writings, but it can be found in many other contemporary works as
well. 14
This linkage of knowledge and politics, the idea of "legislative
reason,,,15 was characteristic of much of the early social science thinking
during the revolutionary period in Europe. Reason, rather than merely
serving as an ideal point of philosophical orientation - which it also con-
tinued to be - was to be made practical in the elaboration and
application of the rules of politics. The movement to transform political
reason into a science of politics found its most ardent spokespersons in
France where politics had most radically been put onto new foundations.
Beyond the voluntary commitment to construct a new social order, there
was also a feeling of dire necessity to do so on well-informed grounds,

not least motivated by the shock of revolutionary terror. The writings of
Saint-Simon and Comte mark one major line of such thinking.16
The hope and aspiration was that the moral and political sciences
should and could now achieve "the same certainty" as the physical
sciences. 17 Certainty was a requirement of some urgency, since the new
political order needed assurances of its own sustainable functioning. But
it was also regarded as an historically new possibility, since political
action was liberated of the arbitrariness of decisions by rulers of doubt-
ful legitimacy and given into the hands of the multitude of reason-
endowed human beings. The "blend of liberalism and rationalism,"
which Keith Baker observed in Condorcet's convictions,18 can thus be
explained as stemming from the same source, the Enlightenment linkage
of freedom and reason.
This linkage, if it could be sustained, made a science possible, where
according to the classical view it would have been unthinkable, in the
realm of the political. Condorcet subscribed to the new concept of free
expression of political wills, but for him there was no contradiction
between that view and the possibility of scientific analysis. In Baker's
words, "societal choice" could well be transformed "into the rational
decision-making of the idealized republic of science."19
The Remaining Foundations of a Political Science:

The Rights-Endowed Individual
The rights-endowed individual became thus, in such views, the only

conceivable ontological as well as the methodological foundation of a
science of political matters after the revolutions. Once the rights of man
had been generally accepted as self-evident and unalienable, it seemed
obvious, to Turgot and Condorcet for instance, that they were also "the
logical foundation of the science of society."2o
In rights-based liberalism, the individual is the only category that
need not, often in fact: cannot, be debated. The individual is simply
there, whereas everything else - for instance, what human nature is or
how the collective good should be determined - needs to be argued
about. Substantive aspects of human interaction are subject to communi-
cation and consensus. And, to make the issue even more complicated,
with whom one should enter into communication, that is, the boundaries
of the community, is itself not given, but subject to agreement.
248 Peter Wagner
Once this assumption was accepted, basically two avenues of

constructing a science of the political had opened. One possibility was to
try to identify by theoretical reasoning the basic features of this unit of
analysis, the individual human being, and its actions. Since it was
conceived as an ontological starting-point, devoid of all specific,
historical and concrete, ties to the world, its characterization was to
proceed from some inherent features. From earlier debates, those
features had often been conceived as twofold, as passions and as
interests. In the late Enlightenment context, the rational side of this
dichotomy was regarded as the one amenable to systematic reasoning, as
intelligible so as to allow the building of a scientific approach to the
study of at least one aspect of human interaction with the world, namely
the production and distribution of material wealth.
While political economy was based on a highly abstract, but for the
same reasons extremely powerful, assumption of human rationality, the
other conclusion from the individualist foundational principle was
possibly even more reductionist but much more cautious. A voiding any
substantive assumptions on the driving forces in human beings at all, the
statistical approach, often under the label of political arithmetic, resorted
to the collection of numerically treatable information about human
behaviour. The space of substantive presuppositions was radically
emptied in this thinking, but the methodological confidence in
mathematics seemed to have increased in inverse proportion.21
Thus, two strands of political thought that had been proposed and
elaborated for some time rose to new and greater prominence, political
economy and political arithmetic. The denominations these approaches
were known by in the late eighteenth century referred explicitly to
political matters. Both were to lose these attributes in the nineteenth
century when they had consolidated their ways of proceeding and when
the application of these cognitive forms had established predominance
over political deliberation in decision on common matters, at least in the
view of many economists and statisticians. Mostly, this terminological
change has been interpreted as an autonomisation of cognitive
approaches and as a differentiation of the sciences into disciplines. How-
ever, it is not exactly true to say that economics and statistics separated
from politics. Once the approaches of the former two are accepted as
valid, there is nothing political left to study.22
Critiques of Such a Foundation
The acceptance of the economic and the statistic ways of conceiving of

the social world did not go without criticism; and they were never
accepted as the only possible ways anywhere. However, the critiques and
alternatives that were proposed most often accepted the fundamental
change in political reasoning after the construction of a polity based on
liberal-individualist rules. After such a polity had come into existence,
new problems were identified, due to the liberal polity falling short of the
ideal of self-regulation. These were now essentially liberal problems; they
resulted, we might say, from the observation that not everything that
was needed for organizing a liberal polity could indeed be derived from
an "original position" (John Rawls). Two main types of problems may
be distinguished by reference to the hypothetical original position in
which individuals meet under a veil of ignorance.
On the one hand, the range of conclusions that could be drawn from
the assumption of free and equal individuals was too limited, since these
individuals' relations were structured by the existence of politically
important "pre-political" social facts, of orientations and links between
human beings that were supposed to exist already before individuals
entered into political communication and deliberation. On the other
hand, the working of the liberal rules would themselves produce new
kinds of social relations, "post-political" relations, which would have a
structuring impact on the polity in turn. The first of these arguments is
to be discussed in this section; the second one in the succeeding one.
Several different attempts were made to theorize the pre-political
relations. They all start out from the critical observation that the human
being who enters into political relations is not such a kind of individual
as liberal political theory described it, and that the hypothesis of any
original position would lead to serious flaws in the conclusions.
The broadest intellectual movement of this kind has been the cultural-
linguistic theory of the boundaries of the polity, which became one
source of later nationalism. Nationhood was there regarded as a
constitutive boundary in terms of social identity. In many European
countries, not least Germany and Italy, political intellectuals fused the
idea of a liberal polity with the search for a somehow natural collective
that should form this polity. The notion was developed that there are
such collectives of historical belonging in Europe which are defined by
their common, historically transmitted, culture and language. In Ger-
many, Johann Gottfried Herder proposed the concept of Volk (people)
250 Peter Wagner
as an ontological unit, and Friedrich Schleiermacher, in a move that now

appears as almost postmodernist, linked the very possibility of know-
ledge to common linguistic practices and concluded that one should
strive to keep the speakers of a common language together. Somewhat
less strongly, the understanding of nation that was prevalent in France
saw the nation as a necessary frame for individual emancipation (the
nation as a collection of individuals), whereas the German ideas were
dominated by the concept that the unity of culture and language
preceded actual human beings (the nation as a collective individual). But
in these two forms, these concepts expressed jointly "the difficulty that
the modern ideology has in providing a sufficient image of sociallife."23
Nationalism (or, in broader terms, theories onto logically based on
cultural-linguistic entities) was increasingly widespread in Europe
throughout the nineteenth and into the first half of the twentieth cen-
tury. It was also widely taught from university chairs, but it was never
developed into a body of sociopolitical thought that aspired to internal
coherence and empirical validity in the way it was increasingly de-
manded in academic institutions. 24 While it would be Whiggish historio-
graphy to neglect the coexistence of such theories with, say, classical
sociology at the turn to the twentieth century, any attempt to restore
such theorizing as a contender for an important place in the history of
the social sciences would be likely to founder on lacking evidence.
Despite a large number of, broadly, nation- and/or race-centered writ-
ings in the human sciences, hardly any even moderately consistent and
sustainable approach of the time can be identified that underpinned the
idea of culture and language rather than bureaucratic means of
domination and coercion as the constitutive link between human beings
and macro social phenomena like "modern" states.
Without committing themselves to such a substantively well-defined
notion of pre-political relations, other scholars developed related
thoughts on social ties between human beings. Most of Hegel's writings
can be read as an attempt to reconcile, after the French Revolution, the
ideas of individual liberties and of moral unity. While he was referring to
the state as a unifying institutions above and beyond the human beings,
he also pointed to different human modes of recognizing the other, of
which the legal relation of liberal theory was only one among others. 25
Alexis de Tocqueville even went actively searching for social foundations
of democracy and meant to identify the intense associative life in the
United States of America as a source, and possibly precondition, for a
viable liberal polity.26 These latter thinkers, among others, maintained a
predominantly politicophilosophical approach to the study of the social

world. Even de Tocqueville, one of the more empirically minded of
them, would not subscribe to the view that there could be a science of
action that could provide individuals and groups with certitudes. 27
Factually, such thinking, which retained a certain primacy of philosophy
over sociology, found itself in long-term gradual decline through to the
late twentieth century.28
The Impregnation of the Social Sciences with the Heritage of Political

Philosophy
Whereas the above-mentioned critiques of an individualist foundation of

political thought did not feed into the tradition of the social sciences as it
is commonly written, the other main line of "postrevolutionary" social
thought did. It started out from the insights, first, that the basic liberal
assumptions, once they were cast into effective rules, would have durable
and important effects on what social scientists would soon call the
"structure" of social relations. In this sense we can refer to those
relations as being conceived as "post-political." And second, the
question of such relations was forced onto the agenda of social and
political thought by the fact that the liberal assumptions on their own
did not suffice to create and justify a political order.
They did not suffice, because they lacked practicality: The concept of
self-determination needed procedural rules of participation in communi-
cation and in deliberation. Since such rules could not unequivocally be
derived from the principles themselves, the issue of representation
emerged. In response to the French Revolution, conservatives like
Edmond Burke would still argue that, while there was a practical issue of
representation (best handled in line with grown traditions), there was no
specific legitimacy attached to representation. Thomas Paine, in contrast,
linked most forcefully the idea of the sovereignty of the people to the
representation of the people in the governing bodies. The controversy
between Burke and Paine "marks the turning point of two ages of
representation."29 As soon as any position closer to Paine than to Burke
was accepted, debates on modes of representation such as those that had
already occurred in both the American and the French constituent
assemblies became inevitable. And it was in conjunction with this
inevitability of disputes over representation that the creation of "post-
political" social effects of the liberal rules moved to the centre of attention.
252 Peter Wagner
Beyond fixing rules, the observation of structures of representation

also served the interest of enhancing some stability and certainty in
political procedures which could appear to be opened to all contin-
gencies by the abolition of any legitimacy of preordained orders.
Typically, we find here again the two main strategies for rediscovering
certainties, systematic observation and reflective conceptualization. The
one seems to be more typical for American thinking, where the structure
of the vote was of key interest, whereas European social thinkers focused
on what came to be called social structures behind the vote, most
importantly the social question.
Behaviourism: The American Way
"Politics as voting is," as Judith Shklar noted, "a subject for constant
investigation, because it is uncertain and yet it needs to be grasped."
When she claims that the emphasis on voting studies is a key feature of
American political science from Hamilton onwards, she stretches her
point somewhat. 3o Still, it seems true to say that all intellectual efforts to
introduce more substantive reasoning into American political thought,
which were in considerable number undertaken during the nineteenth
century, failed to persuade academics and politicians likewise. And from
the early twentieth century onwards, when the American Political
Science Association was founded and the discipline acquired an
institutional profile, Shklar's argument on American political science
becomes clearly valid. Voting studies that tried to reveal stable patterns
of electoral behaviour without any theoretical or conceptual a priori
assumptions, became the core of the field. In a political space that was
radically emptied, empiricist behaviourism is almost self-justifying as an
approach and places all other considerations under the onus of the
argument. "The prime concern now was to discover, not how people
should behave in order to achieve the best possible political
arrangements, but how they will behave under specific and analysable
circumstances."3l
Social-Interest Theories of Representation: The European Way
European sociopolitical thinkers after the revolutions would often

broadly agree with such a view, but they were less convinced that the
empirical study and later aggregation of individual behaviour was the

only remaining means to that end, A "social science," some of them
held, would be able to identify an order of the social world that
organized individuals into larger groups and could serve as an objective,
scientific basis for rules of representation.
Elements of such a social theory of representation were proposed
already before the Revolution as a means to reform the monarchy.
Mirabeau, and following him Turgot and Condorcet, had accepted the
idea that interests are something constant and reliable that could be used
to build a social order. Abbe Sieyes used the same argument in a
revolutionary reasoning. Society is to be represented rationally, and that
can best be done on the basis of social interests. His theory of
representation was built on a progressive, productivist view of society, in
which identification of the rational interests of social groups and their
recognition in the organisation of the political order would enhance
social progress. At the same time, it introduced the tension between the
political logic of the unitary will - ahistorical and unsociological, if one
wants to say so - and the social logic of interest positions according to
the division of labour. 32
This tension made itself increasingly felt during the nineteenth
century. Though the concern for solidarity was already present in the
French Revolution, the expectation among many republicans in France
was rather that the establishment of the desired political order, the
republic with universal suffrage, would take care of all other problems,
since everybody concerned would have a say in collective matters. At the
latest, however, the failure of the Second Republic to satisfy the material
needs of its electorate - a failure that entailed the early end of the
republic itself - made evident that the so-called social question would
remain a key issue even for a democratic polity. "The social question,
thus, first appears as the recognition of a deficiency of social reality with
regard to the political imaginary of the Republic."33
This early republican problematic appeared to demonstrate that the
modern polity, all individualism and egalitarianism notwithstanding,
showed internal social structures that somehow would have to be taken
into account in its social practices. In this sense exactly, the social
question can be seen as giving rise to sociology, as the liberal awareness
of the persistence of problems of social order. In France, the linkage of
the transformation of classical liberalism to the formation of a social
group with specific demands becomes crucially evident. In the liberal
atmosphere after the July 1830 revolution the workers turned optimisti-
254 Peter Wagner
cally to the new regime with their demands, but were rejected. They
"responded by developing a new political and organizational language
that met the regime on its chosen terrain: the discourse of liberty. In
doing so, the workers embraced, but also modified and elaborated, the
liberal language of the French Revolution. Class consciousness, in other
words, was a transformed version of liberal revolutionary discourse."34
After the claim for a social science had been made by authors like
Saint-Simon or Comte, the themes of the emerging social sciences
formed around the observation of this internal structuration of societies.
In Germany, Lorenz von Stein reported about the "social movements"
in France that announced a major change in the social order. At mid-
century, Robert von Mohl diagnosed a transitory situation after the
Ancien Regime had disassembled and no liberal order had been able to
assert itself in the German states, while beginning industrialization and
urbanization placed new demands on the political orders. 35 Karl Marx
gave a central place in his social theory (and philosophy of history) to
the newly forming social phenomenon, the "working class." And Emile
Durkheim provided a representation of society in which the elements of
the social order were defined according to their position in the division
of social labour and their relations regarded as interlocking in the form
of "organic solidarity." Steps like these marked the construction of a
sociological view-point which was clearly identifiable around the turn to
the twentieth century. "Society" emerged as a structured and dynamic
entity relatively independent of the state, of the polity, to which it stood
in a complementary but tension-ridden relation.
In this way, the internal structuring of the modern political order
became the key concern of an emerging sociology. The new discourse
came to replace the discourse of political philosophy, for two very
different reasons. To some, the basic ideas of liberal philosophy ap-
peared to be generally accepted and no longer an issue of debate. At-
tention needed to be paid to issues of "post-political" structures instead.
To others, the same basic liberal ideas needed to be rejected, but the
possibility of a convincing rejection seemed to be very dim on the plane
of philosophical reasoning alone. As the very themes of the emerging
social sciences showed that liberal theory did by far not solve all political
questions, there was more hope of factually undermining liberal
assumptions on this more concrete terrain. That the loss of interest in
political philosophy was so ambiguously motivated makes for the
politically equivocal profile of the "sociological tradition," having been
labelled both conservative and progressivist or socialist.
Such works mark the shift from a political philosophy to an empirical

social science, a shift in which the basic questions are maintained, but
are answered by different means. I try to say here two things at the same
time which are only apparently contradictory. First, classical sociology,
if we take these works as a major point of reference, continued on the
main themes of political philosophy. Far from heading towards a
comprehensive study of all aspects of a societal configuration, most of
the works of these authors remain focused on a political problema-
tique. 36 Second, they decisively transformed this problematique by
introducing substantive social ontologies into a mode of political
theorizing that had socially been rather thin.37 This transformation
entailed a reformulation of a key aspect of what politics used to refer to.
Political Philosophy and Sociological Reasoning
Agency and Determinism
Long before the intellectual developments discussed here, the notion of

politics had acquired an ambiguous double meaning. On the one hand, it
continued to refer to communication and deliberation about the
common good, to the collective regulation of the realm of life human be-
ings had in common. On the other hand, it was increasingly used to refer
to the state, to an institutionalized sphere of power, and to the interests
of that state, the raison d'Etat. 38 This ambiguity contained a seed from
which two entirely different and incompatible understandings of politics
should grow during the so-called transition from political philosophy to
social science.
The classical interpretation of the term, often called Aristotelian,
emphasized essentially unconstrained human interactiQn, human beings
engaging others through action and speech. In Hannah Arendt's reading,
this was a view on the world which insisted on the potentially unlimited
plurality of human lives and the possibility to make beginnings in the
world. Power is here the capacity to convince in communication. During
the intellectual transformation at issue here, observers became less and
less persuaded that action and speech were the only, or even the most
important, modes of human interaction. They increasingly pointed to
common needs that united humankind and to modes of work that linked
human beings to each other. Places of production and chains of material
exchange acquired new attention; these phenomena should enter into the
256 Peter Wagner
language of the new social sciences under names like markets and the
division of social labour.
This shift of importance between modes of human interaction had an
impact on notions of agentiality in the human sciences. There is a way to
rationally reconstruct this shift. Needs and work had been confined to
the household in the prior mode of social organization; political action
could then be seen as rather free and unconstrained. In the emerging
social formation, however, needs and work became the key node of
social organization, which thus became dependent on ongoing flows of
goods. That is why it became necessary to talk of social structures, as the
girders of the social building, and of "society" as the ensemble of all
those structures. 39
This shift was not merely the replacement of one representation of the
social world by another one. The place of the human beings in the
picture was not left unaffected. The newly emerged or detected structures
were seen to limit human plurality and agentiality. They limited plurality
because human beings were now located at specific places in a given
order of the social world, they could be grouped with others at near
places into collectives of approximately similar outlooks on the world
and interests in it. The structures also limited agentiality because the
girders, which might be enhancing stairs or ladders for some kind of
activity, would turn into walls or fences impeding others. Agency was
certainly not completely excluded; social scientists of the nineteenth
century were not all strong determinists (though some were). But it
would run against objective tendencies of history in Marx, against
functional exigencies in Durkheim, or against the self-produced iron
cages in Weber. Agential capacities could be strongly enhanced if they
related to these structures, but they would be strongly constrained if they
did not do so.
Against the background of my prior reasoning, this inclination
towards determinism can now be understood as a way of dealing with
the political problematique after exterior assumptions to control political
action have been ruled out. It proceeds, in a first step, via a reintro-
duction of a substantive ontology that is now claimed to be internal to
the social world. In a second step, it is argued that these phenomena
have causal effects on human action, that identifiable determinants of
human action emanate from them.
Above I have argued that economics and statistics in its strong
versions should not be seen as springing off from political philosophy by
way of intellectual differentiation, but that they make a claim to replace
it, each in its own way, The preceding argument now leads to the
conclusion that the sociologies of the nineteenth century, again in their
strong interpretations, can be read in a similar way. Significantly, these
approaches, if adopted as valid, do not only preclude a continuation of
political philosophy, they are also mutually exclusive. The economic and
the sociological determinism make for a very peculiar couple in the sense
that the one locates the determinant completely inside the human beings,
and the other one completely in the outside social world. In the
statistical approach no such assumptions are made, but attitudes and
behaviours of individuals are counted, summarized and treated with
mathematical techniques so as to discover empirical regularities. These
three approaches to social life have different ways of establishing
certainty; and they all know weaker and stronger varieties. There is also
a long tradition of criticism of such reasonings, often indeed in the name
of human freedom. However, this criticism was mostly treated as
rearguard activity on the march of intellectual progress, and modernist
social science, as we know it now, is almost unthinkable without some
such determinism.
Consequences for a Political Science
The preceding remarks may have sufficed to show it can indeed be

claimed that a "great transition" occurred in "the political sciences" at
the turn to the nineteenth century. However, this transition is so
profound that it would almost be more appropriate to say that political
thought did not survive the political revolutions. We are left without any
founding assumptions in political thought, in striking contrast to the
foundations of economic and social thought as reconstructed in this
volume.
Though all social science disciplines show some cognitive pluralism
today, the discipline of political science is a heterogeneous conglomerate
without any core to refer to or to distance oneself from.4o The intel-
lectual activities which are institutionally united in this field deal
empirically with practices such as elections, parliamentary and ad-
ministrative activities, policy-making, international relations, which are
held together by their institutional setting in the state and law rather
than by an agreed-upon definition of the nature of politics. 4! Loosely
related to these empirical endeavours, the sub-field labelled "political
theory" deals either with the history of ideas (dominating the field in
258 Peter Wagner
Germany, maybe in most of continental Europe), or it reiterates themes

of liberalism (in the U.S. and, partly, in the U.K.).
Practitioners of political science may not necessarily be unsatisfied
with this situation, since at least some areas of interest are rather safely
occupied under this definition. However, it should be slightly disturbing
that a question that could legitimately be considered a key issue of
political thought, namely the question of political agency, of collective
deliberation and action on common matters, has become almost un-
thinkable after the cognitive transformations of the social sciences
during the past two centuries. I will devote at least some reflections as to
whether this is so and how such a situation could possibly be remedied.
The cognitive space of a possible political science may be seen as
comprising a judicial, an administrative, and a specifically political
problematique. 42 In those terms, it is only the third one, dealing with
will, that decayed (or was substantially transformed) in the developments
described above. The former two, dealing with justice and (instrumental,
procedural) reason, remained intellectually alive in Europe, in the legal
and in the administrative sciences as well as to some extent in the
discipline of political science as it exists.
The two currently dominant ways of thinking about politics can be
described on this basis. In the first view, the administrative aspect has
come to dominate the political one. Politics is much more about the ef-
ficient management of large-scale social phenomena than about crucial
and contested decisions about the common life. This view can be traced
to the revolutionary period and the conviction that, once impediments
due to privilege are removed, good knowledge can and will guide society.
In extreme versions, it can similarly be found in scientific Marxism and
in the idea of the scientification of politics prevalent in the post-Second
World War era of the end of ideology.
In the other view, which is not entirely incompatible with the former
one, politics is not replaced by administration but by the self-harmon-
izing capacities of the social structures. The social structures linking
human beings to each other through various modes of exchange are then
seen to be endowed with self-regulating mechanisms, such as most
prominently the market. In a mixture of normative and analytical
arguments which is hard to disentangle, it is held that "society" and
"economy" are relatively autonomous and should be left rather to their
own to create harmony in the social world. If such a view is accepted, the
former realm of political will, now embodied by the state apparatus, was
confined to managing the relations between self-developing entities.
However, rather than adequately analyzing a change in social

practices, such observations marked a change in the cognitive order. The
"invention of the social," often accompanied or followed by the "admin-
istration of the social," was not least a way of reordering cognitive tools
for understanding social processes. 43 From my earlier reasoning it became
evident that a number of different motivations entered into this shift. It
could be seen, optimistically, as the beginning of a rational order of the
world, in which liberty and reason became one. It could be seen as a
necessary conclusion from the liberal opening of political liberties that
had created a radical contingency which needed to be decreased. Or it
could be a "reactionary" conclusion from the observation of post-
revolutionary strife arguing that radical liberation is unfeasible and that
laws of the "natural order" need to be observed. Regardless of motivation
the shift meant a reductionist rethinking of issues of choice and agency
which has marked the social sciences almost up to the present day.
Conclusions
In terms of political thought, the so-called great transition can be read as

a shift in emphasis regarding one major underlying problematique of any
political science under conditions of modernity, namely the effort to
reconcile the commitment to liberty with the quest for certainty. To
establish a valid "scientific" discourse on political modernity meant to
reason on the basis of the recognition of liberty and contingency of
human social life, but to strive for order and certainty under those very
conditions. Any conceivable account of the social world could not but be
a compromise between different exigencies, a compromise that could be
contested from a number of other similarly well-reasoned positions.
From our present position, for which it is often argued that we might
be able, if we tried, to look at modernity with a certain distance,44 we
can see that no unequivocal advance was accomplished by the social-
scientific turn. Problematiques have been rephrased at some gain of
insights, but costs were also incurred. More generally, we should
probably be ready to recognize that such advances, which have often
been read into the history of the social sciences, are hard to achieve.
Even from the perspective of some variant of realism, any discourse on
society can only devote its attention to a part of the wealth of empirical
occurrences; it is inevitably highly selective, creates foci of attention and
spaces of neglect. 45 We may try to understand the selectivity, but we
260 Peter Wagner
cannot aspire to close the gaps at any point in time - as it was hoped, for
instance, during the 1950s and 1960s. A shift of attention, a reformu-
lation of a problem will increase understanding for certain matters, may
even create issues unknown before, but it will throw wellknown other
issues into darkness and even oblivion.
In this sense, the great transition marked a shift in discursive for-
mations, and we may be undergoing another one currently, possibly one
in which the social sciences lose their persuasiveness and the legacy of
political philosophy is being revitalised. If that is what is currently at
stake, then it is high time to find out what we may want to retain from
the sociological tradition and what should rightly be discarded. 46 The
least one could hope for is that under an emerging discursive formation,
being constructed now in many places all over the world, scholars
remain somewhat able to grasp the reigning mode of selectivity and to
keep some reflexive distance to the intellectual project even while
pursuing it.
Notes
1. The argument of this essay was developed while the author was a visiting fellow at the
research group "Institutions, emploi, politique economique" (IEPE) of the National
Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) in Paris in 1994.
2. For the former argument, see the contribution by lohan Heilbron to his volume, for
the latter see Istvan Hont, "The Language of Sociability and Commerce: Samuel
Pufendorf and the Foundation of the 'Four-stages Theory,'" in Anthony Pagden ed.,
The Languages of Political Theory in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, Mass.:
Cambridge University Press).
3. Michel Foucault, Les mots et les choses. Une archeologie des sciences humaines, (Paris:
Gallimard, 1966), p. 356 (translations from non-English sources are mine).
4. Two cautionary remarks may be appropriate here. First, any kind of synthetical
presentation as I intend to give it here, can only be very cursory, and will sometimes
even risk being caricatural. I do think though, that the unfolding of such a large map
can be of help in understanding events in intellectual history. Second, as to the
substance of the map, I am aware of the possible reproach to have produced a
sophisticated version of a Whiggish history of individualism-cum-liberalism. Since I
plead not guilty to this accusation, I better explain what my view is. I do think, as the
following presentation will show, that individualism-cum-liberalism has been an
organizing centre for social and political thought during the past two centuries, this is to
say that hardly anybody could avoid referring to this - itself rarely spelt out - discourse,
affirmatively or critically. I do not think, though, that a commitment to "modernity"
(leaving here open what that may exactly be; see my A Sociology of Modernity (London:
Routledge, 1994), for further discussion) irrefutably demands a commitment to this
discourse. My conclusion could thus be summarized as saying that there was an
historical, but not a theoretical inevitability of individualism-cum-liberalism. A

systematic presentation of the theoretical alternatives cannot be given here, but I plan to
develop one in an ongoing book project, tentatively titled Vanishing Points.
5. Claude Lefort, "Reversibility: Political Freedom and the Freedom of the Individual,"
Democracy and Political Theory (Cambridge: Polity, 1988), p. 180.
6. Pierre Manent, La cite de l'homme (Paris, Fayard, 1994), p. 123.
7. Manent, op. cit., pp. 75 and 113.
8. I have tried to argue this point in much more detail in "Sociology and Contingency.
Historicizing Epistemology," Social Science Information/Information sur les sciences
sociales 34 (2) (1995), pp. 179-204.
9. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
1958).
10. Claude Lefort, "Introduction" to the French edition of Gordon S. Wood, The
Creation of the American Republic 1776-1787 (Durham: University of North Carolina
Press, 1969): La creation de la republique americaine 1776-1787 (Paris: Belin, 1991),
p. 27 (all quotations).
II. Wood, op. cit.
12. John G. Gunnell, "In Search of the State: Political Science as an Emerging Discipline
in the US," in eds. Peter Wagner, Bjorn Wittrock, and Richard Whitley, Discourses on
Society. The Shaping of the Social Science Disciplines (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic
Publishers, 1991), pp. 123-161.
13. Manent, op. cit., pp. 228-229.
14. See Robert Wuthnow, Communities of Discourse. Ideology and Social Structure in the
Reformation, the Enlightenment, and European Socialism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1989), e.g., p. 315, on the Enlightenment attitude towards the state.
15. Zygmunt Bauman, Legislators and Interpreters (Cambridge: Polity, 1987).
16. On Saint-Simon's view, for instance, that "the critical and revolutionary philosophy of
the eighteenth century must be superseded in the nineteenth century by a philosophy
of organisation," see Robert Wokler, "Saint-Simon and the Passage from Political to
Social Science," in ed. Anthony Pagden, The Languages of Political Theory in Early-
Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 334.
17. Keith Michael Baker, Condorcet: From Natural Philosophy to Social Mathematics,
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1975), p. 197. See also Eric Brian, La
mesure de I'Etat. Administrateurs et geometres au XVIII' siecle (Paris: Michel, 1994).
18. Baker, op. cit., p. 385
19. Baker, op. cit., pp. IX and 193.
20. Baker, op. cit., p. 218. It is worth noting that both Hannah Arendt and Jacques
Derrida, in slightly different ways, have interpreted the contemporaneous American
Revolution as a political beginning which needed neither the certainty of a science nor
any absolute, irresistible foundation, but the common practice of a performative act;
see B. Honig, "Declarations of independence: Arendt and Derrida on the problem of
founding a republic," American Political Science Review 85, (1991), pp. 97-1 \3. The
reasonings of both Arendt and Derrida show how it is possible to reject any kind of
foundationalism, i.e., to be "modern," without having to accept reductionist scient ism
and individualism, which go along with more conventional versions of the modernist
project.
21. Brian, op. cit; Alain Desrosieres, La politique des grands nombres (Paris: La
Decouverte, 1993).
262 Peter Wagner
22. This is, of course, exactly Hannah Arendt's critique in The Human Condition, op. cit.
23. Louis Dumont, "Une variante nationale. Le peuple et la nation chez Herder et
Fichte," Essais sur l'individualisme (Paris: Seuil, 1983), pp. 130-131.
24. For a comparative analysis of the linkage of institutional and intellectual develop-
ments in late-nineteenth-century social science see Wagner, Wittrock and Whitley,
Discourses, op. cit.
25. See Axel Honneth, Kampf um Anerkennung (Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 1992); Stephen
B. Smith, Hegel's Critique of Liberalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989).
26. For the broader context, see George Armstrong Kelly, The Humane Comedy. Cons-
tant, Tocqueville and French Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1992).
27. Jean-Claude Lamberti, Tocqueville et les deux democraties (Paris: Presses Univer-
sitaires Fran9aises, 1983), p. 302.
28. But significantly enough, it appears to be now being revived after the sociological line
seems to have exhausted its cognitive-political potential. I will return to this issue
below.
29. Dolf Sternberger, "A Controversy of the Late Eighteenth Century Concerning
Representation," Social Research 38 (1971), 594; the reference is to Burke's 1790
Reflections on the French Revolution, and to Paine's Rights of Man from 1791-1792.
On Burke's reaction to the Enlightenment onslaught on tradition see also Robert P.
Kraynak, History and Modernity in the Thought of Thomas Hobbes (Ithaca: Cornell
30. Judith N. Shklar, "Alexander Hamilton and the Language of Political Science," in ed.
Pagden, Languages, op. cit., p. 346. Shklar goes on to argue more generally that the
study of past occurrences, of "history," had become the only available means to
counter the principled "unpredictability" of human action. (In her "Redeeming
American Political Theory," American Political Science Review 85 (I) (1991), 3-15,
Shklar paints a more plural picture of the field).
31. Anthony Pagden, "Introduction," in Pagden (ed.), Languages, op. cit., p. 16.
32. This paragraph draws on Keith Michael Baker, "Representation Redefined," Inventing
the French Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), esp. pp.
238-250. See more generally Hannah Fenichel Pitkin, The Concept of Representation
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967).
33. Jacques Donzelot, L'invention du social. Essai sur Ie dec/in des passions poUtiques
(Paris: Fayard, 1984), p. 33; see Giovanna Procacci, Gouverner la misere (Paris: Seuil,
1993), for a detailed analysis of French debates in the half-century after the
Revolution.
34. William H. Sewell, jr., "Artisans, Factory Workers, and the Formation of the French
Working Class, 1789-1848," in eds. Ira Katznelson and Aristide Zolberg, Working-
Class Formation. Nineteenth-Century Patterns in Europe and the United States (Prince-
ton: Princeton University Press, 1988), p. 60. In the course of the nineteenth century, a
philosophical idea of representation, based on Enlightenment reasonings, was
transformed into a sociological one, based on a theory of industrial society, as
Fran90is d'Arcy and Guy Saez write ("De la representation," in Fran90is d'Arcy (ed.),
La representation (Paris: Economica, 1985), p. 9).
35. See Hans Maier, Die altere deutsche Staats- und Verwaltungslehre (Munich: Beck,
1980).
36. See Steven Seidman, Liberalism and the Origins of European Social Theory (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1983); Peter Wagner, "Crises of Modernity. Political Sociology in

Historical Contexts," in ed. Stephen P. Turner, Social Theory and Sociology. The
Classics and Beyond (Oxford: Blackwell).
37. Authors like Montesquieu or Rousseau are partial exceptions; see, for instance, Johan
Heilbron's observations in The Rise of Social Theory (Cambridge: Polity, 1995), pp.
80-90.
38. See, e.g., Volker Sellin, "Politik," in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, vol. 4, ed. by Otto
Brunner, Werner Conze and Reinhart Koselleck (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta), pp. 808-809.
39. I discuss this aspect of the intellectual transformation in a forthcoming paper, called
'''An Entirely New Object of Consciousness, of Volition, of Thought.' The Coming
into Being and (almost) Passing Away of 'Society' as an Object of Sociology," to
appear in Lorraine Daston (ed.), The Coming into Being and Passing Away of Scientific
Objects (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
40. See Bjorn Wittrock, "Discourse and Discipline: Political Science as Project and
Profession," in eds Meinolf Dierkes and Bernd Biervert, European Social Science in
Transition (FrankfurtiM and Boulder, Col.: Campus and Westview, 1992), pp.
268-307.
41. It may indeed be preferable to speak of authoritative practices or practices of
domination. Or for those to whom this term appears to be too encompassing, because
it needs to include issues of domination in, say, gender relations, the old institutional
term of state and legal sciences should seem appropriate.
42. Baker, "Representation," op. cit.; see also Wittrock, op. cit.
43. I will not here enter into any detailed discussion whether the changes in the "real"
structure of social relations between 1750 and 1850 were of such a kind as to warrant
this major intellectual turn in talking about the social world. Such a discussion,
frought with foundational issues as it would be, would tend to show both that the
language change "responded" to some extent to observations and that it introduced a
new order of language which could not, not even in a weak sense, be said to be derived
from observations.
44. Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence (Cambridge: Polity, 1991), p. 272.
45. In de Certeau's sense, see Michel de Certeau, The Writing of History (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1988); and Heidrun Friese, Lampedusa. Historische
Authropologie einer Insel (FrankfurtlM: Caupus, 1996).
46. Obviously I have myself no clearly articulated opinion yet on what should be retained
and what should be discarded. Two preliminary attempts at approaching the question
are "Crises of Modernity," op. cit.; and "Sociology and Contingency," op. cit.
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
Eric Brian is maitre de conferences at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en

Sciences Sociales (EHESS) and associated researcher at the Institut Na-
tional d'Etudes Demographiques (INED) in Paris. He recently published
La mesure de fEtat. Administrateurs et geometres au XVIIIe siecle (1994).
Randall Collins is Professor of Sociology at the University of

Pennsylvania. His publications include Conflict Sociology (1975), The
Credential Society (1979), Weberian Sociological Theory (1986), and Four
Sociological Traditions (1994).
Michael Donnelly is presently Professor of Sociology at the University of

New Hampshire. He taught previously at Harvard University, and has
held visiting appointments in London and at several universities in Italy.
His publications include Managing the Mind: A Study of Medical
Psychology in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain, and The Politics of
Mental Health in Italy.
Johan Heilbron is a sociologist presently at the Centre Lillois d'Etudes et

de Recherches Sociologiques et Economiques (CLERSE). He has also
been a Fellow of i.e., the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin and the Swedish
Collegium for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences at Uppsala. His
research concerns the sociology of art and culture, comparative
intellectual history and economic sociology. Recent publications include
Kunst leren (The Apprenticeship of Art, 1992) and The Rise of Social
Theory (1995) as well as co-edited books in Dutch on Globalization
(1995) and Dutch Culture and Transnational Cultural Exchange (1995).
Lars Magnusson is Professor of Economic History at Uppsala Uni-

versity, Sweden. He has been a visiting Fellow at the Max-Planck-
Institut fUr Geschichte at Gottingen and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en
Sciences Sociales, Paris. He has written extensively on European and
Swedish industrialization and on early political economy in Europe.
Recent publications include Mercantilism. The Shaping of an Economic
Language (1994) and The Contest for Control. Metal industries in
Sheffield, Berg and Eskilstuna during Industrialization (Berg, 1994).
265
Modernity. 265-267.
266 About the Contributors
Peter Hanns Reill is Professor of History at the University of California,

Los Angeles, and Director of the Center for 17th and 18th Century
Studies. His publication include The German Enlightenment and the Rise
of Historicism (1975) and various studies on the interrelationship
between the natural sciences and the human sciences.
Keith Tribe is Reader in Economics at Keele University. His principal

research interests are in the history of economic discourse and the
histories of culture and technology. He has been a visiting Fellow of i.e.
Heidelberg University and the Max-Planck-Institut fUr Geschichte at
G6ttingen. His current research involves a study of the reconstruction of
the discipline of economics in Britain 1860-1970. One part of the
research for this project has involved interviews with students and
teachers of economics over the period from the mid-1920s to the mid-
1960s, and a selection from these will be published under the title
Economic Careers. Interviews with British Economists. Recent
publications include Governing Economy, The Reformation of German
Economic Discourse, 1750-1840 (1988), and Strategies of Economic Order
(1995).
Peter Wagner is Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick.

His main research interests are in comparative and historical analyses of
social institutions and of the social sciences as well as in issues of social
theory. His current research involves a rereading of some controversies
in social and political theory by means of a confrontation with a
historical sociology of modernity and comparative studies of the
building of social institutions. His publications include A Sociology of
Modernity. Liberty and Discipline (1994), The Scholar's Space. A
Topography of Academic Practices (with Heidrun Friese, in German,
1993), Discourses on Society: The Shaping of the Social Science
Disciplines (co-editor, 1991) and The Social Sciences and the State:
France, Italy, Germany, 1870-1980 (in German, 1990).
Bjorn Wittrock is Lars Hierta Professor of Government at Stockholm

University and director of the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in
the Social Sciences at Uppsala. His major research interests are in the
fields of comparative and historical studies of societal institutions and
discourses on society. His recent publications include Social Sciences and
Modern States (co-editor, 1991), Discourses on Society (co-editor, 1991)
and The European and American University Since 1800 (co-editor, 1993).
About the Contributors 267
Robert Wokler is Reader in the History of Political Thought at the

University of Manchester. He has held visiting positions at a large
number of universities and research institutes, including the Institute for
Advanced Study at Princeton and the Swedish Collegium for Advanced
Study in the Social Sciences at Uppsala. He is joint editor of Diderot's
Political Writings, a three-volume revised edition of John Plamenatz's
Man and Society and Rousseau and the Eighteenth Century (all 1992),
and the forthcoming Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Political
Thought. He is also co-editor of Inventing Human Science (1995). His
numerous publications on Rousseau, Enlightenment, and anthropo-
logical studies include Rousseau on Society, Politics, Music, and
Language (1987), "Apes and Races in the Scottish Enlightenment," in
Science and Philosophy in the Scottish Enlightenment (1987), Rousseau
(1995), and Rousseau's Enlightenment (forthcoming).
SUBJECT INDEX
A New Discourse of Trade (1693),163 American colleges, 155

absolute freedom, 55, 56 American universities, 156
absolute monarchy, 18,213, 217 American political science, 252
absolutism, 5, 85, 90, 103,211, 212 American Political Science Association,
absolutist state, 84 252
abstraction, 6 amour desinteresse, 96
academic philosophers, 150 amour pur, 96
academic philosophy, 157 amour-propre, 88
academic revolution, 141, 147 analogical reasoning, 114, 121
academicians, 215 analogy, 122
academicization, 145 analyse, 214, 215
Academie des sciences morales et analytic habitus, 210
politiques, 4 analytic theory of probabilities, 210, 218
academies, 3,4,43, 145, 147, 148, 150 analytical activism, 214
Academy at Berlin, 142, 145 analytical theory of probabilities, 207
Academy of Sciences, 18,207, 212, 213, anarchy, 85
217 Anatomie, 213
accumulation of printed numbers, 231 anatomy, 47
active, 112 ancient constitution, 62
active force, 119 ancient mathematics, 208
active forces, 110, 116 animism, 15, 110, 114
administrative reforms, 18 animists, 111, 113
administrative sciences, 258 Annales,46
aesthetic Idealism, 143, 144 Annales historians, 36
aesthetics, 156 annual survey, 207
affections, 87 Anschauung, 114
affinities, 116 anthropology, 3, 14, 15, 109, 110, 120,
agency, 12, 14-16, 25-27, 255, 256 123
agentiality, 256 antiquity, 108
aggregate, 117 aporias, 242
aggregate rates, 229 apostles, 120
aggregate statistics, 234 appetites, 80, 116
aggregation, 112 appetitus societatis, 82
agriculture, 200 application of analysis to administrative
all-purpose intellectual, 152 reforms, 215
amateur philosophers, 151 application of analysis to the political
ambiguity, 115 and moral sciences, 216
American and French Revolutions, 243 aristocracy, 145
270 SUBJECT INDEX
aristocratic moralities, 83 bourgeoisie, 14, 97

aristocratic salons, 159 Breslau, 231
Aristotelian formalism, 166 Britain, 145
art, 127 Britannia Languens, 179
artists, 120 British Association for the
arts de penser, 208 Advancement of Science, 235-236
as a self-governing corporation, 149 British universities, 156
Assembh\e nationale, 50 biirgerliche Gesellschaft, 57
associations, 244
Astronomie, 213 cadastral survey, 215
astronomy, 214 calculability, 218
atheism, 154 calculations on population, 212
Athenian democracy, 49 calculus, 18, 210
atomistic indivuals, 245 calculus of probabilities, 210, 214, 215
Augustinian pessimism, 98 canon, 108
Augustinianism, 83 cambio fictio, 183
Ausbildung, 126 cambio sicco, 183
Austrian School of economics, 203 Cambridge School, 5, 6, 9, 10
authority, 23 cameral sciences, 19
autonomisation of the State, 217 Cameralism, 203
autonomy, 58 Cameralism, chairs in, 193
cameralistic courses, 203
Baconian scientific program, 180 cameralistic literature, 192
balance of trade, 168, 172 cameralistic sciences, 189, 192-194, 198
balance-of-trade idea, 167 cameralistic sciences, lectures in, 193
balance of trade theory, 179 cameralistic sy lla bus, 194
Bank of England, 165 Canonists, 182
bankers, 184 canonization, 57
Bastille, 49 capitalism, 39, 78, 97
Bavaria, 144 capitalist economy, 14
Begriffsgeschichte, 7, 9, 10, 36, 67 Cartesian geometry, 208
behaviorism, 20, 252 Cartesian principles, 166
Berlin, 141, 143 Cartesian science, 61
Berlin university, 144, 155 categories of understanding, 156
Biblical scholars, 146 Catholic Churches, 54
Bildung, 15, 16, 126, 128, 131, 132, 139 censorship, 213
Bildungstrieb, 113, 119, 122, 127, 130, census, 230
131 ceremonialism, 150
binary systems, 115 certainty, 99, 247, 259
biology, 3, 7, 15,35,40, 133 chairs of philosophy, 145
body politic, 24, 231 character, 86, 126
Body Politick, 165 character books, 103
book statistics, 88 charity, 88, 93, 94, 95
Botanique, 213 chemical affinities, 127
SUBJECT INDEX 271
chemistry, 3, 143,214, 222 coins, 164

chemists, 214 collective entities, 26
Chimie,213 collective good, 247
Christianity, 143 collective identities, 24
christians, 93 collective will, 65
church, 147 colleges, 148, 160
citizens, 24, 51, 52, 62, 86 commerce, 23, 78, 91, 93, 163, 171,200
citizenship, 53 commercial economy, 165
city Augustinianism, 83 commercial law, 193
city of God, 83 commercial sociability, 82
city of man, 83 commercial society, 11, 13, 14, 77, 78,
city-republics, 79 82,97, 166
civic identity, 64 common good, 191, 255
civil society, 2, 12, 23, 25, 39, 57, 91, 93, common-sense, 178
94, 97, 191, 194,200 commonwealth, 231
civil utility, 211 Commune of Paris, 53, 54, 58
civilising process, 191 communication, 172, 255
civilite, 97 communist party, 64
civility, 94, 98 communitarians, 62
civilized behavior, 89 community, 57
civilization, 38, 40,55,67,94,99, 118, comparative analysis, 121
132 comparative anatomy, 121
civilizing process, 103 comparative linguistics, 124
civitas, 48, 49 compatriot, 24
class consciousness, 254 compositional collective, 25
class of the moral and political Comteans, 153
sciences, 4 concept of society, 9
Classe des sciences morales et conceptual change, 8,14,17,21
politiques, 45, 46 conceptual history, 12, 37,40
classes, 51 connection, 125
classic calculus of combinations, 214 conservatism, 9
classical antiquity, 230 constitution, 126
classical liberalism, 253 constitutionalism, 103
classical philology, 191 consumption, 199
classical political economy, 175 contextualism, 36
Classical republicanism, 64 contingency, 19, 113, 243, 244, 259
classical sociology, 255 contractual association, 56
classifications of mathematical activities, Controle general des Finances, 211, 212
209 Convention, 45, 53
clerics, 150 cooperation, 171
climate, 60, 118 corporations, 8
Club of the Cordeliers, 58 corruption, 11,94
coercion, 250 cosmopolitanism, 13, 37
cognitive pluralism, 257 counsellors, 82
272 SUBJECT INDEX
Counter-Reformation, 83 development, 8, 113, 125

courage, 88 devotion, 84
court, 87, 90 dialectics, 115
courtiers, 87 dictatorship, 56
courts of law, 65 differential and integral calculus, 207
craftsmen, 120 differential equations, 209, 214, 215
creative networks, 142 differentiation, 3
credit, 183 diplomats, 82
critical philosphy, 21 direct democracy, 52, 59
Critical Philosophy, 190, 194, 195,201, dis-neuviemistes, 4
202 disciplinary history, 4, 108
Critique of Pure Reason, 145, 192 disciplinary institutionalization, 20, 21
Crystal Palace, 40 disciplinary science, 108
cultivation, 128 disciplinary social science, 4
culture, 118, 120, 132 discipline formation, 10
customs, 86 discipline of statistics, 226
disciplines, 2, 3, 19,20,24,40-42, 107,
De I' Administration des finances de la 248
France, 212 discourse analysis, 5
decisions rendues a la pluralite des voix, disinterestedness, 88, 96, 97
215, 216 disputation, 149
decomposition, 209 dissertation, 149
dedifferentiation, 160 Distribution, 199
deduction, 181 divination, 114, 129
degeneracy, 127 division of labor, 52, 218
degeneration, 119 dix-huitiemistes, 4
Dei delitti e delle pene, 211 dix-neuviemistes, 4
Deism, 143 dominance of theology, 158
deliberation, 255 domination, 250
democracy, 49, 52, 54, 58, 62-64 dons, 150
democrate,41 Dorrien, 196
democratic republic, 49 doubt, 99
democratic revolutions, 21, 242 dual revolution, 1
democratic states, 60 dualism, 115
democratization, 8 Dutch republic, 169, 170, 171
democrats, 51 duties, 88
demography, 226
Denkfiguren, 27 early modern period, 6
denombrement,209 East India Company, 164, 167, 168, 179,
depoliticization, 61, 62 181
Der Streit der Fakultaeten, 153 Ecole Norrnale, 218
despair, 99 Ecole Poly technique, 218
despotism, 45,53, 133, 195 economic and sociological determinism,
determinism, 255, 256 257
SUBJECT INDEX 273
economic growth, 169, 172 Enlightenment, 4, 7,12,13,16,36--39,43,

economic liberalism, 78 47,55,60,61,108,157,192
economic literature during the Enlightenment, critique of, 38
seventeenth and early eighteenth Enlightenment Project, 25, 37, 43, 61,
century, 178 62, 66, 98
economic man, 26 Enlightenment style, 151
economic nationalism, 179 Enlightenment vitalism, 110, Ill, 125,
economic policy, 193 128, 129, 131
economic writing in England, 163 Enlightenment vitalists, 114, 116
economics, 3, 7, 17, 35,40, 189, 256 enquete Terray, 212
economics as a systematic science, 166 epigenesis, 138
economie politique, 199 episteme, 6, 7
economists, 248 epistemic change, 41
economy as a system, 182 epistemic codes, 7
edict of 1277, 150 epistemic revolution, 2
Edict of Nantes, 84 epistemic shift, I, 14
edicts, 193 epistemic transformations, 6, 12, 21
Edinburgh, I, 43 epistemology, 110, 113, 120, 149
education, 60 equilibrium, 96
egalitarian, 64 Erkenntnis-interessen, 20
egalitarian democracy, 39 Essai pour connaitre la population du
egalitarian liberalism, 96 Royaume, 207, 216, 217
egalitarianism, 64, 253 Essai sur la constitution et les fonctions
egotism, 183 des assemblees provinciales, 216
electricity, 143, 156 Essai sur l'application de l'analyse a la
eloges, 213 probabilite des decisions rendues a
emergent totality, 25 la pluralite des voix, 215, 216
empirical sciences, 19 essays, 87
empiricism, 111, 118 estates, 50
empericist methodology, 181 Estates General, 49
Encyclopedia (1745-1772),146 esthetics, 97
Encyclopedia Brittanica, 151 etat, 50
Encyclopedie, 39,40 ethics, 14, 63
energy, 126 eudaemonistic Natural Law tradition,
engineers, 148 190
England's Treasure by Forraign Trade, Europe, 60, 158
181 exchange, 241
England universities, 150 exchange dealers, 184
enlightened, 95 exchange rates, 182
enlightened administration, 211 experiment, 6
enlightened monarchy, 62 experimental practices, 222
enlightened self-interest, 98
enlightened self-love, 95 Faculty of Law, 189
enlightened society, 216 Fall, 79, 83, 94
274 SUBJECT INDEX
farmers, 120 German universities, 146

fellow-feeling, 100 German university statistics, 231
finance, 203 German writers, 200
force, 112, 131 Germany, 141, 249, 258
foreign trade, 167, 168 Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, 7, 9,10,40
formalism, 37 Girondins, 54
France, 242, 246, 250, 253 Glorious Revolution, 164
free action, 245 goods, 195
free trade, 167, 168 G6ttingen, 1, 196
free will, 83 government, 48, 246
freedom, 54, 246, 247 grace, 83, 99
freedom of choice, 12 grammar, 7
French moralists, 14, 78 Grandes Ecoles, 3, 148
French nobility, 83 grandeur, 92
French Revolution, 1, 12, 24, 39,41, 50, Great Chain of Being, 127, 138
55,59, 60, 63~65, 142, 154,250,251, Great Transformation, 158
254 great transition, 2, 4, 12, 13, 20~22, 27,
French Revolutionary assemblies, 54 257, 259, 260
French state, 52 Gresham's law, 164
friendship, 88 growth, 125
Fronde, 83, 97 Grundsatze der Volkswirthschaftslehre,
frondeur, 90 195
functional analysis, 114 guilds, 147
functional differentiation, 10 Gymnasia, 148, 149
gambling, 226 habits, 86, 118

Garve, 196 habitus, 112, 118, 122,208,220
Geisteswissenschaften, 108, 132 Halle, 142
General Estates, 216 Handbuch der Staatswirthschaft, 196
generally trammeled, 145 Handbuch politisch-sozialer
generation, 125 Grundbegriffe in Frankreich,
Genesis, 49 1680~1820, 9
Geneva, 43 happiness, 192, 197
geodesic map, 212 harmony, 116
geography, 4, 118 Haupttypus, 115
geometers, 207 Hebrew, 193
Geometrie, 213 hermeneuticists, 157
German economic discourse, 195 hermeneutics, 10
German Enlightenment, 1 hidden organizer, 130
German Idealism, 141, 142, 152, 153 hidden sympathies, 116
German Idealists, 157 high nobility, 84
German intellectuals, 146 High schools, 148
German legal curriculum, 190 higher faculties, 150
German moral statisticians, 233 historical evolution, 23
SUBJECT INDEX 275
historical inquiry, 24 Idealist revolution, 141

historical semantics, 9 ideals, 159
historicism, 8, 109, 124, 130 Ideenlehre, 130
Historisches W orterbuch der ideologie,41
Philosophie, 9 Ideologiesierbarkeit, 8
history, 4, 22, 109, 110, 120, 123 ideologues, 13,41,45-47,60, 153
history of economic doctrines, 175 ideology, 153
history of economic ideas, 174 imagination, 118, 129
history of economic language, 174 inclination, 89
history of economic thought, 174 India, 153
history of ideas, 5, 9, 35, 36 indirect suffrage, 54
history of mathematics, 211 individual autonomy, 243
history of science, 6, 107 individual liberties, 250
History of the Human Sciences, 5 individual need, 192
holism, 22 individualism, 22, 103, 253
Holland, 170, 172, 176 individuality, 130
Holocaust, 37 induction, 6, 181
homicide, 235 industrial capitalism, 40
homo reconomicus, 14, 57 Industrial Revolution, 21, 39
honnetete, 89, 97 industrialization, 254
honor, 80 industry, 173
household, 192, 256 infinitesimal analysis, 214
human action, 61, 256 injustice, 66
human agency, 2, 63 Institut de France, 4
human body as metaphors, 165 Institut national des sciences et des arts,
human exchange, 85 13,45
human nature, 242 institutionalisation, 217, 231
human need, 194, 196 integral and differential calculus, 209
human plurality, 256 integral calculus, 213, 214, 220
human race, 124, 126 intellectual circles in England, 146
human sciences, 12,40, 61 intellectual history, 36
human will, 61 intellectual ideals, 159
humanities, 2, 86, 132 intellectuals, 142
humanity, 16, 123, 132 intendant, 211, 216
humility, 89 interest rates, 167, 182
hystory of science, 107 interests, 14, 77, 89, 91, 100, 241
internal mold, 115, 131
id quod interest, 79 internalism, 107
idea of population, 229 intuition, 115, 129
Idealism, 16, 152 inverse probabilities, 213
Idealism as ideology of the university invisible hand, 1I, 100
revolution, 153 Ireland, 232
Idealism, revolt against, 156 irony, 90
Idealist metaphysics, 143 Italian Renaissance, 39
276 SUBJECT INDEX
Italian universities, 156 Leipzig, 142

Italy, 249 Le Systeme figure des connaissances
humaines, 209
Jacobin Club, 58 l'homme moyen, 236
Jacobins, 44, 53, 54, 59 liberal idea of the polity, 242
Jansenism, 82-84, 97, 98 liberal mercantilism, 96
Jansenist theologians, 26 liberalism, 242, 243, 247, 258
Jansenist theology, 82 liberation, 243
Jansenists, 84, 89, 97, 103 liberty, 19, 55, 254, 259
Jena, 144 life force, 11 0
Jena-Weimar, 141 life sciences, 15
Jesuit colleges, 148 life tables, 229, 230
Jesuit schools, 209 linguistic analysis, 24
Jesuits, 83, 84, 90, 103 linguistic change, 40
joint-stock company, 164 linguistic practices, 250
journalism, 159 linguistic turn, 5
jurisprudence, 211 linguistics, 7, 15, 35, 40
jurists, 85 linguistics/philology, 109
justice, 258 literary intellectual, 149, 159
literary marketplace in England, 159
Kamera1wissenschaften, 190 literary marketplace in France, 159
Kantian transcendentalism, 144 literary marketplace in Germany, 159
Kleinstaaterei, 145 literature, 127
Konigsberg, 43, 141, 142 living forces, 126
Kreuzigung, 139 living matter, 124
living organism, 128
labour, 7 logic, 114, 149, 166
language, 132 logic of ambiguity, 128
language families, 122 logicians, 157
languages, 123 love, 88
langues, 176 love of God, 83
late Enlightenment, 109 Lutheran clergy, 145
law of large numbers, 235
Law of Small Numbers, 144 magistrate, 91
laws, 4, 60, 80 magnetism, 143
laws of nature, 109 mandat imperatif, 63
lawyers, 189 mandate, 51
learned societies, 3 manners, 60, 85, 86
lectures, 193 manufactures, 174, 200
legal despotism, 62 market, 21, 258
legal institutions, 57 market economy, 57
legal scholars, 21 market mechanism, 183, 184
legislation, 12,45, 61 Market processes, 182
legislators, 11, 47 market relations, 181
SUBJECT INDEX 277
market society, 77 method, 110

marketplace, 16 metonomies, 136
markets, 256 metonymy, 112
mass, 125, 131 Midas fallacy, 179
materialism, 153, 154 migrations, 143
materialist philosophy, 61 military strength, 174
mathematical abstraction, 111 mind, 111
mathematical analysis, 114, 208, 214, mind-body duality, 122, 130
217 minimalist morality, 82
mathematical calculations, 217 Mischung, 139
mathematical teaching, 218 mitigated skepticism, 98
mathematicians, 215 Mittelkraft, 115
mathematics, 158,203,220,226,228, mixed constitution, 51, 52, 62
248 mixte mathematics, 209
matter, 110, 111, 126 modern civilization, 64
measurement of uncertainty, 227 modern democracy, 246
Mecanique, 213 modern philosophy, 98
mechanical forces, 182 modern republicanism, 64
mechanical natural philosophy, 111, 133 modern research university, 149
mechanics, 214 modern science, 98
'mechanism, 15, 110, 114, 118 modern social science, 48, 60
mechanistic epistemology, 130 modern states, 48, 53, 63, 65, 250
mechanistic model, 15 modernity, 1,2, 12, 13, 19-21,25,27,
mechanistic science, 109 38-40,49, 50, 54, 59-61, 63-65, 172,
mechanists, 111, 112 243-245
mechanization, 133 modernity, criticism of, 38
mediation, 115, 120 modernization, 10, 169
medicine, 210 modesty, 89
medieval scholasticism, 146 moeurs et manieres, 86
medieval university, 147, 149 monarchies, 49, 60, 213, 253
mental categories, 218 monarchs, 65, 120
mental dispositions, 60 monastery, 88
mental habits, 208 monde,87
mercantilism, 11, 17, 167, 169, 176, 177 monetary theory, 167
mercantilism as a literary genre, 176 monopolistic behaviour, 183
mercantilism as policy, 179 monopolistic speculation, 183
mercantilist, 11 moral and political sciences, 3,4, 218
mercantilist breakthrough, 168 moral facts, 235
mercantilist revolution, 180 moral commands, 241
merchants, 120 moral philosopher, 11
metamorphoses, 113, 119 moral philosophy, 3, 11, 12, 24, 78, 79,
metaphors, 136 81, 82, 85, 8~ 109, 14~ 166
metaphysicians, 47 moral sciences, 87, 10 1, 116, 208,
metaphysics, 63, 141, 149 210
278 SUBJECT INDEX
moral sense, 100 natural sciences, 2, 108, 158, 165

moral statisticians, 230 naturalism, 153
moral unity, 250 naturalization, 116
morale, la, 86 nature, 3
moralistics, 85 Naturphilosophie, 143, 144, 156
morality, 86 Navigation act, 173
morals, 4, 80, 127 negation, 54
mores, 60 neo-classical economics, 78
motives, 88 Neo-Kantianism, 157
multiplicateur des naissances, 215 Neo-Platonism, 153
multiplier, 207 neologisms, 9
municipal statistics, 235 network stars, 142
mutual dependence, 192 network structure, 144
mutuality, 171 networks, 16, 141
New England Transcendentalists, 151
Namierite historians, 36 New World, 23
Naples, 43 Newtonian mechanism, 113
Napoleonic wars, 142, 147 Newtonian natural philosophy, 109
narcissism, 89 Newtonian physics, 36, 223
nation, 43,50,51,53,65, 120, 125,244, nobility, 90
250 noblemen, 83
nation-state, 13, 25, 39, 48, 49, 62, nobles, 120
64-66,168 noblesse de robe, 84
National Assembly, 48, 50-52, 55, 57-59 non-infinitesimal analysis, 214
national property, 199 norms, 88
national strength, 173 North America, 242
national wealth, 199 Northern Europe, 121
national wealth theory, 200 Novum Organum, 180
nationalism, 64, 250 numerical method, 226
Nationa16konomie, 189, 190, 195,
198-203 objectivity, 6
nationhood, 249 observation, 20, 128
nations, 37 observational reason, Ill, 120
natural economic order, 96 observational understanding, 129
natural history, 121 Observations upon the United Provinces
natural jurisprudence, 79, 82 of the Netherlands (1673), 170
Natural Law, 191, 196, 201, 202 occult powers, 114
natural laws, 3, 11, 14, 35, 36, 85, 96, Offentlichkeit, 62
166, 193, 214 organic life, 124
natural liberty, 57, 58, 197 organic solidarity, 254
natural order, 212 organic totality, 25
natural philosophy, 2, 3, 15,61 organisms, 7,112,125,126,130
natural right, 12 organization, 112
natural rights of man, 45 organized bodies, 113, 118
SUBJECT INDEX 279
organized matter, 113, 123 physico-mathematics, 209

Oxford, 155 physics, 3, 61, 203, 209
Physiocrats, 96, 167
panometery, 181 physiology, 46, 47, 60, 61, 136
pantheism, 143 pious retreat, 93
Pantheon, 56 plebiscite, 52
paradox, 115 poets, 120
paradox of Petersburg, 210 political arithmetic, 18, 226, 230-232,
Paris, 43, 235 248
Paris Commune, 63 political division of labor, 61
parishes, 212 political economy, 4, 6, 100, 196, 199,
Parisian geometers, 209 207,212,213,217,218,248
Parlements, 85 political intellectual, 149
Parliament, 211, 213 political modernity, 55, 259
paroles, 176 political philosophy, 19,20, 241, 245,
passions, 12, 77, 81, 85, 87, 241 255, 260
patents, 193 political science, 3, 35, 257, 258
patriotic literature, 143 political theory, 257
patronage, 16, 143, 145, 150, 159 politicization, 8
patronage system, 146 Politics, Science of Legislation, 199
pedantry, 91 polity, 25, 244, 249
penance, 87 polls, 215
perfectibilite, 40, 67 popular sovereignty, 53, 54
perfectibility, 37 popUlation, 19
perfection, 36, 127 popUlation growth, 233
personal identity, 63 population size, 207
phenomenologists, 157 populism, 64
Philadelphia, 43 populists, 59
philology, 7 Port-Royal, 82, 91, 92, 95
philosophes, 47, 99, 160 Port-Royal Monastery, 89
philosophical creativity, 144 post- or hyper-modernity, 159
Philosophical Faculty, 142, 150, 154, 189 post-Kantians, 157
philosophical history, 47 postmodernist, 250
philosophical idealism, 16 postmodernists, 98, 157
philosophical networks, 145 poststructuralism, 24
philosophical style, 152 poverty, 172
philosophy, 3, 4, 16, 141, 142 power, 41
philosophy as an abstract discipline, 149 Practical Philosophy, 191
Philosophy Faculty, 193, 196 practical theology, 193
philosophy in Britain, 152 pragmatism, 152
philosophy in France, 152 precieuses, 90
philosophy in Italy, 152 predestination, 83
philosophy in the U.S., 152 predictability, 218, 241
physical anthropology, 35 presumption, 89
280 SUBJECT INDEX
price theory, 167 rational calculation, 82

pride, 89, 90 rational decision-making, 247
principalities, 79 rational state elite, 191
private vices, 11, 77 rationalism, 37, 247
probabilities, 18 rationalist dialectics, 144
probability theory, 226, 234 rationality, 37
problematiques, 14, 24 rationalization, 108
Production, 199 realism, 259
professional identity, 228 Realzusammenhang, 117
professional schools, 148 reason, 3, 36, 111, 246, 247, 258
professionalization, 132 reason of interest, 80
progress, 8, 36, 37, 55 reason of state, 13, 79, 80
progression, 119 receptivity, 97
progressive natures, 119 Recherches et considerations sur la
prohibition, 87 population de la France, 216
proletariat, 64 reductionism, 82, 114
protectionism, 167, 179 reflective conceptualization, 252
prototype, 115 reformist administrators, 217
providence, 234 regularities, 231, 234
provincial intendants, 212 relativism, 82, 98, 99
prudence, 63, 81 religions, 36, 60, 80, 84, 94, 99, 126
Prussia, 148 religious fideism, 143
Prussian Academy of Sciences, 124 religious pessimism, 98
Prussian bureaucracy, 191 Renaissance, 6, 13,79,85
Prussian universities, 193 reorganisation of mathematical
psychological sensitivity, 88 knowledge, 210
psychology, 40, 47 representation, 48, 52, 65, 253
public benefits, 77 representative government, 54
public finance, 195 reproduction, 20, 112, 125
public opinion, 30, 35, 216 republic of letters, 39
Public Schools, 148 republicanism, 62
public sphere, 30, 62 republicans, 253
public utility, 216 reputation, 80
publishing market in Germany, 146 research, 20
pure democracy, 64 research university, 141
pure mathematics, 209 Restoration, 164
Pyrrhonian scepticism, 98 revolution, 9
Revolution, 23
Querelle des anciens et des modernes, 39 Revolutionary debates, 41
querelle du pur amour, 97 revolutionary France, 49
Revolutionary pamphlets, 43
races, 122 Revolutionary schools, 218
raison d'Etat, 48, 255 revolutionary upheavals, 19
rates of phenomena, 234 Revolutionary Wars, 190
SUBJECT INDEX 281
revolutionnaire,41 Second Republic, 253

rights, 25, 53 secondary schools, 148
rights of man, 37, 58, 65, 247 secrets, 81
rights of the citizen, 65 self activating force, 112
rights-based liberalism, 247 self-complacency, 90
rights-endowed individual, 247 self-control, 80
Ritterakademie, 148 self-determination, 251
Roman law, 79 self-emancipation, 62
Roman Republic, 64 self-interest, 13, 77, 78, 84, 91
Romanticism, 4 self-love, 79, 82-84, 89-91, 93-95
Romantics, 143 self-movement, 113
Rousseauism, 59 self-patronage, 145
ruler, 24 self-preservation, 82
Russia, 121 self-regulating mechanisms, 85, 258
self-regulating order, 181
sacrifice, 87 self-regulation, 249
salon gatherings, 91 self-restraint, 87, 103
salons, 3, 43, 82, 87-90, 94, 97 self-rule, 52
satire, 90 selfishness, 182
Sattelzeit, 7-9, 10, 39,40,42, 67 selflessness, 96
sceptical anthropology, 81 semantics, 10
scepticism, 37, 82, 98 semiotics, 122
sceptics, 82 Semitic languages, 122
schemata, 115, 135 separation of empirical and moral
Schleiermacherian theology, 144 discourses, 2
scholarship, 87 separation of powers, 62
Schoolmen, 182 sex-ratio, 216
science de I'homme, 47, 132 sexuality, 41
science of humanity, 109, 132 shift from patronage to the commercial
science sociale, 12, 41, 43, 44, 50, 52, 60, marketplace, 158
61 sign, 15, 136
science studies, 6 simulation, 81
scientific authority, 214 Sittlichkeit, 57
scien tific culture, 212 size of the population, 216
scientific fashions, 216 skepticism, 143
scientific Marxism, 258 slavery, 63
scientific method, III sociabilitas, 166
scientific milieu, 212 sociability, 22, 194
Scientific Revolution, 16, 116, 158 social body, 47, 118,231
scientific utility, 213 social elites, 217
scientism, 130 social engineering, 37
Scotland, 145 social exchange, 84
Scottish Enlightenment, I, II, 12, 172 social interests, 253
second best argument, 98 social laws, 233
282 SUBJECT INDEX
social mathematics, 218, 226 state formation, 17

social movements, 244 state management, 52
social networks, 141 state officials, 189, 192
social organisation, 194 State-science, 232
social physics, 218, 235 statistical aggregates, 229
social physiology, 35 statistical bureaux, 226, 231
social progress, 62 statistical enthusiasm, 228
social sciences, 3,4, 19,22, 24, 39,42, statistical mechanics, 229
44, 62, 86, 107, 132, 241 statistical records, 17
social scientists, 116 Statistical Society of London, 227
social statisticians, 234 statisticians, 225, 227, 232, 248
social statistics, 18, 226, 228, 230, 231 statistics, 18, 19,35,135,217,218,256
social studies of science, 228 statistics as a new mode of
social theorists, 62 representation, 229
social ties, 244 statistics as empirical social science, 227
socialism, 9, 64 statistics as technology idiom tool, 225
societe, 87 statistics of deviance, 235
Societe de 1789, 44, 45 Statistik, 203
Societe franr;aise pour I'histoire des status, 48
sciences de l'homme, 5 structural explanations, 60
society, 16,21-23,25,27,78,232,244, structural opportunities, 142
253 structuralists, 157
society as a population, 229 studia humanitatis, 86
sociological tradition, 254 Sturm und Drang period, 146
sociologie, 47 SUbjective affinities, 220
sociology, 3, 5, 10, 35, 40, 226 subjects, 24, 86
sociology of the sciences, 6 subtle fluids, 116
soil, 118 suicide, 235
solidarity, 57, 253 Suicide (1897), 235
Sorbonne, 83, 146 superstition, 84
soul, 60 supply and demand, 181
souverainete, 50 Sur l'homme, 233
sovereignty, 48, 50, 52, 59, 63 Siittigung, 139
sovereignty of the people, 58 sympathy, 100
spirit, III synergy, 112
spiritualists, I 10 synthetic a posteriori, 154
Sprachwissenschaft, 109, 110, 120, 123 synthetic a priori, 154
Staatsvermogen, 198 system, 117
Staatswirthschaft, 195, 197,201,202 system of natural liberty, 196
Staatswissenschaften, 192, 196, 198 systematic observation, 252
Staatszwecke, 191, 197,201,203 systemic aggregate, 25
stages of abstraction, 209 Szientisten, 108
state, 12, 18,21,23,39,42,65,203,232,
245
SUBJECT INDEX 283
tariffs, 193 twofold, 20

tax revenues, 230 two Scientific Revolutions, 2
taxes, 215 tyranny, 110
Technologie, 193
technology, 203 uncertainty, 243, 244
teleology, 126 unconscious desires, 89
temperament, 86 unit ideas, 163
temporalization, 8, 9 United States, 65, 151
ternary systems, 115 United States of America, 49, 246, 250
Terror, 44, 45, 54-57, 59, 61 universal justice, 66
terroriste, 41 universal rights of man, 65
textbook history,S universal suffrage, 253
The Circle of Commerce, 180 universality, 27
The Economist, 151 universities, 3, 16, 20, 38, 142, 145
the end of ideology, 258 universities in England, 150
the literary intellectual, 147 University of Berlin, 149
the mechanical, 113 University of Frankfurt, 191
The Westminster Review, 151 University of Halle, 17, 190, 191
the social question, 252 University of Gottingen, I
the state, 255 university reform, 151
the teleological, 113 university revolution, 16, 141, 150, 158
The Westminster Review, 151 unsociable sociability, 192
The World as Will and Representation, unsocial sociability, 99, 100
145 Untertanenverstand, 191
theologians, 146, 158 urbanization, 254
theology, 3, 16 Urideen, 130
theology of pure reason, 155 Urtyp, 115, 130
Theory of Moral Sentiments, 11 usury, 79, 182, 183
Thermidor, 48 utilitarians, 151, 157, 160
Third Estate, 43, 50 utility, 91, 200
topoi,9 utility of the Academy of Sciences, 214
Tories, 164
totalitarian democracies, 37 vaccine, 210
totalitarian state, 56 value, 201
totality, 126 value theory, 166
trade, 91,163,171-174 Verstehen, 108
trade civilisation, 172 Verwandschaft, 112
trade crisis, 165 Verzeitlichung, 8
trading agreements, 193 veto, 51
Traite d'economie politi que, 190 vibrating chords, 116
transcendental categories, 154 Vie de Monsieur Turgot, 215, 216
Transcendentalism, 143, 151 Vienna Circle positivists, 157
travelers, 120 violence, 93
tunnel history, 227 virtue, 22, 54, 81
284 SUBJECT INDEX
vital forces, 110 Weimar, 143

vital statistics, 234 welfare, 191, 194, 203
vitalism, 110, 134 Weltgeschichte, 117, 123
Volk,249 Whigs, 164
Volksvermogen, 198 Wirtschaftslehre, 195
Volkswirtschaft, 202 Wissenschaft, 108
Volkswirtschaftslehre, 202 Wissenschaftler, 108
volonte generale, 56, 57 Wolffian Natural Law, 195
voluntary subjection, 63 workers, 254
voting behavior, 36 working class, 254
voting studies, 252 world history, 123, 124
worldly corruption, 93
warriors, 120
Was ist Aufklarung?, 191 Zeeland, 170
wealth, 7, 180, 192, 194, 197, 198 zusammengesetzt, 112
Wealth of Nations, II, 196-198,201, Zweckmal3igkeit, 200
202
NAME INDEX
Addison, J., 146 Beccaria, C., 211

Adorno, T., 37, 66 Beckmann, 193
Ailly, N. d', 77, 94, 96, 105 Beer, M., 187
Alembert, D', 208-210, 214, 215, 217, Benichou, P., 89, 103, 104
219-221 Bensaude-Vincent, B., 222
Althusius, J., 86 Bentham, J., 151
Angeville, A. d', 230 Bergeron, L., 67
Ansart, P., 69 Bergson, H., 152, 160
Antoine, M., 222 Berkeley, 145
Appleby, J.O., 102, 187, 188 Bernoulli, D., 210
Aquinas, 149 Bevir, M., 29
Arendt, H., 65, 75, 244, 245, 255, 261, Bezout, 220
262 Biagioli, M., 29
Aristotle, 180, 195 Bichat, X., 47, 60
Arnauld, Antoine, 82-84, 91, 92, 99 Bishop Ussher, 49
Arnauld, Angelique, 83 Blaas, P.B.M., 31
Asad, T., 239 Black, J., 114
Ashley, W.J., 175, 186 Blaug, M., 174, 186
Augustine, 83 Blumenbach, J.F., 113, 114, 116, 122,
125, 127, 130, 134, 137, 138
Bachelard, G., 115, 135 Bobbio, N., 32
Backhouse, R., 175, 186 Bodin, J., 48, 49, 85
Bacon, F., 17, 178, 180, 181 Boetie, La, 85
Baczko, Bronislaw, 73 Boisguilbert, P. de, 79, 95, 96, 105
Baeque, A. de, 55, 71 Bolingbroke, 146
Baker, K.M., 22, 31, 32, 46, 55, 68, 69, Bonald, de, 26, 46, 47, 100
71, 73, 75, 99, 106, 133,219,221, Borda, C.H., 18,215
247, 261-263 Bordeu, T., 60
Barbon, N., 163, 164, 166-168, 170, 176, Bosanquet, B., 152, 157
179, 185 Bossut, Ch., 208, 215, 220
Barcos, M. de, 91 Botero, G., 80, 91
Barthez, P.-J., 60, 134 Bourdieu, P., 18, 104, 219, 223
Bastid, P., 55, 71 Boutroux, E., 152
Bauer, S., 237 Bradley, F.H., 152, 154-157
Bauman, Z., 37, 66, 261, 263 Bredin, J.-D., 55, 71
Baumgartner, A., 146 Bremond, H., 93, 104, 105
Bayes, T., 211 Brian, E., 17, 18, 29, 66, 101, 207, 219,
Bayle, P., 79 222, 261
286 NAME INDEX
Bru, B., 219, 221 Collini, S., 29

Brunner, 0., 7-8, 10, 67 Collins, R., 15-17,27,28,66,106,141,
Bruyere, La, 88 160
Bryson, G., 68 Comte, A., 5, 26, 35, 47, 100, 106, 152,
Buck, P., 237, 238 247, 254
Buckle, H.T., 151 Condillac, E.B. de, 60
Buffon, G.L. Leclerc de, 111, 112, 115, Condorcet A.N. de, 3, 18,44,46,47, 53,
121, 129, 130, 134-136 54,69,207-211,213-216,218,220,
Burdin, J., 47, 60 222,223,247,253
Burg, P., 133 Conze, W., 8, 10, 67
Burke, E., 56, 72, 251 Crepel, P., 219, 221, 222
Burke, P., 177, 187 Croce, B., 152-154
Crocker, L., 37, 66
Cabanis, P.J.G., 45-47 Cunningham, A., 2, 28
Calhoun, c., 30 Cunningham, W., 164, 173, 185
Camper, P., 122, 137
Camus, A., 160 Dalberg, C. von, 134
Cannon, S.F., 239 Darjes, 193
Cantillon, R., 11 Darnton, R., 216, 223
Carl, 11 Darwin, c., 229
Carlisle, R., 69 Daston, L.J., 29, 223
Carlyle, T., 151 Davenant, C., 164, 166, 168, 173, 174,
Carrive, P., 106 176, 178, 179, 186,230,231,238
Cary, J., 164, 165, 168, 185 Dear, P., 28, 105
Cassini, 212, 216 Decker, M., 170, 185
Cassirer, E., 106 Delft, L. van, 103
Castel, L.B., 220 Derrida, J., 261
Certeau, M. de, 263 Descartes, R., 98, 160
Challamel, A., 69 Descimon, R., 18,223
Chamfort, 88 Desmarest, 215
Charle, C., 161 Desrosieres, A., 29, 261
Chesterfield, P.D.S., 146 Destutt de Tracy, A.L.C., 44, 69
Child, J., 163, 168, 171, 173, 176, 179, Dewey, J., 152
185, 186 Diderot, D., 60
Church, R.W., 187 Dithey, W., 102
Church, W.F., 103 Dohm,193
Claeys, G., 69 Doisy,221
Clairaut, A.c., 220 Domat, J., 79, 95, 96, 105
Clement, S., 164 Donnelly, M., 17-19, 22, 66, 225
Coats, A.W., 187 Donzelot, J., 262
Cohen, LB., 28, 224 Doubrovsky, S., 104
Coke, R., 167, 185 Dumas, c.L., 110, 134
Colbert, J.B., 96 Dumont, E., 43
Coleman, J.S., 101 Dumont, L., 22, 262
NAME INDEX 287
Dunn, J., 5, 33 Gadamer, H.-G., 10, 31

Durkheim, E., 5, 235, 254, 256 Gagnon, A., 32
Galiani, F., 11
Edgeworth, F., 227 Galton, F., 227, 236
Elias, N., 87, 103 Galvani, L., 156
Emerson, R.W., 151 Garat, D.-J., 44, 45
Endres, A.M., 238 Gassendi, P., 98
Enzo Baldini, A., 102 Gasser, 193
Esmonin, E., 221 Gauchet, M., 22, 75
Esprit, J., 90, 105 Gavard, F.K., 204
Euler, L., 209, 220, 223 Gee, J., 172, 186
Expilly, J.J. d' 221 Gentz, 138
Gerhardt, V., 106
Fabiani, J.-L., 161 Gervaise, 1., 11
Faccarello, G., 105 Gigerenzer, G., 29, 236
Farr, W., 230, 236 Gilbert, F., 102
Farrao, T.J., 101 Gille, B., 221
Faull,K.,68 Gillispie, c.c., 208, 216, 219, 223
Fenelon, F. de Salignac de la Mothe, 96 Goethe, 115, 116, 130, 138, 143-145
Ferguson, A., 61,114,119,134,136 Goldmann, L., 92
Ferry, L., 72 Golinski, J., 29
Feuerbach, 155, 157 Goodman, D., 30, 73
Fichte, J.G., 57, 137, 142-144, 153-156, Goody, J., 220
160 Gottlob, M., 133
Filangieri, G., 61 Goudsblom, J., 105
Fish, S., 186 Gouhier, H., 69
Fontaine, A., 220 Gracian, B., 81
Forbonnais, F.V. de, 195 Graham, L., 29
Forster, 116 Grampp, W.D., 187
Forster, J.C., 193 Graunt, J., 230
Forsyth, M., 55, 71 Gray, J., 37, 66
Foucault, M., 2, 6, 7, 12, 13, 15,39--42, Green, T.H., 152, 153, 155
44,45,48, 49, 55, 61, 63, 67, 74, Grimm, J., 33
242, 260 Grotius, H., 82, 86, 166
Fox, c., 28, 32 Gueniffey, P., 55
Frankenstein, 66 Guerry, A.-M., 230
Franklin, J., 30 Guery, A., 18,223
Friedrich the Great, 142 Guicciardini, F., 79-81, 87, 91, 102
Friedrich, H., 103 Gunn, J.A.W., 102
Friedrich Wilhelm II, 232 Gunnell, J.G., 66, 261
Friese, H., 263 Gusdorf, G., 41, 68
Fuchs, H.-J., 78,91, 102, 104 Guy, W., 227, 230, 237
Fulda, H.F., 72
Furet, F., 67 Haakonssen, K., 11,31
288 NAME INDEX
Habermas, J., 20, 62, 73 Humboldt, W. von, 16, 116-118, 121,

Hacking, 1., 18,226,227,231,236-239 123, 125-133, 136-138, 140, 153
Hahn, R., 74, 220, 223 Hume, D., 11, 12,61,84, 103, 145, 167,
Haller, A. von, 60 168,172
Halley, E., 230-232, 238 Hundert, E.G., 101
Hamann, J.G., 142 Hunt, L., 30, 74
Hamelin, 0., 152 Hutcheson, F., 11, 12
Hamilton, 252 Hutchinson, T.W., 163, 185, 186
Harris, J., 167, 185 Huxley, T.H., 151
Head, B., 28, 41, 68
Hecht, J., 219 Iggers, G., 124
Heckscher, E., 173, 177, 179, 187 Ignatief, M., 29
Heeren, 136 Ivanoff, N., 104
Heeschen, V., 140
Hegel, 9, 39,42,49-51,54-60,62,70, Jacob, F., 237
71, 143, 144, 152-156,246,250 Jacobi, F.H., 143, 144
Heidegger, M., 31 Jakob, L.H. von, 17, 190, 195, 197, 198,
Heilbron, J., 1, 13-15, 17,22,26,28,32, 200-205
76,77, 158-160,260,263 James, W., 157
Held, D., 75 James, E.D., 93, 104
Hellmuth, E., 203 Jansenius, 83
Helvetius, c.-A., 60, 99, 160 Janssen, T., 173
Henry, C., 221, 222 Jardine, N., 2, 28
Herder, J.G., 115, 116, 118, 121, 133, Jaume, L., 55, 75
135, 136, 142, 143, 145,249 Jay Reedy, W., 69
Herschel, J., 239 John, V., 238
Higonnet, P., 70 Johnson, E.A.J., 186-189
Hinchman, L., 72 Jowett, B., 152
Hirschman, A., 78, 102 Judges, 167
Hobbes, T., 12, 48-50, 59, 82, 86, 87, Justi, 194
93, 98, 145, 242
Hobsbawm, E, 1 Kahler, W., 203
Hogarth, R.M., 101 Kant, 1., 62, 63, 74, 75, 97, 100, 101,
Holbach, P.H.T. d', 60, 160 106, 115, 120, 121, 133, 135, 142,
Hollander, J., 237 145, 153-157, 191, 192, 195,203,204
Holmes, S., 82, 102 Kant, J., 12, 16, 136
Honig, B., 261 Kaplan, S.L., 29
Honigsheim, P., 105 Kathe, H., 204
Honneth, A., 262 Kelley, D.R., 29, 30
Hont, 1., 29,55,71, 73, 75, 76, 82, 102, Kelly, G.A., 262
260 Kennedy, E., 41, 68
Horkheimer, M., 37, 66 Keohane, N.O., 103, 105
Horstmann, R.-P., 72 Keynes, J.M., 176
Hufeland, G., 195, 200-202, 205 Kley, D. Van, 104
NAME INDEX 289
Korn, W.G., 204 Longueville, duke of, 84

Koselleck, R., 2, 6--10, 13, 15,23,30-32, Louis XVI, 50
39-42, 55, 59, 66, 67, 72 Lovejoy, A.O., 102, 163
Krailsheimer, A.J., 104 Lowndes, W., 165
Kraynak, R.P., 262 Luhmann, N., 10
Kristeller, P.O., 103 Luxemburg, R., 64
Kristeva, J., 75
Krohn, W., 31 Machiavelli, N., 79, 87
Kuppers, G., 31 MacIntyre, A., 37, 66
Madison, J., 49
Labriola, A., 152 Magnusson, L., 1, 17, 163, 185-187
LaCapra, D., 29 Maier, H., 262
Lachelier, J., 152 Maistre, J. de, 26, 46, 100
Lacretelle, P.-L., 44 Major-Poetzl, P., 67
Lafayette, madame de, 89 Malebranche, N., 95, 105
Lafond, J., 104 Malthus, T.R., 229, 233
Lagrange, J.L., 208, 210 Malynes, G. de, 182, 183, 187
Lamarck, J.B. de, 154 Mandeville, B., 11, 77, 79, 99, 100, 106
Lamberti, J.-e., 262 Manent, P., 22, 23, 32, 73, 261
Lamprecht, G.F. von, 193, 194 Mansbridge, J., 101
Landes, J., 30, 73, 75, 76 Manuel, F., 69
Langholm, 0., 182 Martin, J., 29
Laplace, P.S., 18, 154,207,208,210, Martin, H.-J., 103
213-223 Martyn, 163
Lavater, J.K., 122 Marx, K., 5, 19,40,42,57, 152, 155,
Lavoisier, A.L., 214 157, 175, 254, 256
Law, J., 176 Massie, 167
Lazarsfeld, P., 238 Massow, von, 147
Lefort, e., 243, 244, 246, 261 Maupeou, R.N.Ch.A. de., 211
Lehmann, 0., 203 Maupertuis, P.L.M. de, 60
Leibniz, G.W., 136, 145, 147 Maxwell, e., 229
Lennon, T.M., 106 Mazlish, B., 76
Lepenies, W., 4, 28-30, 104 McCulloch, J.R., 175
Lessing, G.E., 142, 145 Medick, H., 31
Levi, A., 104 Mee, R. Ie, 221
Levine, D.N., 29 Meek, R.L., 31
Levy, e., 219 Meijer, M.e., 137
Lewis, C.I., 157 Mendelssohn, M., 142, 143
Liancourt, marquis de, 83 Menger, e., 195,200,201,203,204
Lichtenberg, G.e., 122, 137 Mephisto, 66
Licoppe, e., 222 Mercier, L.S. Le, 56, 62
Locke, J., 53, 63, 86, 92, 145, 165, 166, Merriam, e., 35
242 Mersenne, M., 98
Longueville, madame de, 92 Merz, J.T., 237
290 NAME INDEX
Mesnard, J., 103 Pagden,A,262

Messance, 207, 219, 221 Paine, T., 49, 52, 251
Mettrie, La, J.O. de, 60, 134 Palmer, R.R., 70
Meyssonnier, S., 105 Panofsky, E., 208, 219
Michaelis, J.D., 122 Parry, G., 75, 76
Michels, R., 64 Parsons, T., 1
Michodiere, La, 212, 215-217 Pascal, B., 82, 83, 84, 88,91,92,95-97,
Mill, J., 175 104, 105
Mill, J.S., 151 Pasquino, P., 55, 71, 73
Mirabeau, V. Riqueti de, 61, 69, 253 Passerin d'Entreves, M., 74, 76
Misselden, E., 168, 176, 178, 180-184, Paty, M., 220
187 Pearson, K., 227, 237
Moheau, 207, 216,219,221 Perrot, J.-C., 105,219,221,222
Mohl, R. von, 254 Petty, W., 18, 166, 169, 176, 178,230,
Monge, G., 208, 215, 222 232, 238
Montaigne, M. de, 82, 85, 87, 102 Petyt, 179
Montesquieu, C.L. de,S, 23, 44, 47, 52, Pfau, T., 32
60, 86, 99, 107, 146, 160, 242, 263 Philipson, N., 1
Montucla, J.E., 211, 221 Picavet, F., 68
Moore, G.E., 157 Pickstone, J., 76
Moore, T., 187 Pippin, R., 74
Morand, J., 215, 223 Pitkin, H.F., 75, 262
Moravia, S., 41, 68, 111 Plamenatz, J., 75
Muller, J.z., 32 Pocock, J., 5, 11, 29, 30, 32, 133, 174,
Miiller, A, 136 176, 186
Mun, T., 168, 169, 171, 172, 176, 178, Poggi, G., 238
179,181-187 Poincare, H., 220
Myers, M.L., 78, 101 Polanyi, K., 22
Pollexfen, J., 165, 185
Napoleon, 17,45 Pope, A., 47, 69, 146
Necker, J., 212, 216 Popkin, R., 98, 105
Neo-Kantians, 156 Porter, R., 1, 28, 32, 68, 132
Newton, 1., 114, 136, 208, 209 Porter, T.M., 29, 223, 237, 238
Nicole, P., 14, 78, 82, 84, 88, 91-100, Price, R., 211
105 Procacci, G., 262
Niebuhr, G., 121, 138 Pufendorf, S., 11, 12, 14,82,86,166
Nietzsche, F., 88, 103, 160 Pygmalion, 66
Nightingale, F., 230
Norris, C., 74 Quetelet, A, 35, 229, 230, 233, 235, 236
North, D., 11, 163, 164, 185 Quine, W.V., 157
Nowotny, H., 31
Ramus, R., 180
Olson, R., 28 Rashed, R., 220
Rask, R., 33
NAME INDEX 291
Rau, K.R., 203 Sade, marquis de, 154

Rawls, J., 249 Saint-Cyran, 83, 91
Raymond, M., 104 Saint-Just, 53
Rayner, J., 31 Saint-Simon, e.R. de,S, 26, 35,47, 60,
Reder, M.W., 101 247, 254, 261
Redwood, J., 68 Sartorius, G., 195, 197, 198, 204
Reichardt, R., 9 Sartre, J.P., 160
ReilI, P.R., 1, 15, 16,27,30, 107, 137 Say, J.-B., 190, 195, 197, 199,200,204,
Reinhold, K.L., 143 205
Rials, S., 75 Schaffer, S., 29, 185
Ricardo, D., 167, 175, 176 Schama, S., 185
Rice Vaughan, 167 SchelIe, G., 221
RicheIieu, 83, 84 Schelling, F.W.J. von, 137, 143, 144,
Richter, M., 10,31,67 153-156
Riedel, M., 9, 30, 72 Schiffman, Z.S., 30
Ritter, J., 10, 72 Schiller, J.e.F. von, 115-117, 135, 136,
Roberts, L., 174, 186 143
Robertson, J.M., 187 Schlegel, 138
Robespierre, M., 51, 53, 56 Sch1eiermacher, F., 138, 143, 153,250
Robinet, 115 Schlosser, 116, 136
Roche, D., 223 Sch16zer, A.L., 116, 117, 120-122, 135
Rochefoucauld, La, 82, 84, 88-91, 94, Schmidt, J., 31, 74
97, 100, 103 Schmitt, K., 31
Roels, J., 75 SchmolIer, G., 173
Rogerson, B., 103 Schopenhauer, A., 144, 145, 160
Rohan, duke of, 81, 91 Schrader, W.H., 106
Rorty, R., 28, 243 Schreber, D.G., 193, 204
RosanvalIon, P., 71 Schumpeter, J., 64
Ross, D., 29 Schumpeter, J.A., 174, 177, 187, 238
Rothacker, E., IO Scotus, 149
Rothblatt, S., 28, 32 Sedgwick, A., 103
Rothkrug, L., 104 Seidman, S., 69, 262
Rousseau, J.J., 5, 38, 43, 52, 55-59, 62, Sejour, D. du, 215, 216
63, 72, 73, 99, 14~ 16~ 242, 263 Sellier, P., 104
Rousseau, G.S., 1,28, 132 Sellin, V., 263
Royce, J., 152-154, 157 Sevigne, madame de, 92
Rudiger, J.e., 194 SewelI, W.H., 55, 71, 262
Rueschemeyer, D., 32 Shaftesbury, countess of, 92
RundelI, J., 74 Shaftesbury, Lord, 81, 97, 100, 145
Rusnock, A., 219 Shapin, S., 29, 133
RusselI, 157 Shippey, T., 33
Shklar, J.N., 252, 262
Sable, Madame de, 84, 89, 90, 94, 104, Sieyes, A., 43, 44-46, 50-52, 54, 58-62,
105 64, 65, 68, 73, 253
292 NAME INDEX
Simon, J., 69 Taveneaux, R., 103

Skinner, A.S., 31 Tawney, R.H., 187
Skinner, Q., 5, 29, 48, 70, 174, 186 Teich, Mikuhis, 68
Skocpo1, T., 32 Temple, W., 170, 171, 185
Smith, A., 10, 11, 17,61,81,100,107, Terray, J.M., 216
146,167,168,175,176,179,184, Thomas, K., 178, 187
190, 196, 198, 199,201,204 Thome, H., 133
Smith, D.W., 106 Thompson, W., 69
Soden, F.J.H. von, 195, 200, 201, 205 Thoreau, H.D., 151
Sommerring, S.T., 122, 137 Thuau, E., 102
Sonenscher, M., 76 Thweatt, V., 89, 104
Sonnenfe1s, 194 TiIlet, M., 215
Spaemann, R., 69 Tocqueville, A. de, 23, 32,40, 74,250,251
Spencer, H., 151 Toews, J.E., 29
Spinoza, B., 86, 145, 160 Tories, 146
Spittler, L.T., 133 Tribe, K., 17,29,30,67, 186, 189
Spranger, E., 124 Trosne, Le, 195
Stacke1berg, J. von, 103 Trotsky, L., 64
Stae1, Madame de, 103, 144 Tuck, R., 102
Stahl, G.E., 134 Tucker, 11, 168
Starobinski, J., 67 Tully, J., 29
Staum, M., 41, 68, 69, 76 Turgot, A.R.J., 18, 160,211,213-215,
Steele, 146 221, 247, 253
Stein, L. von, 254 Turner, R.S., 28
Steland, D., 103 Turner, S., 2, 238
Stephan Collini, 29
Sternberger, D., 262 Urbach, P.M., 187
Stevenson, 157
Stichweh, R., 10, 28 Vartanian, A., 134
Stiebritz, 193 Vauvenargues, 99, 106
Stigler, S., 236 Veit-Brause, 1., 31
Strauss, L., 62 Vicq-d'Azyr,47
Stroup, A., 222 Viner, J., 173, 186
Strube, W., 105 Viro1i, M., 102
Stuarts, 164 Vollinger, J.A., 204
Suarez, F., 149 Volney, c., 46, 69
Supple, B., 183 Volta, A.G.A.A., 156
Suviranta, B., 168, 185 Voltaire, 61, 99, 146, 160
Swaan, A. de, 101 Vopa, A.J. La, 30
Swift, J., 146 Vout, M., 66
Talleyrand, C.M. de, 69 Wagner, A., 233, 238

Talmon, J., 37, 66 Wagner, P., 19,20,22,28,29,32,241,
Taton, R., 220, 222 262, 263
NAME INDEX 293
Wallas, G., 35 Wise, N., 30

Wallerstein, 1., 32 Wittrock, B., 1, 28, 32, 76, 262, 263
Wartenberg, T., 74 Wokler, R., 12-15, 18,22,25,26,28,
Waszek, N., 72 32, 33, 35, 102, 238, 261
Weber, M., 5, 39, 256 Wolff, c., 146
Weingart, P., 29 Wolin, S., 62, 73
Weiss, C., 32 Wood, G.S., 246, 261
Welch, c., 41, 68 Wuthnow, R., 261
Westergaard, R., 237
Westfall, R.S., 134 Yeo, R., 3, 28
Whigs, 146 Yule, G.D., 227
White, R., 124
Whitley, R., 28, 32, 262 Zarka, Y.C., 102
Willcox, W., 237 Zbigniew Pelczynski, Z., 72
Winch, D., 11,31,32
1. E. Mendelsohn, P. Weingart and R. Whitley (eds.): The Social Production of

Scientific Knowledge. 1977 ISBN Hb 90-277-0775-8; Pb 90-277-0776-6
2. W. Krohn, E.T. Layton, Jr. and P. Weingart (eds.): The Dynamics of Science and
Technology. Social Values, Technical Nonns and Scientific Criteria in the
Development of Knowledge. 1978 ISBN Hb 90-277-0880-0; Pb 90-277-0881-9
3. H. Nowotny and H. Rose (eds.): Counter-Movements in the Sciences. The
Sociology of the Alternatives to Big Science. 1979
ISBN Hb 90-277-0971-8; Pb 90-277-0972-6
4. K.D. Knorr, R. Krohn and R. Whitley (eds.): The Social Process of Scientific
Investigation. 1980 (1981) ISBN Hb 90-277-1174-7; Pb 90-277-1175-5
5. E. Mendelsohn and Y. Elkana (eds.): Sciences and Cultures. Anthropological and
Historical Studies of the Sciences. 1981
ISBN Hb 90-277-1234-4; Pb 90-277-1235-2
6. N. Elias, H. Martins and R. Whitley (eds.): Scientific Establishments and
Hierarchies. 1982 ISBN Hb 90-277-1322-7; Pb 90-277-1323-5
7. L. Graham, W. Lepenies and P. Weingart (eds.): Functions and Uses of
Disciplinary Histories. 1983 ISBN Hb 90-277-1520-3; Pb 90-277-1521-1
8. E. Mendelsohn and H. Nowotny (eds.): Nineteen Eighty Four: Science between
Utopia and Dystopia. 1984 ISBN Hb 90-277-1719-2; Pb 90-277-1721-4
9. T. Shinn and R. Whitley (eds.): Expository Science. Fonns and Functions of
Popularisation. 1985 ISBN Hb 90-277-1831-8; Pb 90-277-1832-6
10. G. B5hme and N. Stehr (eds.): The Knowledge Society. The Growing Impact of
Scientific Knowledge on Social Relations. 1986
ISBN Hb 90-277-2305-2; Pb 90-277-2306-0
11. S. Blume, J. Bunders, L. Leydesdorff and R. Whitley (eds.): The Social Direction
of the Public Sciences. Causes and Consequences of Co-operation between
Scientists and Non-scientific Groups. 1987
ISBN Hb 90-277-2381-8; Pb 90-277-2382-6
12. E. Mendelsohn, M.R. Smith and P. Weingart (eds.): Science, Technology and the
Military. 2 vols. 1988
ISBN Vol, 1211 90-277-2780-5; Vol. 12/2 90-277-2783-X
13. S. Fuller, M. de Mey, T. Shinn and S. Woolgar (eds.): The Cognitive Turn.
Sociological and Psychological Perspectives on Science. 1989
ISBN 0-7923-0306-7
14. W. Krohn, G. Kiippers and H. Nowotny (eds.): Seljorganization. Portrait of a
Scientific Revolution. 1990 ISBN 0-7923-0830-1
15. P. Wagner, B. Wittrock and R. Whitley (eds.): Discourses on Society. The
Shaping on the Social Science Disciplines. 1991 ISBN 0-7923-1001-2
16. E. Crawford, T. Shinn and S. Sorlin (eds.): Denationalizing Science. The

Contexts ofIntemational Scientific Practice. 1992 (1993) ISBN 0-7923-1855-2
17. Y. Ezrahi, E. Mendelsohn and H. Segal (eds.): Technology, Pessimism, and
Postmodernism. 1993 (1994) ISBN 0-7923-2630-X
18. S. Maasen, E. Mendelsohn and P. Weingart (eds.): Biology as Society? Society as
Biology: Metaphors. 1994 (1995) ISBN 0-7923-3174-5
19. T. Shinn, J. Spaapen and V. Krishna (eds.): Science and Technology in a
Developing World. 1995 (1997) ISBN 0-7923-4419-7
20. J.Heilbron, L. Magnusson and B.Wittrock (eds.): The Rise of the Social Sciences
and the Formation of Modernity. Conceptual Change in Context, 1750-1850.
1996 (1998) ISBN 0-7923-4589-4
KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS - DORDRECHT / BOSTON / LONDON

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(Sociology of the Sciences 20) Peter Hanns Reill (Auth.), Johan Heilbron, Lars Magnusson, Björn Wittrock (Eds.) - The Rise of the Social Sciences and the Formation of Modernity_ Conceptual Change in C

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THE RISE OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

AND THE FORMA nON OF MODERNITY

R.D. Whitley, Manchester Business School, University of Manchester

Y. Ezrahi, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

SPRINGER SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.

ISBN 978-1-4020-0254-0 ISBN 978-94-011-5528-1 (eBook)

Printed an acid-fi'ee paper

All Rights Reserved

BJORN WITTROCK, JOHAN HEILBRON, LARS MAGNUSSON /

ROBERT WOKLER / The Enlightenment and the French

JOHAN HEILBRON / French Moralists and the Anthropology of

PETER HANNS REILL / The Construction of the Social Sciences

RANDALL COLLINS / The Transformation of Philosophy 141

LARS MAGNUSSON / The Language of Mercantilism: The English

KEITH TRIBE / Natural Law and the Origins of NationalOkonomie:

ERIC BRIAN / Mathematics, Administrative Reform and

MICHAEL DONNELLY / From Political Arithmetic to

PETER WAGNER / Certainty and Order, Liberty and Contingency:

About the Contributors 265

Subject Index 269

Epistemic Shifts and the Formation of Modernity

In popular discourse and in the self-understanding of the social and

those of the nineteenth century; or as a mystery, a twilight zone in which

entia ted constellation of intellectual practices. This tendency among

followed by institutional projects (journals, societies) that culminated in

curiosity of retired professors and a few historians. In sociology, for

in the early modern period, it has gradually broadened to include other

Two Models of Change

Koselleck's Sattelzeit and German Begriffsgeschichte

Another line of research has been outlined by Reinhart Koselleck. His

history as conceived by Erich Rothacker, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and

The Revisionist Interpretation of Adam Smith

In considering the recent historiography of economic, political, and

The Volume: Arguments and Structure

In the immediately following chapter Robert Wokler examines in detail

responsibility as opposed to the shackles of tradition, convention, and

nineteenth centuries, a point which was suggested rather than demon-

meaning, society, and agency. For example, a notion of a science of

case. Brian focuses on French developments towards the end of the

and twentieth centuries. He contrasts the historical formation of the

institutionalization closely corresponded to a more or less tacit as-

Conceptual Change and the Formation of Modernity

The essays in this volume together entail a fundamental reVlSlOn of a

understanding of society emerged during the great transition in the late

processes of reconstitution. Wokler's chapter in particular strongly

in a number of contributions to the present volume, they were either

capacities of human beings as agents. A nexus of philosophical com-

Conceptualizing the Enlightenment Project

It is as true of the human sciences as of the sciences of nature that, by

mati on of parties and eventually voting behavior - could be investigated

Project itself. I shall not mind if my remarks here may appear to

as portrayed by Tocqueville, or of the class structures of industrial

Foucault anticipated the more detailed work of Georges Gusdorf, Sergio

hand, and Koselleck's broader perspective on the interconnections

by impermeable boundaries, we risk parting company from the very

Inventing Social Science

change. While they were men of predominantly liberal temperament

enthusiastic legislators and metaphysicians, now identified in the same

Manufacturing the Nation-State

generally requires that the represented be a moral person as well,

that there could be no sovereign above the people's representatives. Both

representation which in his eyes was to constitute the most central

referenda, such as had been proposed by Condorcet at the beginning of

The Hegelian Misrepresentation of Rousseau