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| 2. Intellectual and Religious Trends |
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(See Intellectual Developments)| The major trends in thought from 1814 to 1848 can generally be understood as reactions to the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. Conservatism arose as a direct, negative response to the changes heralded by revolution and industrialization. Conservatives stressed the value of tradition. They supported religion, the social hierarchy inherited from the early modern period, and the lessons of historical experience. They held that abstract political theory led only to ruin. The major proponents of this philosophy were the English historian of the French Revolution, Edmund Burke (1729–97), Joseph de Maistre (1754–1821), and Vicomte Louis de Bonald (1754–1840). Conservatism was also linked to the rise of ultramontanism in the Roman Catholic Church. | 1 |
| Liberals saw much of value in the French Revolution, especially its emphasis on individual liberty and the protection of private property. For that reason, they opposed the Terror, with its economic and social controls, as a threat to the individual. Liberals sought a rational state, one based on science and natural laws. They thus opposed both the status quo, as supported by the conservatives, and changes that would increase the state's role in society and the economy. Instead, they supported a social structure that rewarded merit. In economics, they emphasized the laws of supply and demand to argue for no restrictions, a system known as laissez-faire economics. The foremost proponents of this thought were Thomas Malthus (1766–1834), who argued that population and food supply were related in a cyclical association, and David Ricardo (1772–1823), who linked wages to labor supply and population. Both scholars posited these conditions as natural, and as such, the state would only worsen conditions if it got involved. | 2 |
| Because liberals saw the Terror as the product of democracy, they feared a widening of suffrage as a danger to individual liberty. Democracy was supported by only a small portion of radical liberals, such as Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832). | 3 |
| Two new philosophies also developed from the French Revolution: socialism and nationalism. Because socialists writing before 1848 sought to combat poverty, oppression, and inequality by creating a new social order based on harmony, they have acquired the label Karl Marx gave them in 1848, utopian socialists. Although based on different understandings of how society worked, socialists like Henri Comte de Saint-Simon (1760–1825), Charles Fourier (1772–1837), and Robert Owen (1771–1858) all based their models of the perfect society on idealized traditional notions of community and cooperation. | 4 |
| Nationalism is difficult to define, for it was built on such concepts as the Volksgeist, or the soul of the people. This was a concept advanced by the German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803). Nationalism promotes the belief that common language, culture, and traditions create an unbreakable bond among people. Nationalism was most readily grasped by those who lived in politically divided empires, especially Germans and Italians. During the first half of the 19th century, nationalism was frequently linked to liberalism; each sought changes to the status quo, and liberals conflated the struggle for national rights with the extension of individual freedoms. In the latter half of the century, however, this link shattered. | 5 |
| Outside of the realm of politics, supporters of the Enlightenment continued their search for reason through such movements as positivism. Positivism, with Auguste Comte (1798–1857) as its main proponent, brought a strict empirical approach to the study of society. The scientific method could be used, in this view, to discover a set of laws that governed the operations of society. In this manner, positivists sought a new ideology and new institutions upon which to base society, now that the revolution had destroyed the old regime but left nothing in its place. | 6 |
| Some of the more important publications that marked the development of philosophical, religious, and social thought from 1800 to 1848 included: | 7 |
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| 1802 |
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| The French author François René de Chateaubriand (1768–1848) initiated the Catholic revival with his Génie du christianisme, stressing the aesthetic rather than the theological aspect of the faith. | 8 |
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| 1803 |
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| The Traité d'économie politique of Jean-Baptiste Say (1767–1832) was one of the most lucid and influential expositions of economic liberalism. Say followed it in 1828–30 with a much more extensive Cours complet d'économie politique pratique. | 9 |
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| 1806 |
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| Johann F. Herbart's (1776–1841) Allgemeine Pädogogik was published, a landmark in the development of modern education based on psychology and ethics. | 10 |
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| 1807 |
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| The Hegelian philosophy of the absolute, the dominant philosophy of the early 19th century, was introduced by George W. F. Hegel (1770–1831) in his Phänomenologie des Geistes, followed by Wissenschaft der Logik (1812–16) and Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts (1821). | 11 |
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| 1810 |
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| The political philosophy of conservatism was further elaborated in the brilliant writings of Joseph de Maistre (1754–1821), the Essai sur le principe générateur des constitutions politiques (1810) and especially Du pape (1819), with its emphasis on the importance of papal authority. | 12 |
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| 1813 |
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| Robert Owen (1771–1858), British industrialist and philanthropist, is generally regarded as the first of the utopian socialists. In his New View of Society (1813) he argued for cooperation in production and advocated the organization of new social units, many of which (notably New Harmony, Indiana, 1825–28) were established in Europe and the United States. Subsequently the French reformer, Charles Fourier (1772–1837), proposed the setting up of phalanstères, or cooperative communities, in a rural setting; and Étienne Cabet (1788–1856) in his Voyage en Icarie (1840) pictured an imaginative, highly planned, and regulated community. Louis Blanc (1811–82) in his Organisation du travail (1839) urged the foundation of state-financed producers' associations, while Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–65), the great French polemicist, demanded justice, equality, and anarchy as the only remedies for the corruption of society. In exile in Paris, the self-educated German tailor Wilhelm Weitling (1808–71) came under the influence of French socialist ideas. In his Garantien der Harmonie und Freiheit (1842), he presented a system not unlike those of Fourier and Cabet. Johann Karl Rodbertus (1805–75) was also instrumental in introducing French ideas into Germany. | 13 |
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| 1815–31 |
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| Friedrich Karl von Savigny (1779–1861) in his six-volume Geschichte des römischen Rechts im Mittelalter contributed greatly to the development of the historical school of jurisprudence. | 14 |
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| 1816–26 |
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| Karl Ludwig von Haller (1768–1854) published his six-volume Restauration der Staatswissenschaften, one of the most comprehensive and one of the last refutations of 18th-century political theory and restatements of the principles of absolutism and paternalism. | 15 |
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| 1817 |
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| The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation by the British banker David Ricardo (1772–1823) provided a classical formulation of economic doctrine. Ricardo set forth the law of “differential rent” and explained wages as tending to seek the minimum subsistence level. He also analyzed the conflicting interests of social classes, thereby foreshadowing the doctrine of the class struggle. His teaching was enthusiastically adopted by the rising manufacturing class and was further elaborated in England by the utilitarian James Mill (1773–1836), John Ramsay McCulloch (1789–1864), and Nassau William Senior (1790–1864), and in France by Pellegrino Rossi (1787–1848), Charles Dunoyer (1786–1863), Michel Chevalier (1806–79), and Frédéric Bastiat (1801–50). | 16 |
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| 1817–18 |
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| Comte Henri de Saint-Simon (1760–1825), eccentric scion of the high French aristocracy, published his four-volume study of industry (L'industrie, ou discussions politiques, morales et philosophiques) followed by Du système industriel (1821) and Le catéchisme des industriels (1823). In these writings he called for a reorganization of society to accord with modern methods of production and to ensure the greatest good for the greatest number. He dreamed of integrating the sciences in a new sociology and forecast modern technocracy. His disciples, Prosper Enfantin (1796–1864) and Saint-Amand Bazard (1791–1832), not only systematized and expounded his thought but also, on the basis of his later book Le nouveau christianisme (1825), organized a Saint-Simonian sect on communist principles. This was soon suppressed by the authorities. Meanwhile Saint-Simon's secretary, Auguste Comte (1798–1857), developed his scientific thought and founded the philosophy known as positivism (Cours de philosophie positive, six volumes, 1830–42; Système de politique positive, four volumes, 1851–54). | 17 |
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| 1817–21 |
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| The Abbé Félicité de Lamennais (1782–1854) wrote an eloquent defense of papal and royal authority in his Essai sur l'indifférence en matière de religion, but after 1830 he became converted to liberalism. With Comte Charles de Montalembert (1810–70) he launched the liberal Catholic movement, which was condemned by the papacy. Eventually Lamennais became identified with the socialist movement. His fervent booklet Paroles d'un croyant (1833) was at once translated into many languages and aroused much sympathy for the lower classes. | 18 |
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