HIST20182

European Intellectual History

Rousseau to Freud

***

Semester 2

2010-11

***

Course Lecturers and Tutors

Course Unit Director: Professor Stuart Jones (S 2.23) stuart.jones@manchester.ac.uk

Other Lecturers: Dr Leif Jerram (W2.07): l.jerram@manchester.ac.uk

Seminar Tutors:

Matthew Adams: matthew.s.adams@manchester.ac.uk Gareth Crabtree: gareth.crabtree@manchester.ac.uk Catherine Feely: catherine.feely@manchester.ac.uk

2

Level 2 Course Unit, 20 Credits

Teaching: one lecture and one seminar per week (lecture Tuesdays 12-1 Samuel Alexander

Building LG 12)

Seminar 1: Thursday 10 a.m. Samuel Alexander S 2.20: Matthew Adams

Seminar 2: Thursday 11 a.m. University Place 6.213: Catherine Feely

Seminar 3: Thursday 12 noon University Place 6.213: Catherine Feely

Seminar 4: Thursday 2 p.m. Roscoe 3.5: Matthew Adams

Seminar 5: Friday 10 a.m. Alan Turing G114: Gareth Crabtree

Seminar 6: Friday 11 a.m. University Place 3.212: Gareth Crabtree

Assessment: Assessed essay (50%), submitted in week 6; two-answer „take-away‟

examination (50%).

1. Coursework: one assessed essay (max 3,000 words) is required. This will provide 50%

of the mark for the course. Questions will be published on Blackboard by the end of week 2.

The deadline for this is Friday 11 March. The essay will assess the first half of the course.

Essays are to be submitted electronically, via the Blackboard site, and feedback will be

provided through Blackboard.

Please note that extensions cannot be granted by your tutors and lecturers, who are not

allowed to grant them. If you have good reason for being late (e.g. illness or bereavement),

you should complete a Special Circumstances form (available from the office), and submit it to

the office with with appropriate documentation (e.g. doctor‟s note). All essays are assessed

anonymously and should therefore bear your student number and not your name.

*Essays submitted late without good reason receive a mark of 0.

Your essay should be properly presented, with footnotes and bibliography following a standard

referencing system. There is guidance on essay presentation at the end of the History

programme handbook, which is available at:

http://www.currentstudents.arts.manchester.ac.uk/ug/handbooks/index.htm

If you are taking a programme outside History it is especially important that you should follow

the History guidance.

2. Examination: this is a two-answer „take-away‟ paper which will be published on the

Blackboard site and is to be submitted via Blackboard. This will deal with the second half of the

course. Since this is a new form of assessment, a specimen examination paper will be

published on the Blackboard site.

Precise details on timing will be published on Blackboard.

3

Programme

Week Date (of

lecture)

Lecture Seminar Text

1 1 Feb Introductory Briefing (HSJ) Organizational

2 8 Feb Liberty and the Modern State (HSJ) Rousseau

3 15 Feb Conservatism (LJ) Burke

4 22 Feb Liberalism (HSJ) Mill

5 1 March Socialism (LJ) Marx

6 8 March Debating Freedom (HSJ) Comparison of the above

7 15 March Evolution (LJ) Darwin

8 22 March Power and Morality (HSJ) Nietzsche

9 29 March Modernity, Violence, Decadence (LJ) Sorel

10 5 April The „Logic‟ of the Mind (HSJ) Freud

EASTER VACATION (3 weeks)

11 3 May Rise and Fall of Rational Man (HSJ) Revision

Bibliography

There are huge literatures on most of the thinkers studied on this course, quite apart from

their intellectual contexts. The bibliography that follows is selective, but nevertheless includes

far more material than any student might attempt to consult. Your tutor will give you specific

guidance on which items are most useful for the particular seminar topics and essay questions

you cover. You will also get credit, in your assessed work, for locating appropriate material

which does not appear in this bibliography.

A note on libraries and other resources:

Library resources are more than adequate to meet the needs of this course unit, provided you

make the most of all the resources available to you. In addition to the main section of the

library, you need to be familiar with the following:

The „High Demand‟ section of the library. This includes a substantial number of

frequently used course texts.

The Blackboard site. This will provide (a) course documentation; (b) lecture summaries

and associated materials; (c) seminar documentation; (d) links to online texts; (e) links

to digitized copies of a substantial number of book chapters and articles. Digitized texts

available via BB are marked [BB] on this list.

In addition, most of the important journals are available electronically via the library‟s

website. Access these via the web-based catalogue, or at:

http://www.library.manchester.ac.uk/eresources/electronicjournals/.

Articles and books available electronically are marked [E] on this bibliography. Most of

these can be accessed off-campus by means of the SHIBBOLETH authentication system,

using your standard University username and password.

4

Key Texts

The following are the texts prescribed for close study. These form the basis of seminar work.

You will be expected to show first-hand knowledge of them in your assessed work.

Most of these texts are available in many different editions, and all are available in English on

the web (in most cases on several different sites). See the Blackboard site for links. In most

cases cheap editions are readily available for purchase. Note that the texts by Rousseau, Mill,

Marx and Engels, and Nietzsche (extract), as well as a different extract from Burke, are

reprinted in David Wootton (ed), Modern Political Thought, of which multiple copies are

available in the library.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract [1762]

Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France [1790]

John Stuart Mill, On Liberty [1859]

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto [1848]

Charles Darwin, Origin of Species [1859]

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil [1886]

Georges Sorel, Reflections on Violence [1908]

Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents [1930]

The core primary sources for each seminar will be available in the course pack, and on

Blackboard. These extracts of c. 30 pages represent the starting point of your

readings and are selected for fruitful seminar discussions. You are expected to read

more widely and in far more depth for each of these authors, especially for assessed

work.

General Reading

There is no single textbook for this course, but the following are useful. Stromberg is quite

comprehensive in its coverage, though not deep. Bayly and Blanning provide historical context.

Haddock (both books) is very good on themes in political thought; Hampsher-Monk provides

helpful introductions to texts and thinkers in political thought (essentially the first half of the

course). Sica and Stromberg reprint relevant texts. Solomon is good for philosophy. On the

second half of the course, Hughes is a classic, Burrow is excellent and up-to-date, but by no

means introductory; Biddiss is more introductory but less original.

BAYLY, C.A. The Birth of the Modern World 1780-1914 (Oxford, 2004), chs 8-9. Good on the

global transmission and implications of European ideas.

BIDDISS, Michael D. The Age of the Masses: Ideas and Society in Europe since 1870

(Harmondsworth, 1977).

5

BLANNING, T.C.W. The Nineteenth Century. Europe 1789-1914 (Oxford, 2000), ch 4. An

excellent short introduction; the book as a whole is useful if you have no background in the

history of the period. [BB]

BURROW, J.W. The Crisis of Reason: European Thought, 1848-1914 (London, 2000). Excellent

analytical overview of (broadly) the second half of the course.

HADDOCK, Bruce. A History of Political Thought (Cambridge, 2008), esp. ch. 9 [BB]

HADDOCK, Bruce. A History of Political Thought 1789 to the Present (Cambridge, 2005), esp.

ch. 6 [BB].

HAMPSHER-MONK, Iain, A History of Modern Political Thought: Major Political Thinkers from

Hobbes to Marx (Oxford, 1992). Useful introductions to Rousseau, Burke, Mill, Marx.

HUGHES, H. Stuart, Consciousness and Society: The Reorientation of European Social Thought

1890-1930 (London, 1959). Something of a classic: relevant for the last part of the course.

SICA, Alan (ed). Social Thought from the Enlightenment to the Present (Boston, 2005). Short

extracts from a wide range of relevant thinkers.

SOLOMON, Robert C. Continental Philosophy since 1750: the rise and fall of the self (Oxford,

1988).

STROMBERG, Roland N. European Intellectual History since 1789 (London, 1994).

WOOTTON, David (ed). Modern Political Thought: Readings from Machiavelli to Nietzsche.

(Indianapolis, 1996). Reprints many of the texts we use. Numerous copies in JRULM.

Reference

KORS, Alan Charles (ed). Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment (Oxford, 2003). 4 vols. Available

as hard copy in JRULM (reference only); also electronically via JRULM website (follow E books

and then Oxford Reference Online).

MILLER, David (ed). Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Political Thought (Oxford, 1987). Available as

hard copy and electronically. Useful entries on thinkers, concepts, and movements.

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Available online via JRULM, or at

http://www.oxforddnb.com. Excellent for British thinkers and others (e.g. Marx and Freud)

who had British connections.

Reading by Topic

For each week, this list indicates:

The prescribed text (plus related primary material)

Secondary reading providing introductory accounts or background.

Secondary readng for seminar work (usually one item per week)

A longer list of secondary reading appropriate for assessed work.

6

For seminars, aim to read:

The prescribed text (usually 30 pages or so - essential)

One background or introductory text

One piece of designated seminar reading (by default, the piece listed here, but

sometimes your seminar tutor will suggest an alternative.

The prescribed text will be in your course pack; the other items will be available electronically,

or sometimes in books with many copies in the library

1. Introduction & Briefing

This session will be devoted (a) to explaining how the course works, and (b) to introducing its

main themes. To most students, intellectual history (or the „history of ideas‟) will be a new

field of study. This lecture will explore some questions about the nature of intellectual history

as a sub-discipline, and will use examples from texts we shall study later to identify some of

the distinctive ways in which intellectual historians study ideas from the past. What

distinguishes the way in which a historian reads Rousseau or Mill or Nietzsche from the way a

political theorist or philosopher does? There is no definite body of reading to accompany this

lecture, but any of the following might stimulate thought.

CHARTIER, Roger. „Intellectual history or sociocultural history‟, in Dominick LaCapra and

Steven L. Kaplan, eds. Modern European Intellectual History: Reappraisals and New

Perspectives (London, 1982), 13-43. [E]

COLLINI, Stefan, and others. „What is intellectual history?‟, History Today 35.10 (October

1985), 46-54. [E]

DARNTON, Robert. „Intellectual history or cultural history‟, in Michael Kammen, The Past Before

Us: Contemporary Historical Writing in the United States (London, 1980), 327-349. [E]

DUNN, John. „The identity of the history of ideas‟, Philosophy, 43 (1968), 85-104. [E]

HARLAN, David. „Intellectual history and the return of literature‟, American Historical Review 94

(1989), 581-609. [E]

TOEWS, John E. „Intellectual history after the linguistic turn‟, American Historical Review 92

(1987), 879-90. [E]

WHATMORE, Richard, and YOUNG, Brian, (eds). Palgrave Advances in Intellectual History

(Basingstoke, 2006).

2. Rousseau: Liberty and the Modern State

The Enlightenment was characterized by a spirit of criticism directed towards received ideas

and established institutions, and a belief in the possibility of improvement in the human

condition through a process of rational enquiry. Jean-Jacques Rousseau‟s Social Contract was

one of the most radical political texts that emerged from the Enlightenment; it was also a key

7

source of inspiration for the French Revolutionaries. In this week‟s work we try to explore

intellectual significance of this complex but fascinating text.

A. Primary Reading

Prescribed Text:

ROUSSEAU, J-J. The Social Contract. This text is available in numerous English editions. It is

also available online on several sites, and is reprinted in full in Wootton (ed), Modern Political

Thought.

Extract for seminar reading:

Book 1, introduction and Chapters 1, 6, 7, 8. Book 2, Chapters 1-4. Book 3, Chapters 12-15. Book 4, Chapters 1-3, 8.

Anthologies of Enlightenment Texts

GAY, Peter (ed). The Enlightenment: A Comprehensive Anthology (New York, 1973).

LIVELY, Jack (ed). The Enlightenment (London, 1966).

SICA, Alan (ed). Social Thought from the Enlightenment to the Present (Boston, 2005), Part 1.

WILLIAMS, David (ed). The Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1999).

B. Secondary Reading

1. Surveys, Contexts

HAMPSHER-MONK, Iain. A History of Modern Political Thought (Oxford, 1992), ch. 4. [BB]

JONES, Colin. The Great Nation: France from Louis XV to Napoleon (London, 2003), ch 5. [BB]

KEENS-SOPER, H. M. A. „Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Social Contract‟, in M. Forsyth and

H.M.A. Keens-Soper (eds), The Political Classics: A Guide to the Essential Texts from Plato to

Rousseau (Oxford, 1992). Numerous copies in JRULM.

2. Seminar Reading

MASON, John Hope. „Forced to be free‟, in Robert Wokler (ed). Rousseau and Liberty (Manchester, 1995), pp. 121-138 [BB]

8

3. Assessed Work

i. Enlightenment Thought

BLANNING, T.C.W. The Culture of Power and the Power of Culture. Old Regime Europe 1660-

1789 (Oxford, 2002).

FITZPATRICK, Martin, JONES, Peter, KNELLWOLF, Christa, and McCALMAN, Iain (eds). The

Enlightenment World (London, 2004).

GOLDIE, Mark, and WOKLER, Robert. The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Political

Thought (Cambridge, 2006). Especially Ch 12 (Patrick Riley, „Social contract theory and its

critics‟); Ch 22 (Keith Michael Baker, „Political languages of the French Revolution‟) is relevant

for how Rousseau‟s ideas were used. [E]

HAMPSON, Norman. The Enlightenment (London, 1990).

KERSTING, Wolfgang. „Politics‟, in Knud Haakonssen (ed), The Cambridge History of

Eighteenth-Century Philosophy, vol 2, 1026-1068. [E]

ii. Rousseau

BERTRAM, Christopher. Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Rousseau and The Social Contract

(London, 2004).

CRANSTON, Maurice. The Noble Savage: Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1754-1762 (Chicago, 1991),

ch. 11. [BB]

DENT, N.J.H. Rousseau (London, 2005), especially ch. 5. [BB]

GILDIN, Hilail. Rousseau's Social Contract: The Design of the Argument (London, 1983).

JONES, W.T. 'Rousseau's general will and the problem of consent', Journal of the History of

Philosophy 25 (1987), 105-130. [E]

KEOHANE, Nannerl O. '"The masterpiece of policy in our century": Rousseau on the morality of

the Enlightenment', Political Theory 6 (1978), 457-84. [E]

MACADAM, J.I. „The “Discourse on Inequality” and “The Social Contract”, in J. Lively & A. Reeve

(eds), Modern Political Theory from Hobbes to Marx: Key Debates (London, 1988), pp. 113-28.

[BB]

NEUHOUSER, Frederick. 'Freedom, dependence and the general will', Philosophical Review 102

(1993), pp. 363-395. [E]

O‟HAGAN, Timothy. Rousseau (London, 1999), especially chs 4-6.

RILEY, Patrick (ed). The Cambridge Companion to Rousseau (Cambridge, 2001), especially

chapters by Brooke and Riley. [E]

RILEY, Patrick. 'A possible explanation of Rousseau's general will', American Political Science

Review 64 (1970), pp. 86-97. [E]

9

RILEY, Patrick. 'The general will before Rousseau', Political Theory 6 (1978), 485-516. [E]

SHKLAR, Judith. Men and Citizens: A Study of Rousseau’s Social Theory (Cambridge, 1969).

WOKLER, Robert (ed). Rousseau and Liberty (Manchester, 1995), esp ch 6, pp. 121-138 (J.

Hope Mason on „forced to be free‟) [BB].

WOKLER, Robert. 'Jean-Jacques Rousseau: moral decadence and the pursuit of liberty', in B

Redhead (ed), Plato to NATO: Studies in Political Thought (London, 1990).

WOKLER, Robert. Rousseau (Oxford, 1995).

WOOD, E. Meiskins. 'The state and popular sovereignty in French Political Thought: a

genealogy of Rousseau's general will' History of Political Thought 4 (1983), pp. 281-316. [BB]

3. Conservatism and the Imperfectibility of Man

Historians have often debated whether or not the Enlightenment „caused‟ the French

Revolution. The Revolution‟s critics certainly thought it did. It was in response to the French

Revolution that conservatism was formulated as an ideological stance for the first time. At its

most extreme, that stance rejected „modernity‟ in all its dimensions – political, economic, and

intellectual. This lecture will examine the conservative critique of modernity and will ask

whether conservatism had a stable body of principles of its own, or whether it was simply a

denial of other philosophies.

A. Primary Reading

Prescribed Text:

BURKE, Edmund. Reflections on the Revolution in France.

Seminar extract: pp. 252-275 of the Penguin edition, edited by Conor Cruise O‟Brien

(Harmondsworth, 1968).

B. Secondary Reading

1. Surveys, Contexts

HAMPSHER-MONK, Iain. A History of Modern Political Thought (Oxford, 1992), ch 6.

LANGFORD, Paul. „Burke, Edmund (1729/30-1797)‟, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

(Oxford, 2004). [E]

NEILL, Edmund. 'Political Ideologies: Liberalism, Conservatism, and Socialism', in Stefan

Berger (ed), A Companion to Nineteenth-Century Europe (Oxford, 2006), ch 16. [E]

10

2. Seminar Reading

POCOCK, J.G.A. „The political economy of Burke‟s analysis of the French Revolution‟, Historical

Journal 25 (1982), pp. 331-49. [E]

3. Assessed Work

i. Contexts: Conservatism, the French Revolution

CLAEYS, Gregory, The French Revolution Debate in Britain: The Origins of Modern Politics

(Basingstoke, 2007).

EASTWOOD, David. „Robert Southey and the Intellectual Origins of Romantic Conservatism‟,

English Historical Review 104 (1989), pp. 308-331. [E]

EATWELL, Roger, and O‟SULLIVAN, Noel. The Nature of the Right: European and American

Politics and Political Thought (London, 1989).

ECCLESHALL, Robert. English Conservatism since the Restoration: An Introduction and

Anthology (London, 1990).

FEMIA, Joseph V. Against the Masses (Oxford, 2001), esp ch 2. [E]

GARRARD, Graeme. „Joseph de Maistre‟s civilization and its discontents‟, Journal of the History

of Ideas 57 (1996), pp. 429-426. [E]

HIRSCHMAN, Albert O. The Rhetoric of Reaction (London, 1991).

HUNTINGDON, Samuel. „Conservatism as an ideology‟, American Political Science Review 51

(1957), 454-473. [E]

MANNHEIM, Karl. „Conservative thought‟, in Kurt H Wolff (ed), From Karl Mannheim (London,

1993), pp. 260-350. [BB]

MULLER, Jerry Z. (ed). Conservatism: an anthology of social and political thought from David

Hume to the present (Princeton, 1997).

O‟SULLIVAN, Noel. Conservatism (London, 1976).

PHILP, Mark. „Vulgar Conservatism: 1792-3‟, English Historical Review 110 (1995), pp. 42-69.

[E]

SCHOFIELD, T.P. „Conservative political thought in Britain in response to the French

Revolution‟, Historical Journal 29 (1986), pp. 601-22. [E]

SCHWARZMANTEL, John. The Age of Ideology (Basingstoke, 1998), ch. 5.

ii. Burke

ARMITAGE, David. „Edmund Burke and reason of state‟, Journal of the History of Ideas 61

(2000), 617-34. [E]

11

BOURKE, Richard. „Edmund Burke and Enlightenment sociability: justice, honour, and the

principles of government‟, History of Political Thought 21 (2000), 632-656. [E]

FREEMAN, M. Edmund Burke and the Critique of Political Radicalism (Oxford, 1980).

HAMPSHER-MONK, Iain. The Political Philosophy of Edmund Burke (London, 1987).

MACPHERSON, C.B. Burke (Oxford, 1980).

MITCHELL, H. „Edmund Burke‟s language of politics and his audience‟, Studies on Voltaire and

the Eighteenth Century 287 (1991), pp. 335-60.

MULLER, Jerry Z. The Mind and the Market: Capitalism in Modern European Thought (New

York, 2003), ch 5. [BB]

POCOCK, J.G.A. „Burke and the ancient constitution: a problem in the history of ideas‟,

Historical Journal 3 (1960), 125-43. [E]

WHALE, John C. Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France: New Interdisciplinary

Essays (Manchester, 2000).

WHITE, Stephen K. Edmund Burke: Modernity, Politics and Aesthetics (London, 1994).

4 . Freedom, the Individual and the State: Liberalism

Liberalism was one of the important ideologies of the nineteenth century – indeed, it is

sometimes thought of as the dominant political and intellectual movement of the century. At

its heart lay a belief in freedom, especially the freedom of individuals: this was valued in itself,

and because liberals held that progress depended on the emancipation of individuals from the

control of state and church. In this lecture, we shall look at the variety of philosophical

approaches that informed liberalism, and why in practice it had such a powerful appeal,

especially to middle-class opinion.

A. Primary Reading

Prescribed Text:

MILL, J.S. On Liberty (many editions; or see Wootton, Modern Political Thought. Seminar

extract: Chs 1 & 4.

A particularly useful edition, which reprints contemporary responses to Mill, is edited by

Edward Alexander for the Broadview Press (Hadleigh, 1999).

Other Works by Mill:

There is an excellent website at http://www.jsmill.com/ which publishes online versions of

many of Mill‟s writings. Mill‟s Collected Works are also available online in the Online Library of

Liberty, at http://oll.libertyfund.org/. This is the authoritative edition.

12

B. Secondary Reading

1. Surveys, Contexts

HARRIS, Jose, „Mill, John Stuart (1806-1873)‟. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography [this

important reference work is available online through the library, under „electronic books‟ or

„databases‟].

NEILL, Edmund. 'Political Ideologies: Liberalism, Conservatism, and Socialism', in Stefan

Berger (ed), A Companion to Nineteenth-Century Europe (Oxford, 2006), ch 16. [E]

2. Seminar Reading

SMITH, G.W. „J.S. Mill on freedom‟, in Z Pelczynski and J N Gray (eds), Conceptions of Liberty

in Political Philosophy (London, 1984), 182-216. [BB]

3. Assessed Work

i. Liberalism

ARBLASTER, A. The Rise and Decline of Western Liberalism (Oxford, 1984).

BELLAMY, Richard. Liberalism and Modern Society (Cambridge, 1992).

BIAGINI, E.F. „Neo-roman liberalism: “republican” values and British liberalism, ca. 1860-

1875‟, History of European Ideas 29 (2003), 55-72 [E].

BRAMSTED, E.K. & MELHUISH, K.J. (eds). Western Liberalism: a history in documents from

Locke to Croce (London, 1978).

CRAIUTU, Aurelian. „Between Scyllan and Charybdis: the “strange” liberalism of the French

doctrinaires‟, History of European Ideas 24 (1998), 243-56. [E]

CRAIUTU, Aurelian. Liberalism under Siege: The Political Thought of the French Doctrinaires

(Lanham, Md., 2003). [Note that the JRULM catalogue misrenders the title as Liberalism under

Seige).

DE DIJN, Annelien. „Aristocratic liberalism in post-revolutionary France‟, Historical Journal 48

(2005), 661-681. [E]

DUNN, John. Western Political Theory in the Face of the Future (Cambridge, 1979), ch 2. [BB]

ECCLESHALL, Robert (ed). British Liberalism: Liberal Thought from the 1640s to the 1980s

(London, 1986).

GOLDSTEIN, Jan, and BOYER, John (eds). Nineteenth-Century Europe: Liberalism and its

Critics (London, 1988), e.g. extract from Macaulay on parliamentary reform, pp. 41-54.

HAZAREESINGH, Sudhir. From Subject to Citizen: The Second Empire and the Emergence of

Modern French Democracy (Princeton, 1998), ch. 3.

JONES, H.S. Victorian Political Thought (Basingstoke, 2000).

13

KAHAN, Alan S. Liberalism in Nineteenth-Century Europe: The Political Culture of Limited

Suffrage (Basingstoke, 2003). Comparative study of Britain, France and Germany.

LANGEWIESCHE, Dieter. Liberalism in Germany (Basingstoke, 2000).

SCHECHTER, Darrow. „Liberalism and the limits of knowledge and freedom: on the

epistemological and social bases of negative liberty‟, History of European Ideas 33 (2007),

195-211. [E]

SIEDENTOP, Larry. „Two liberal traditions‟, in Alan Ryan (ed), The Idea of Freedom (Oxford,

1979) [BB]

WILSON Ben. What Price Liberty? How Freedom was Won and is being Lost (London, 2009), ch

7. [BB]

ii. Mill

BIAGINI, Eugenio F. „Liberalism and direct democracy: John Stuart Mill and the model of

ancient Athens‟, in Biagini (ed), Citizenship and Community: Liberals, Radicals and Collective

Identities in the British Isles, 1865-1931 (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 21-44. [BB]

CAPALDI, Nicholas. John Stuart Mill: A Biography (Cambridge, 2004). A stimulating account

which emphasizes Mill‟s debt to romanticism. Chapter 9 is the most important for this course.

COLLINI, Stefan. „From dangerous partisan to national possession. John Stuart Mill in English

culture 1873-1933‟, ch 8 of Stefan Collini, Public Moralists: Political Thought and Intellectual

Life in Britain 1850-1930 (Oxford, 1991), pp. 311-341.

COLLINI, Stefan. „The idea of “character” in Victorian political thought‟, Transactions of the

Royal Historical Society 5th series 35 (1985), 29-50. [E]

COWLING, Maurice. Mill and Liberalism (Cambridge, 1963). A famous critique.

GRAY, J., & SMITH, G.W. (eds). J S Mill ‘On Liberty’ in Focus (London, 1991).

HAMBURGER, Joseph. „Individuality and moral reform: the rhetoric of liberty and the reality of

restraint in Mill‟s On Liberty‟, Political Science Reviewer 24 (1995), 7-70. Offers a revisionist

perspective. [E]

JONES, H.S. „John Stuart Mill as moralist‟, Journal of the History of Ideas 53 (1992), pp. 287-

308. [E]

MEGILL, Allan D. „J S Mill‟s religion of humanity and the second justification for the writing of

On Liberty‟, Journal of Politics 34 (1972), pp. 612-629. [E]

PARRY, J.P. „Liberalism and liberty‟, in Peter Mandler (ed), Liberty & Authority in Victorian

Britain (Oxford, 2006), pp. 71-100.

REEVES, Richard. John Stuart Mill: Victorian Firebrand (London, 2008). The best biography.

RYAN, Alan. J.S. Mill (London, 1974).

SKORUPSKI, John (ed). The Cambridge Companion to Mill, esp chapters by Robson, Nicholson

& Ryan (Cambridge, 1998). [E]

14

SMITH, G.W. „The logic of J.S. Mill on liberty‟, Political Studies 28 (1980), 232-252. [E]

STIMSON, Shannon S., & MILGATE, Murray. „Mill, liberty and the facts of life‟, Political Studies

49 (2001), pp. 231-248. [E]

THOMAS, William. Mill (Oxford, 1985).

ZIVI, Karen. „Cultivating character: John Stuart Mill and the subject of rights‟, American

Journal of Political Science 50 (2006), 49-61. [E]

5. Socialism: Utopian and Scientific

Karl Marx did not invent socialism, which had already begun to generate a rich literature in the

two decades before the Communist Manifesto was written in 1848. If students wish to do

assessed work on this, then they need to be aware of the wide range of Utopian socialists from

Owen to Proudhon who, building on ideals of equality, dreamed of a new society where

concepts such as property, the family, the state would be questioned and undermined by

organic communities.

This lecture, however, will focus on how Marx and Engels built on but also subverted this

socialist heritage. They claimed to have formulated a „science‟ of society which was as powerful

an explanatory tool as was Darwin‟s theory of evolution. Yet they did not want just to

understand why the world came to be as it is; they wanted to show how it could and must be

changed, by revolution. In doing so, they created one of the most impressive and enduring

methods of analysing what society is and how it functions in the last two hundred years.

A. Primary Reading

Prescribed Text

MARX, Karl, and ENGELS, Friedrich. The Communist Manifesto. This is available in many

editions and on several websites, but the translations vary. The manifesto itself is very short,

and written in lively prose. The whole text is set for seminar reading.

It is recommended that students use one of the following:

1. 2002 Penguin edition, with an introduction by Gareth Stedman Jones. The introduction

runs to 184 pages and present a fundamental scholarly reinterpretation of the origins of

the Manifesto. This edition reprints the 1888 English translation of the Manifesto by

Samuel Moore, which is the most familiar English text.

2. The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels with Related Documents,

edited by John Toews. The introduction engages very well with the concerns of this

course, and the related documents are an enormous help.

B. Secondary Reading

1. Surveys, Contexts

HAMPSHER-MONK, Iain. A History of Modern Political Thought (Oxford, 1992), ch 10.

15

KELLNER, Douglas. „Marx‟, in Robert C. Solomon and David Sherman (eds), The Blackwell

Guide to Continental Philosophy (Oxford, 2003), ch. 4. [E]

NEILL, Edmund. 'Political Ideologies: Liberalism, Conservatism, and Socialism', in Stefan

Berger (ed), A Companion to Nineteenth-Century Europe (Oxford, 2006), ch 16. [E]

2. Seminar Reading

CARVER, Terrell. The Cambridge Companion to Marx (Cambridge, 1992), ch 5: Terence Ball,

„History: critique and irony‟, pp. 124-142. [E]

3. Assessed Work

i. Marx and Engels

AHMED, Aijaz. „The Communist Manifesto in “World Literature”‟, Social Scientist 2 (2000), pp.

3-30. [E]

AVINERI, Shlomo. The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx (Cambridge, 1968).

BALL, Terence. „Marx and Darwin: a reconsideration‟, in his Reappraising Political Theory

(1994). [E]

BOOTH, W.J. Booth. „Gone fishing: making sense of Marx‟s concept of communism‟, Political

Theory 17 (1989), pp. 205-22. [E]

BOYER, George R. „The historical background of the Communist Manifesto‟, Journal of Economic

Perspectives 12 (1998), pp. 151-174. [E]

CARVER, Terrell. Marx’s Social Theory (Oxford, 1982).

CARVER, Terrell. The Cambridge Companion to Marx (Cambridge, 1992). [E]

CLAEYS, Gregory. „The political ideas of the young Engels, 1842-1845: Owenism, Chartism,

and the question of violence in the transition from “utopian” to “scientific” socialism‟, History of

Political Thought, 6 (1985), 455-478.

COWLING, M. (ed.). The Communist Manifesto: New Interpretations (Edinburgh, 1998). See

essays by Levin, Carver, Thatcher, Wilks-Heeg, and Hoffman. Multiple copies in JRULM.

KAIN, Philip J. Schiller, Hegel, and Marx: State, Society, and the Aesthetic Ideal of Ancient

Greece (Kingston, 1982).

LEOPOLD, David. „The structure of Marx and Engels‟ considered account of utopian socialism‟,

History of Political Thought 26 (2005), 443-466. [E]

McLELLAN, David. The Thought of Karl Marx, 2nd edn (London, 1980).

MULLER, Jerry Z. The Mind and the Market: Capitalism in Modern European Thought (New

York, 2003), ch 7. JRULM has 6 copies.

16

PAUL, Diane. „“In the interests of civilization”: Marxist views of race in the nineteenth century‟,

Journal of the History of Ideas 42 (1981), pp. 115-138. Shows how Marx and Marxists

absorbed Darwin‟s ideas. [E]

SINGER, Peter. Marx: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2000).

WHEEN, Francis. Karl Marx (London, 1999). A readable and stimulating biography.

ii. Early/Mid-19th-Century Socialism

CLAEYS, Gregory, „Paternalism and democracy in the politics of Robert Owen‟, International

Review of Social History 27 (1982), 161-207 [E]

CLAEYS, Gregory, Machinery, Money and the Millennium: From Moral Economy to Socialism,

1815-60 (Cambridge, 1987) – on the Owenites

GOLDSTEIN, Leslie F. „Early feminist themes in French utopian socialism: the St.-Simonians

and Fourier‟, Journal of the History of Ideas 43 (1982), 91-108. [E]

IONESCU, Ghita (ed). The Political Thought of Saint-Simon (London, 1976). Extracts from

primary texts.

KAMENKA, Eugene, „Socialism and Utopia‟, in E Kamenka (ed), Utopias (Oxford, 1987).

KOLAKOWSKI, L. Main Currents of Marxism, Volume I: The Founders (Oxford, 1981).

LICHTHEIM, G. Marxism: An Historical and Critical study, 2nd edn (London, 1964). 6 copies in

JRULM.

LOVELL, David W. „The French Revolution and the origins of socialism: the case of early French

socialism‟, French History 6 (1992), 185-205. [E]

MOSES, Claire G. „Saint-Simonian Men/Saint-Simonian Women: The Transformation of

Feminist Thought in 1830s France‟, Journal of Modern History 54 (1982), 240-267 [E]

OWEN, Robert, New View of Society – various editions, or see short extracts at

http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/newview.html

PILBEAM, Pamela, French Socialists before Marx (Teddington, 2000).

SCHWARZMANTEL, Joel, The Age of Ideology (Basingstoke, 1998), ch 4.

SICA, Alan, Social Thought from the Enlightenment to the Present, extracts from Saint-Simon

and Fourier (Boston, 2005).

TAYLOR, Keith, The Political Ideas of the Utopian Socialists (1982).

6. Debating Freedom

This lecture will aim to consolidate understanding of the first section of the course by

comparing conceptions of freedom developed by the various thinkers we have encountered,

and by exploring the relationship of the idea of freedom with the ideas of progress and

17

rationality. Your reading here should draw on the lists for the last four topics, following

particular guidance given by your tutor, as well as on the items below.

A. Primary Reading

No new reading is specified: consolidate your knowledge of the four texts studied hitherto.

B. Secondary Reading

1. Surveys, Contexts

HADDOCK, B.A. A History of Political Thought: 1789 to the Present (Cambridge, 2005), ch. 6,

pp. 78-93 [BB].

SWIFT, Adam, Political Philosophy: A Beginners’ Guide for Students and Politicians (Cambridge,

2006), Part 2, pp. 51-90.

2. Key Seminar Reading

BERLIN, Isaiah, „Two concepts of liberty‟, in his Four Essays on Liberty (London, 1969). Also

available as e-book in an expanded edition entitled Liberty. This essay expounds the classic

distinction between „positive‟ and „negative‟ concepts of liberty. [E]

3. Assessed Work

Draw mainly on the reading prescribed for Rousseau, Burke, Mill and Marx, plus:

CARTER, Ian, KRAMER, Matthew, and STEINER, Hillel (eds), Freedom: A Philosophical

Anthology (Oxford, 2007). A very useful collection of extracts from historical texts and modern

works of political philosophy. Concentrate on Part I („Negative and Positive Freedom‟),

especially chs 1-10; 21-22 (Pettit and Skinner), and 61 (Marx and Engels).

CONNOLLY, William, The Terms of Political Discourse, 3rd edn (Oxford, 1993), ch. 4 (pp. 139-

178), or brief extract as ch 36 of Carter, Kramer and Steiner (eds), Freedom, above.

HAMPSHER-MONK, Iain, A History of Modern Political Thought (Oxford, 1992), chs on

Rousseau, Burke, Mill and Marx.

PETTIT, Philip, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government (Oxford, 1997),

especially ch. 1, pp. 17-50. [E]

REDHEAD, Brian (ed). Plato to Nato: Studies in Political Thought (London, 1990), chs on

Rousseau, Smith, Mill and Marx.

ROSEN, Michael, and WOLFF, Jonathan (eds), Political Thought (Oxford, 1999), especially

extracts 49-51 (from Constant, Berlin, and Taylor), pp. 122-30.

WILSON Ben. What Price Liberty? How Freedom was Won and is being Lost (London, 2009),

chs 5-8.

18

7 . Evolution and the Meaning of Life

Evolution was not Darwin‟s idea. Plenty of people believed, by the early nineteenth century,

that the world was not exactly as God had created it; they were surrounded by evidence that it

had changed, that it had evolved. And yet they struggled to place mankind in this process of

change and evolution. This lecture will examine commonplace beliefs about nature and life in

the early nineteenth century, as understanding this is crucial to understanding just how

devastating Darwin‟s ideas would be both to the concept of „mankind‟ on the one hand, and

good and evil on the other.

A. Primary Reading

Prescribed Text:

DARWIN, Charles, On the Origin of Species. Seminar reading: Chapter 14.

In the edition of Darwin, On the Origin of Species edited by Joseph Carroll (Peterborough,

Canada, 2003), you should also read Appendix G (extracts from Paley, Lamarck, Spencer,

Malthus, Lyell, Wallace, Huxley). Multiple copies in Short Loan.

Other editions will contain chapter 14, but not the contextual work.

Other Invaluable Primary Material:

DARWIN, Charles, Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, in Carroll: Appendix F.

APPLEMAN, Philip (ed.), Darwin (London, 2001). Part III: Scientific Thought Just Before

Darwin; Part IV: Selections from Darwin‟s Work; Part V: Darwin‟s Influence on Science, pp.

255-288; Part VI: Darwinian Patterns in Social Thought; Part VII: Darwinian Influences in

Philosophy and Ethics; Part VIII: Evolutionary Theory and Religious Theory (this last section is

mostly concerned with the debate about creationism in the USA). Multiple copies in Short Loan.

B. Secondary Reading

1. Introductory and Background

DESMOND, Adrian, BROWNE, Jane, & MOORE, James, „Darwin, Charles Robert (1809-1882)‟,

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. [E]

2. Key Seminar Reading

HODGE, Jonathan, and RADICK, Gregory (ed), The Cambridge Companion to Darwin, 2nd edn

(Cambridge, 2009), ch 8: John Hedley Brooke, „Darwin and Victorian Christianity‟, pp. 197-

218. [E]

19

3. Assessed Work

i. On the Intellectual Context of Darwin‟s Ideas:

BOWLER, Peter J. „Malthus, Darwin and the concept of struggle‟, Journal of the History of Ideas

37 (1976), pp. 631-650. [E]

BOWLER, Peter J. Evolution: The History of an Idea (Berkeley, 2003), or earlier editions.

BURROW, J.W. Evolution and Society: A Study in Victorian Social Theory (Cambridge, 1966).

Important for the idea of social evolution before Darwin.

CORSI, Pietro, „Before Darwin: transformist concepts in European natural history‟, Journal of

the History of Biology 38 (2005), pp. 67-83. [E]

ELLIOTT, Paul, „Erasmus Darwin, Herbert Spencer and the origins of the evolutionary worldview

in British provincial scientific culture‟ 1770-1850‟, Isis 94 (2003), pp. 1-29. [E]

HAINES, Valerie, „Is Spencer‟s theory an evolutionary theory?‟, American Journal of Sociology

93 (1988), pp. 1200-1223. [E]

HERBERT, Sandra, „The Darwinian Revolution revisited‟, Journal of the History of Biology 38

(2005), pp. 51-66. [E]

HODGE, Jonathan, and RADICK, Gregory (ed), The Cambridge Companion to Darwin, 2nd edn

(Cambridge, 2009) [E], especially Chs 1, 5, 6-10.

HULL, David, „Deconstructing Darwin: evolutionary theory in context‟, Journal of the History of

Biology 38 (2005), pp. 137-152. [E]

NUOVO, Victor, „Rethinking Paley‟, Synthese 91 (1992), pp. 29-51. [E]

OLDROYD, David R. Darwinian Impacts: An Introduction to the Darwinian Revolution (Milton

Keynes, 1980).

PEEL, J.D.Y. Herbert Spencer: The Evolution of a Sociologist (London, 1981).

SMITH, Roger, The Fontana History of the Human Sciences (London, 1997), ch 13. [BB]

YOUNG, R.M. Darwin’s Metaphor: Nature’s Place in Victorian Culture (Cambridge, 1985).

ii. On the Use of Darwin‟s Ideas:

ADAMS, Mark B. The Wellborn Science: Eugenics in Germany, France, Brazil and Russia

(Oxford, 1990).

BLACKLEDGE, Paul, and KIRKPATRICK, Graeme, Historical Materialism and Social Evolution

(Basingstoke, 2002). Collection of essays on Marxists‟ interpretations of Darwin – Blackledge‟s

own essay on German socialists is perhaps most useful.

BRANTLINGER, Patrick, Dark Vanishings: Discourses on the Extinction of ‘Primitive’ Races

1800-1930 (London, 2003).

CLAEYS, Gregory, „“Survival of the fittest” and the origins of Social Darwinism‟, Journal of the

History of Ideas 61 (2000), pp. 223-240. [E]

20

CLARK, Linda L. Social Darwinism in France (University, Ala., 1984).

CLARK, Linda, „Social Darwinism in France‟, Journal of Modern History 53 (1981), pp. D1025-

D1044. [E]

CROOK, Paul, Darwinism, War and History (Cambridge, 1994).

JONES, Greta, Social Darwinism and English Thought (Brighton, 1980).

KAYE, Howard, The Social Meaning of Modern Biology: From Social Darwinism to Social Biology

(New Haven, 1986), especially ch. 1.

MAYER, Arno, The Persistence of the Old Regime (New York, 1981), ch 5. [BB]

NUMBERS, Ronald, and STONEHOUSE, John (eds.), Disseminating Darwinism: The Role of

Place, Race, Religion and Gender (Cambridge, 1999), esp. essays 1, 7, 9 and 10.

PICK, Daniel, Faces of Degeneration: A European Disorder, c.1848-c.1918 (Cambridge, 1989).

STACK, D.A.. „The first Darwinian left: radical and socialist responses to Darwin, 1859-1914‟,

History of Political Thought 21 (2000), pp. 682-710. [E]

WEIKART, Richard, „Darwinism and death: devaluing human life in Germany, 1859-1920‟,

Journal of the History of Ideas 63 (2002), pp. 323-344. [E]

WEIKART, Richard, „The origins of Social Darwinism in Germany, 1859-1895‟, Journal of the

History of Ideas 54 (1993), 469-88. [E]

WINCH, Donald, „Darwin fallen among political economists‟, Proceedings of the American

Philosophical Society 145 (2001), pp. 415-437. [E]

iii. Biographies of Darwin

These are crucial for showing the long „evolution‟ of the idea in the contexts of a long and

eventful life covering most of the 19th century.

BROWNE, Janet, Darwin: Vols. 1 & 2 (London, 1996 & 2002).

DESMOND, Adrian, & MOORE, James, Darwin (London, 1992). The best one-volume

introduction.

21

8 . Power and Morality

Nietzsche achieved little recognition until the last years of his life, when he was insane. Yet in

his dramatic, uncompromising poetry and prose he offered a devastating analysis of modern

man‟s faith in progress, science and rational thought at the end of the nineteenth century. We

need to understand his ideas in their context, because he was far from being a lone voice,

although some have chosen to present him as a „prophet‟. In many ways, he gave system and

method to a certain form of aggressive nihilism, but in other ways, he shared contemporaries‟

faith in the possibilities of renewal and cultural honesty. His diagnoses of the pathologies of the

modern world, and the types of responses that these evoked in his readers, will be the subject

of this lecture.

A. Prescribed Text:

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil.

Extract for seminar reading: Preface; Part 1, „On the prejudices of philosophers‟, paras 1-6;

Part 9, „What is noble?‟.

B. Secondary Reading

1. Surveys, Contexts

ANSELL-PEARSON, Keith (ed). A Companion to Nietzsche (Oxford, 2006), ch. 1 [E].

BALDWIN, Thomas (ed). The Cambridge History of Philosophy 1870-1945 (Cambridge, 2003),

esp ch 19. [E]

SOLOMON, Robert C. „Nietzsche‟, in Robert C. Solomon and David Sherman (eds), The

Blackwell Guide to Continental Philosophy (Oxford, 2003), ch. 5 [E].

SOLOMON, Robert C. Continental Philosophy since 1750: The Rise and Fall of the Self (Oxford,

1988), ch 8. [BB]

2. Seminar Reading

ANSELL-PEARSON, , Keith (ed). A Companion to Nietzsche (Oxford, 2006), ch 21. [E]

3. Assessed Work

i. On Nietzsche‟s Ideas

ANOMALY, Jonny. „Nietzsche‟s critique of utilitarianism‟, Journal of Nietzsche Studies 29

(Spring 2005), pp. 1-15. [E]

ANSELL-PEARSON, , Keith (ed). A Companion to Nietzsche (Oxford, 2006). [E]

ANSELL-PEARSON, Keith (ed). Nietzsche and Modern German Thought (London, 1991), esp.

chs by Ansell-Pearson and Newman.

22

ANSELL-PEARSON, Keith, Nietzsche contra Rousseau (Cambridge, 1991), esp. ch 4.

ANSELL-PEARSON, Keith, „Nietzsche on autonomy and morality: the challenge to political

theory‟, Political Studies 39 (1991), 270-86. [E]

EMDEN, Christian. „The uneasy European: Nietzsche, nationalism and the idea of Europe‟,

Journal of European Studies 38 (2008), 27-51. [E]

EMDEN, Christian. „Toward a critical historicism: history and politics in Nietzsche‟s second

“Untimely Meditation”‟, Modern Intellectual History 3 (2006), pp. 1-31. [E]

FOOT, Philippa, Virtues and Vices, ch 6 [E]

HAYMAN, R. Nietzsche: a critical life (London, 1980).

HOLLINGDALE, R.J. Nietzsche, the Man and his Philosophy (Cambridge, 1999).

JANAWAY, Christopher (ed). The Cambridge Companion to Schopenhauer (Cambridge, 1999).

JANAWAY, Christopher, Schopenhauer (Oxford, 1994).

KAUFMANN, W. Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Anti-Christ (Princeton, 1974).

KIRKLAND, Paul E. „Nietzsche‟s Honest Masks: From Truth to Nobility Beyond Good and Evil‟,

Review of Politics 66 (2004), 575-604.

MAGNUS, Bernd, and HIGGINS, Kathleen (ed). The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche

(Cambridge, 1996), esp chs 1-4 and 9. [E]

MOORE, Gregory. „Nietzsche, Spencer, and the ethics of evolution‟, Journal of Nietzsche Studies

23 (Spring 2002), pp. 1-20. [E]

SAFRANSKI, Rüdiger, Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography (London, 2002).

SCHACHT, Richard, Nietzsche, esp chs 6 & 7. [E]

SHAW, Tamsin. „Nietzsche and the self-destruction of secular religions‟, History of European

Ideas 32 (2006), pp. 80-98. [E]

SIEMENS, H.W. „Nietzsche‟s critique of democracy (1870-1886)‟, Journal of Nietzsche Studies

38 (Autumn 2009), pp. 20-37. [E]

SLEINIS, Edgar. „Nietzsche‟, in Thomas Baldwin (ed), The Cambridge History of Philosophy,

1870-1945 vol 1 (Cambridge, 2003), 266-276. [E]

STERN, J.P. Nietzsche (London, 1978).

STRONG, Tracy B. Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of Transfiguration (Berkeley, 1988).

WARREN, Mark. „Nietzsche and political philosophy‟, Political Theory 13 (1985), pp. 183-212.

[E] – and reply by Alan N. Woolfolk, Political Theory 14 (1986), pp. 51-4. [E]

ii. On Nietzsche‟s influence

ASCHHEIM, Steven E. „Max Nordau, Friedrich Nietzsche and degeneration‟, Journal of

Contemporary History 4 (1993), pp. 643-657. [E]

23

ASCHHEIM, Steven E. „Nietzschean socialism: Left and Right, 1890-1933‟, Journal of

Contemporary History 2 (1988), 147-168. [E]

ASCHHEIM, Steven E. The Nietzsche Legacy in Germany, 1890-1990 (Berkeley, 1992).

FORTH, Christopher. „Nietzsche, decadence and regeneration in France, 1891-95‟, Journal of

the History of Ideas 54 (1993), pp. 97-117 [E]

THATCHER, David S. Nietzsche in England, 1890-1914: The Growth of a Reputation (Toronto,

1970).

THOMAS, R. Hinton. Nietzsche in German Politics and Society, 1890-1918 (Manchester, 1983).

9. Violence as Solution

It is hard for us today to imagine that one might advocate violence per se as a solution to any

particular problem. Although we can imagine using violence to achieve a particular objective,

this is usually considered a sign of failure, rather than success. We operate with a general

assumption that peaceful ways are best. In general, this was true of the late nineteenth and

early twentieth centuries too, but some influential thinkers, policymakers, authors and

publicists did not share this view. For a variety of reasons, ranging from encouraging social

reform to enforcing racial purity to the destruction of feminism, a significant strand of

European thought emerged which discussed violence as a useful form of human activity in and

of itself. Whether as part of anarchist bomb-throwing, or artistic self-expression, or achieving

foreign policy objectives, or re-invigorating masculinity or securing social revolution, this

lecture will approach the problem of violence, with particular reference to a) the idea of anti-

materialism, and b) ideas associated with a French writer, Georges Sorel, and his work,

Reflections on Violence.

A. Primary Reading

Prescribed text

SOREL, Georges. Reflections on Violence. The best edition is the Cambridge University Press

edition, edited by Jeremy Jennings (Cambridge 1999).

Seminar reading: „Introduction: Letter to Daniel Halévy‟.

B. Secondary Reading

1. Surveys, Contexts

BURROW, J.W. The Crisis of Reason (London, 2000), ch 4. [BB]

CALLINICOS, Alex. „Marxism and anarchism‟, in Thomas Baldwin (ed), The Cambridge History

of Philosophy 1870-1945, vol 1 (Cambridge, 2003), 297-308. [E]

2. Key Seminar Reading

24

VINCENT, K. Steven. „Interpreting Georges Sorel: defender of virtue or apostle of violence?‟,

History of European Ideas 12 (1990), pp. 239-257. [E]

3. Assessed Work

BIDDISS, Michael. The Age of the Masses (Harmondsworth, 1977), chs 3-4

HOROVITZ, Irving. Radicalism and the Revolt Against Reason: The Social Theories of Georges

Sorel (London, 1961)

HUGHES, H. Stuart. Consciousness and Society: The Reorientation of European Social Thought,

1890-1930 (London, 1959).

JENNINGS, Jeremy. „Syndicalism and the French Revolution‟, Journal of Contemporary History

26 (1991), pp. 71-96. [E]

JENNINGS, J.R. Georges Sorel: The Character and Development of his Thought (London,

1985).

KOLAKOWSKI, L. Main Currents of Marxism, Volume 2: The Golden Age (Oxford, 1981), pp.

151-174 („Georges Sorel: a Jansenist Marxist‟). [BB]

MAZGAJ, Paul. „The Young Sorelians and decadence‟, Journal of Contemporary History 17

(1982), pp. 179-199. [E]

NYE, Robert. „Two paths to a psychology of social action: Gustave Le Bon and Georges Sorel‟,

Journal of Modern History 45 (1973), pp. 411-438. [E]

OHANA, David. „Georges Sorel and the rise of political myth‟, History of European Ideas 13

(1991), pp. 733-746. [E]

REDDING, Arthur. „The dream life of political violence: Georges Sorel, Emma Goldberg and the

Modern Imagination‟, Modernism/Modernity 2 (1995), pp. 1-16. [E]

ROUANET, S. „Irrationalism and myth in Georges Sorel‟, Review of Politics 26 (1964), pp. 45-

69. [E]

STANLEY, John. The Sociology of Virtue: The Political and Social Theories of Georges Sorel

(London, 1981).

STERNHELL, Zeev. „The “anti-materialist” revision of Marxism as an aspect of the rise of fascist

ideology‟, Journal of Contemporary History 22 (1987), pp. 379-400. [E].

STERNHELL, Zeev. The Birth of Fascist Ideology (Princeton, 1994), esp. ch 1.

WILDE, Larry. „Sorel and the French Right‟, History of Political Thought 7 (1986), 361-374. [E]

10. The ‘Logic’ of the Mind

Freud initiated a professional discourse – that of modern psychiatry – that in many ways sets

him apart from the protagonists of this course. Building on the original „discovery of the

unconscious‟ by precursors such as the French hysteria specialist, Jean-Marie Charcot, Freud

25

developed new theoretical and curative perspectives on the human mind. His theories have not

only served to explain the role and meaning of dreams, but have also contributed considerably

to the shaping of the modern world and to our modern sense of self. In one of his last works,

Civilization and its Discontents, he explores the tensions between individual freedom and the

demands of social order in ways that recall themes central to the work of Rousseau and Mill,

Marx and Nietzsche.

A. Primary Reading

Prescribed text

Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and its Discontents. Seminar reading: sections III, V, VI, VIII.

This is available in various editions, and is also reprinted in Peter Gay (ed), The Freud Reader

(London, 1995), which reproduces other relevant works by Freud.

B. Secondary reading

1. Surveys, Contexts

ROAZEN, Paul. „Freud and his followers‟, in Terence Ball and Richard Bellamy (eds), The

Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century Political Thought (Cambridge, 2003), 392-411 [E].

2. Key Seminar Reading

FISHER, David James. „Reading Freud‟s “Civilisation and Its Discontents”‟, in Dominick LaCapra

and Steven L. Kaplan (eds.), Modern European Intellectual History: Reappraisals and New

Perspectives (London, 1982), pp. 251-279. [E]

3. Assessed Work

ALEXANDER, Sally. „Psychoanalysis in Britain in the early twentieth century: an introductory

note‟, History Workshop Journal 45 (1998), 135-43. [E]

BALDWIN, Thomas (ed). The Cambridge History of Philosophy 1870-1945 (Cambridge, 2003),

ch 8. [E]

GAY, Peter. Freud, Jews, and Other Germans (New York, 1974), ch 1. [BB]

GAY, Peter. Freud: A Life for our Time (London, 2006).

GELFAND, Toby. „Charcot‟s response to Freud‟s rebellion‟, Journal of the History of Ideas 50

(1989), 293-307 [E]

NEU, Jerome (ed). The Cambridge Companion to Freud (Cambridge, 2006) [E]. See especially

Ch 1 (Schorske), Ch 4 (Hopkins), Ch 8 (Church) and Ch 12 (Deigh).

RAPP, Dean. „The early discovery of Freud by the British general educated public, 1912-1919‟,

Social History of Medicine 3 (1990), 217-43 [E]

26

RICHARDS, Graham D. „Britain on the couch: the popularization of psychoanalysis in Britain,

1918-1940‟, Science in Context 13 (2000), 183-230. [BB]

RIEFF, Philip. „The origins of Freud‟s political psychology‟, Journal of the History of Ideas 17

(1956), 235-49 [E]

RIEFF, Philip. Freud, the Mind of the Moralist (London, 1979).

SCHECHTER, Darrow. „Liberalism and the limits of knowledge and freedom: on the

epistemological and social bases of negative liberty‟, History of European Ideas 33 (2007),

195-211. [E]

SCHORSKE, Carl E. Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture (London, 1980), ch 4.

SOLOMON, Robert C. Continental Philosophy since 1750: The Rise and Fall of the Self, (Oxford,

1988), ch 10.

STAFFORD-CLARK, David. What Freud Really Said (Harmondsworth, 1967).

STORR, Anthony. Freud: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2001).

STRONG, Tracy B. „Psychoanalysis as a vocation: Freud, politics and the heroic‟, Political

Theory 12 (1984), 51-79 [E]

WOLLHEIM, Richard. Freud (London, 1991).

11 . Conclusion and Revision

This lecture reflects on how we can make sense of the intellectual changes surveyed in the

course, considering narratives such as „the rise and fall of rational man‟, and how we can

explain long-term intellectual change. We shall then focus on how to prepare most effectively

for the examination.

BEVIR, Mark. „The long nineteenth century in intellectual history‟, Journal of Victorian Culture 6

(2001), pp. 313-335. [E]