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Justus Möser and the German enlightenment
746
Book Reviews
toleration into a matter of expediency rather than a virtue. The second main assumption behind his morally free society appears to be a highly unrealistic picture of emerging social harmony, in which (to paraphrase only slightly) ‘the autonomy of each is the condition for the autonomy for all’. Is personal well-being really as inseparable from the promotion of social values which benefit the whole community as Raz claims? Surely the dilemma for liberalism is precisely the recognition that it is not. For this reason the defence of individual liberty must be a political matter, separated from any meta-ethical doctrine. If no one can doubt the intellectual quality of this book, the central thesis of the whole is less convincing than the many important arguments forcing others to think a little clearer. Richard
Bellamy
Jesus College, Cambridge Justus MGser and the German Enlightenment, Jonathan Cambridge University Press, 1986), xvi + 216pp., g27.50.
B. Knudsen
(Cambridge:
‘No one carries misfortune with greater integrity than the peasant’, Justus Moser wrote in 1786, ‘no one dies more peacefully than he; no one goes to heaven more uprightly as he. And why? Because his virtue rests not on syllables but on total impressions of Creation which he can neither characterize with clear concepts nor with words’ (quoted on p. 162). Moser’s remarks suggest a dilemma from which conservative ideologues could not escape: in order to express their admiration for a world where loyalties and beliefs were natural and instinctive, they had to use the language of their enemies. Conservatives might celebrate the peasant whose virtues did not rest on syllables, but their own virtues were inevitably woven from a web of words and concepts. Justus Moser was in a particularly good position to appreciate the difficulties of finding modern words and concepts to describe traditional attitudes and institutions. Born in 1720, Moser belonged to a family long active in the affairs of Osnabrtick, a small Westphalian city state alternately ruled by a Catholic and Protestant bishop. At twentytwo, Moser began a lifetime of public service, first as secretary to the noble Estate, then as advocutus patriue, the government’s legal agent in fiscal matters, and finally the bishopric’s chief administrator. Except for some time at the university, a brief stay in England, and an annual trip to a nearby spa, Osnabrtick’s walls defined Moser’s world. But, as he once wrote, he had both a hometown and a literary fatherland: as ajournalist, social critic, and historian he was part of that great generation of intellectuals who established the foundations for the German enlightenment. In his multivolume history of Osnabrtick, Moser tried to bring his two worlds together by memorializing his state and propagating its distinctive virtues. This work, which deserves a place among the classics of eighteenth-century historiography, blends contemporary modes of social analysis with old-fashioned values and traditional commitments. Klaus Epstein expressed the conventional view of Moser when he portrayed him as ‘championing a comprehensive Conservative Weltanschauung embracing all aspects of life’. (n2e Genesis of German Conservatism [Princeton, 19661, p. 297.) As his title suggests, Knudsen wants to emphasize Moser’s relationship with, rather than his rejection of, the Enlightenment. The interpretation of Moser ‘as a carrier of the counterenlightenment’, Knudsen argues, comes ‘from deep misconceptions about the varied impulses in the German movement’. Far from being a consistent opponent of the Aufkltirung, Moser was typical of what Knudsen calls its ‘corporate’ wing, which sought to defend traditional values, interests, and institutions with a language based on rationalism and secularization. Knudsen is, I think, quite correct to warn us against imposing the rhetoric of counterrevolution on the more open and ambivalent discourse prevalent in German Europe before 1789. He is also right to stress the complexities and ambiguities in Moser’s
Book Reviews
747
wide-ranging and diverse writings. All in all, however, Knudsen succeeds in balancing rather than transforming the established view of Osnabrtick’s champion. There is a great deal of interesting information in this book, both about Moser and his world. Occasionally the prose is blemished by awkwardness (the author, for example, speaks of the German public’s ‘moderate radicalization’) and there are times when I found the argument hard to follow (for example in the concluding analysis of Kant). Overall, however, this is a useful introduction to a major figure, whose writings still evoke the vanished world of the eighteenth century. James J. Sheehan
Stanford University
Revolution and Rebellion; State and Society in England in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, J.C.D. Clark (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1986), x + 182 pp., e20.00/$34.50 H.C., E9.95/$9.95 P.B. Clark begins this book by arguing that the ‘two most marked characteristics of English historical scholarship’ are its adversorial nature and its specialisation (p. 1). His aim is to escape both of these characteristics in order, first, to present a re-interpretation of seventeenth and eighteenth century British political history, and second, to give an account of the recent historical research and debates on which this new interpretation is founded. According to Clark, English historians fall into four major schools: the ‘Old Guard’ Marxists such as Christopher Hill; ‘Old Hat’ liberals like G.M. Trevelyan; the ‘Class of 68’, who learned their history during the radicalism of the late 1960s; and ‘Revisionists’, such as Clark himself, empiricists ever skeptical of the broad theories and sweeping claims of the first three schools. Ideological blinkers, specialist confinement of historical research into traditionally received periods and poor research all blinded members of these three schools to what the labours of the Revisionists have now revealed: England did not experience anything resembling a revolution in 1642 or 1688. Political events did not march to the beat of either an emerging bourgeoisie or an expanding liberty. Parliament did not rapidly or even steadily assert itself over the monarchy. Rather, Revisionist analysis of this period shows the political elements of monarchy, parliament, gentry, church and party to be in a state of ‘continual change, decay and renovation’, their relative powers by no means settled at the close of the eighteenth century (p. 167). Clark’s synthesis of recent Revisionist research is very skillful, particularly in chapters 5, 6 and 7, which deal with ‘The Monarchy and Parliament’, ‘Political Ideology’ and ‘Party Structure’ respectively. These chapters follow the style and some of the themes of Clark’s earlier English Society 1688-1832( 1985). By drawingtogether an impressive range of what are often in themselves narrow historical studies, Clark is able to tease out conclusions and implications which were not previously clear. He also hints at a number of areas of British political history which deserve further primary research. If Clark’s synthetic approach constructs a plausible and very scholarly perspective on Britain in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, how successful is his attempt to present and counter alternative historical views? It must be said that here he is much less successful. Clark’s jibes at and criticism of alternative schools show just how deeply and sorely the disputes between Revisionists and the Old Guard have cut. In Revolution and Rebellion, the author’s hand is firmly clamped, for the most part, over the Old Guard’s mouth. When it is released, it is only to allow brief snatches of apparently trite Marxist sloganeering about class and revolution to be heard. With the partial exception of E.P. Thompson’s Whigs and Hunters, Clark conducts no detailed exploration of the historical
Book Reviews
toleration into a matter of expediency rather than a virtue. The second main assumption behind his morally free society appears to be a highly unrealistic picture of emerging social harmony, in which (to paraphrase only slightly) ‘the autonomy of each is the condition for the autonomy for all’. Is personal well-being really as inseparable from the promotion of social values which benefit the whole community as Raz claims? Surely the dilemma for liberalism is precisely the recognition that it is not. For this reason the defence of individual liberty must be a political matter, separated from any meta-ethical doctrine. If no one can doubt the intellectual quality of this book, the central thesis of the whole is less convincing than the many important arguments forcing others to think a little clearer. Richard
Bellamy
Jesus College, Cambridge Justus MGser and the German Enlightenment, Jonathan Cambridge University Press, 1986), xvi + 216pp., g27.50.
B. Knudsen
(Cambridge:
‘No one carries misfortune with greater integrity than the peasant’, Justus Moser wrote in 1786, ‘no one dies more peacefully than he; no one goes to heaven more uprightly as he. And why? Because his virtue rests not on syllables but on total impressions of Creation which he can neither characterize with clear concepts nor with words’ (quoted on p. 162). Moser’s remarks suggest a dilemma from which conservative ideologues could not escape: in order to express their admiration for a world where loyalties and beliefs were natural and instinctive, they had to use the language of their enemies. Conservatives might celebrate the peasant whose virtues did not rest on syllables, but their own virtues were inevitably woven from a web of words and concepts. Justus Moser was in a particularly good position to appreciate the difficulties of finding modern words and concepts to describe traditional attitudes and institutions. Born in 1720, Moser belonged to a family long active in the affairs of Osnabrtick, a small Westphalian city state alternately ruled by a Catholic and Protestant bishop. At twentytwo, Moser began a lifetime of public service, first as secretary to the noble Estate, then as advocutus patriue, the government’s legal agent in fiscal matters, and finally the bishopric’s chief administrator. Except for some time at the university, a brief stay in England, and an annual trip to a nearby spa, Osnabrtick’s walls defined Moser’s world. But, as he once wrote, he had both a hometown and a literary fatherland: as ajournalist, social critic, and historian he was part of that great generation of intellectuals who established the foundations for the German enlightenment. In his multivolume history of Osnabrtick, Moser tried to bring his two worlds together by memorializing his state and propagating its distinctive virtues. This work, which deserves a place among the classics of eighteenth-century historiography, blends contemporary modes of social analysis with old-fashioned values and traditional commitments. Klaus Epstein expressed the conventional view of Moser when he portrayed him as ‘championing a comprehensive Conservative Weltanschauung embracing all aspects of life’. (n2e Genesis of German Conservatism [Princeton, 19661, p. 297.) As his title suggests, Knudsen wants to emphasize Moser’s relationship with, rather than his rejection of, the Enlightenment. The interpretation of Moser ‘as a carrier of the counterenlightenment’, Knudsen argues, comes ‘from deep misconceptions about the varied impulses in the German movement’. Far from being a consistent opponent of the Aufkltirung, Moser was typical of what Knudsen calls its ‘corporate’ wing, which sought to defend traditional values, interests, and institutions with a language based on rationalism and secularization. Knudsen is, I think, quite correct to warn us against imposing the rhetoric of counterrevolution on the more open and ambivalent discourse prevalent in German Europe before 1789. He is also right to stress the complexities and ambiguities in Moser’s
Book Reviews
747
wide-ranging and diverse writings. All in all, however, Knudsen succeeds in balancing rather than transforming the established view of Osnabrtick’s champion. There is a great deal of interesting information in this book, both about Moser and his world. Occasionally the prose is blemished by awkwardness (the author, for example, speaks of the German public’s ‘moderate radicalization’) and there are times when I found the argument hard to follow (for example in the concluding analysis of Kant). Overall, however, this is a useful introduction to a major figure, whose writings still evoke the vanished world of the eighteenth century. James J. Sheehan
Stanford University
Revolution and Rebellion; State and Society in England in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, J.C.D. Clark (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1986), x + 182 pp., e20.00/$34.50 H.C., E9.95/$9.95 P.B. Clark begins this book by arguing that the ‘two most marked characteristics of English historical scholarship’ are its adversorial nature and its specialisation (p. 1). His aim is to escape both of these characteristics in order, first, to present a re-interpretation of seventeenth and eighteenth century British political history, and second, to give an account of the recent historical research and debates on which this new interpretation is founded. According to Clark, English historians fall into four major schools: the ‘Old Guard’ Marxists such as Christopher Hill; ‘Old Hat’ liberals like G.M. Trevelyan; the ‘Class of 68’, who learned their history during the radicalism of the late 1960s; and ‘Revisionists’, such as Clark himself, empiricists ever skeptical of the broad theories and sweeping claims of the first three schools. Ideological blinkers, specialist confinement of historical research into traditionally received periods and poor research all blinded members of these three schools to what the labours of the Revisionists have now revealed: England did not experience anything resembling a revolution in 1642 or 1688. Political events did not march to the beat of either an emerging bourgeoisie or an expanding liberty. Parliament did not rapidly or even steadily assert itself over the monarchy. Rather, Revisionist analysis of this period shows the political elements of monarchy, parliament, gentry, church and party to be in a state of ‘continual change, decay and renovation’, their relative powers by no means settled at the close of the eighteenth century (p. 167). Clark’s synthesis of recent Revisionist research is very skillful, particularly in chapters 5, 6 and 7, which deal with ‘The Monarchy and Parliament’, ‘Political Ideology’ and ‘Party Structure’ respectively. These chapters follow the style and some of the themes of Clark’s earlier English Society 1688-1832( 1985). By drawingtogether an impressive range of what are often in themselves narrow historical studies, Clark is able to tease out conclusions and implications which were not previously clear. He also hints at a number of areas of British political history which deserve further primary research. If Clark’s synthetic approach constructs a plausible and very scholarly perspective on Britain in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, how successful is his attempt to present and counter alternative historical views? It must be said that here he is much less successful. Clark’s jibes at and criticism of alternative schools show just how deeply and sorely the disputes between Revisionists and the Old Guard have cut. In Revolution and Rebellion, the author’s hand is firmly clamped, for the most part, over the Old Guard’s mouth. When it is released, it is only to allow brief snatches of apparently trite Marxist sloganeering about class and revolution to be heard. With the partial exception of E.P. Thompson’s Whigs and Hunters, Clark conducts no detailed exploration of the historical