1.

Record Nr.

UNISA996556965003316

Autore

Poulsen Frank Ejby

Titolo

The Political Thought of Anacharsis Cloots : A Proponent of Cosmopolitan Republicanism in the French Revolution

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Berlin/Boston : , : Walter de Gruyter GmbH, , 2023

©2023

ISBN

3-11-078254-5

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (266 pages)

Disciplina

944.04092

Soggetti

POLITICAL SCIENCE / Political Ideologies / General

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Acknowledgments -- Contents -- Introduction: The Importance of Cloots and Cosmopolitan Republicanism -- 1 The Life of Cloots -- 2 Rehabilitating Cloots -- 3 Reason and Science -- 4 Natural Law -- 5 Humanity -- 6 Republicanism -- 7 Cosmopolitan Republicanism -- Bibliography

Sommario/riassunto

Historians have often either ignored Anacharsis Cloots (1755–1794) or considered him deranged because he claimed to be the ‘orator of the human race’ and devised a ‘universal republic’ based on the ‘sovereignty of the human race’. This book is the first comprehensive study of the entire body of Cloots’s written works and political actions. By contextualizing them, the book non only rehabilitates Cloots as a political thinker worthy of consideration, but also argues that his political thought constitutes a specific branch of republicanism in the age of Atlantic revolutions: cosmopolitan republicanism. The introduction suggests how 18th-century French cosmopolitanism was a new philosophical tradition, but was composed of several themes, which the book then analyses in Cloots’s writings. The first chapter provides a brief overview of his life. The second chapter explains why he called himself orator and wrote pamphlets, and why contemporary readers should not discard this as non-philosophical. Having established Cloots’s writings as constituting a philosophical system, the following chapters explores it through the themes laid out in the introduction. First, the concept of reason and his understanding of



science. Second, the paradigm of natural law and the role of nature in moral and political thought. Third, the conception of humanity and individuals in nature and society. Finally, republicanism and its principles. The last chapter summarizes the elements of Cloots’s cosmopolitan republicanism and opens a research programme to other political thinkers in the age of Atlantic revolutions for historians and political theorists.