Jones G.S., Claeys G. The Cambridge History of Nineteenth-Century Political Thought
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John Morrow
For Schlegel the state was a ‘great moral individual’, forged by affection and
belief, not a mechanical contrivance produced by contract and held together
by the power of an absolute monarch or a sovereign people (Schlegel 1964,
pp. 122–4;cf.Faber1978,p.60).
M
¨
uller endorsed these sentiments, but he treated the state as a self-
subsistent totality and did not relate it to the universal goal of human
perfection. The framework of this account of the state was provided by his
conception of the bipolar structure of the natural and social worlds (M
¨
uller
1804; Berdahl 1988,pp.165–6; Klaus 1985,pp.40–1; Koehler 1980,pp.20,
53, 59, 79–80, 86, 98;Reiss1955,pp.29–30). In politics the conserving and
innovating principles of old age and youth, and the masculine principle of
law and the feminine principle of love, produced a unity that was focused
on the ‘idea of the state’. It was, M
¨
uller wrote, ‘the intimate association of
all physical and spiritual wealth [in a] great energetic, infinitely active and
living whole. The state is that point in man in which all bodily and mental
interests coincide’ (M
¨
uller 1922, i,p.39;Reiss1955,p.150; cf. Immerwahr
1970,p.34).
In common with other German romantics M
¨
uller rejected the image of
the state as a machine because this implied that mechanical standards could
be applied to it.
7
He also resisted attempts to apply natural law doctrines
to the state. The ‘idea of law’ resulted from a polar opposition between a
physical or positive element on one side and a ‘spiritual or universal and
universally valid’ element on the other. The coexistence of the positive and
the universal produced a system of regulation which mirrored the fluid,
expansive character of the state. The ‘idea of law’ was ‘never concluded or
completed, but [was] always in the process of infinite and living expansion’
(M
¨
uller 1922, i,pp.41–2; Gottfried 1967,pp.236–7). Like the state itself,
law expressed the common consciousness of an organic community; it
was a product of consciousness not the arbitrary creation of the sovereign
(cf. Zilkowski 1990,pp.95–6).
There are close parallels between M
¨
uller’s critique of the legalistic basis of
political individualism and Edmund Burke’s anti-individualistic application
of the common law tradition in the 1790s. Burke’s ideas were well known
in Germany and admired by M
¨
uller and other contemporaries. German
7 The ‘mechanistic administration’ of the factory state of which Novalis complained (Novalis 1969c,
No. 36) had its theoretical counterpart in conceptions of the state as a mighty machine propelled by
the self-interest of its subjects and controlled by the absolute power of the monarch. These images of
the state were common in the eighteenth century; they are, perhaps, epitomised by August Ludwig
von Schloezer’s blunt statement that ‘the state is a machine’ (quoted in Krieger 1972,pp.46ff., 77).
54
Romanticism and political thought in the early nineteenth century
romantics, however, combined a historical understanding of law with ele-
ments that appealed to ideas which had an affinity with patriarchal theories
of government (Kraus 2004,p.203; Sweet 1941,pp.20–3). M
¨
uller, for
example, denied that the relationships between members of a state were
purely legal. Law was balanced by love, a principle which imbued the state
with the aura of familial affection and made it an object of beauty (Koehler
1980,p.29). M
¨
uller believed that these feelings were epitomised in the royal
family, but this belief received its most vivid statement in Novalis’ paean
to the young King and Queen in Glauden und Liebe oder Der K
¨
onig und die
K
¨
onigin.
A true royal couple is for the whole person what a constitution is for mere reason. One
can only be interested in a constitution as in a letter of the alphabet. If the sign is not a
beautiful image, a song, dependence on it is the most perverse of all tendencies. What is
law if it is not the expression of a loved, respected person? Does not the mystic sovereign
need, like every idea, a symbol and what symbol is more fitting than a splendid person
worthy of love? (Novalis 1969c, No. 15)
Novalis endowed the monarch and his consort with mystical qualities to
which subjects responded as an act of faith. He derived political authority
from the personal, ‘charismatic’ qualities of the ruler (Beiser 1992,pp.264,
272; Gooch 1965,pp.235–6; Scheuner 1978,pp.72, 76). Since this concep-
tion of monarchy required the state to engage the affections of its members
it was related to the interest in active individuality which marked early
romanticism (Beiser 1992,p.230). Other vestiges of this concern can be
seen in Novalis’ disparaging references to the ‘indolence’ fostered by abso-
lutism, and in M
¨
uller’s comment that the sovereign should ‘stimulate’ as
well as coerce his subjects (Meinecke 1970,pp.53, 103–4;Reiss1955,
p. 148). The most thoroughgoing restatement of this theme appeared in
Schleiermacher’s writings. Schleiermacher thought that community was a
product of ‘free Sociality’ (that is, voluntary, informal interaction) which
fostered the integration of individuals who moved towards perfection by
pursuing a diversity of ends (Schleiermacher 1988,pp.183–4, 1967, ii,
pp. 129–30;Bruford1975,pp.82–4; Hoover 1990,p.252). A pluralistic and
decentralised political str ucture was necessary to accommodate this diver-
sity and Schleiermacher therefore rejected the eighteenth-century model
of absolute monarchy. He did not however, reject monarchy completely.
To the contrary, he argued that a monarch may ser ve as an organ of unity
reflecting a collective consciousness within a decentralised system of rule.
By contrast, the rigid centralisation of the absolute state was a consequence
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John Morrow
of the weakness of its subjects’ collective consciousness. Having repressed
the bases of sociability, the eighteenth-century state was forced to create
elaborate outward shows of unity (Schleiermacher 1845,pp.139, 111–12;
Dawson 1966,pp.148–9; Hoover 1989,p.310).
The fact that Schleiermacher’s true monarch symbolised the collective
consciousness of the people, not their membership of an all-embracing
union which could be compared to the family, gave a distinctively ‘liberal’
cast to his political romanticism. Even for other German romantics, how-
ever, the analogy between the family and the state was not meant to bolster
the absolute state by images derived from conventional patriarchal political
theory. Novalis’ stress upon faith, Schlegel’s claim that the state was based
upon belief, and M
¨
uller’s concern with stimulation implied that satisf ac-
tory political relationships had to be imbued with distinctive qualities. The
monarch possessed personal power that was not derived from consent, but
his relationship with other members of the state was qualitatively different
from that which existed between an absolute monarch and his emotionally
torpid subjects. By relating monarchy to the intuitions of the poetic intelli-
gence, German romantics sought to transform the cool, mechanical severity
of the Friedrichean monarch into the authoritative, but emotionally appeal-
ing figure of an idealised royal patriarch. In so doing, they focused on the
affective and aesthetic needs of human beings; they did not use the image of
thefamilytoevokethepower of the Father. This point was emphasised by
the role ascribed to the female head of the royal family by Novalis (Novalis
1969c, Nos. 30–2, 42) and by Schlegel’s remark that ‘a family can form itself
only around a loving woman’ (Schlegel 1996b, No. 126;Beiser1996,p.136).
Romantics seemed to believe that by portraying the relationship between
sovereign and subject in a new way they could reconcile a strong concep-
tion of sovereignty with the moral dignity of the subject (Scheuner 1980,
p. 71). They ignored mechanical questions concerning the weight and direc-
tion of sovereign power and the forces which might constrain it, and focused
instead on the close link between the potentialities of monarchy and the
affective and aesthetic requirements of humanity and individuals’ sense of
identification with and participation in the community. At the height of
his political radicalism, Schlegel identified true republicanism with democ-
racy, merely allowing that monarchy might be consistent with emerging or
waning republican political cultures (Schlegel 1996a, pp. 102–6). Novalis,
by contrast, attempted to promote an idea of republican government that
was not hostile to monarchy. This approach echoed earlier formulations of
res publica (‘the public thing’) and privileged emotional and psychological
56
Romanticism and political thought in the early nineteenth century
identification over representation and popular sovereignty. As Novalis cryp-
tically put it, ‘the true king becomes a republic, the true republic becomes
a king’ (Novalis 1969b, No. 23).
Schleiermacher’s identification of a symbolic role for monarchy was very
similar to the position taken by Coleridge, but romantic writers in Germany
produced far more elaborate accounts of kingships than their English coun-
terparts. This perhaps reflected the practical and theoretical prominence of
the monarch in German politics. Since German romantics did not wish
to turn the head of state into a constitutional figurehead, it was necessary
for them to formulate a radical alternative to the conception of king as
state-mechanic which they identified with eighteenth-century absolutism.
The novelty and difficulty of this task can be contrasted with that facing
the English romantics. They generally endorsed the representative tradition
of British government and could pretty much take the constitutional posi-
tion and the status of the Crown for granted. The only English figure who
wished to present monarchy in the guise of emotional patriarchalism was
Robert Southey, but he could appeal to history and to aspects of present
practice. His attachment to the cult of Charles I as ‘royal martyr’ provided
a precedent, and in ‘A Vision of Judgement’ (1821), the mantle of true
kingship had passed to George III (Southey 1825,chs.xvi–xviii).
There were also divergences between German and English perspectives
on other institutional implications of romanticism. Early in the nineteenth
century Schlegel had presented a picture of an Established Church which
was very similar to that of Coleridge, but after his conversion to Roman
Catholicism in 1809 he identified a judicial and protective role for the papal
head of a universal church (Schlegel 1964,pp.148, 169–70; cf. Schlegel
1966,p.589). This account, which harked back to Novalis’ suggestion that
the ‘beauty’ of medieval faith and the ‘beneficent’ influence of the Church
should be recalled to bring unity to a fragmented Europe, signalled a search
for political ideals that were not tainted by the modern world (Novalis
1969b, pp. 500–1, 512–13).
ForbothM
¨
uller and Schlegel the idea of ‘estates’ was a particularly
valuable medieval survival, but it needed to be detached from mechanical
conceptions of political representation. This feature of German political
romanticism set it apart from Coleridge’s attempt to integrate estates into a
modern system of representative government. It also challenged those who
wished to resolve Prussia’s financial problems by endowing estates with a
representative role in relation to taxation (Berdahl 1988,pp.112–15, 124–
7; Krieger 1972,pp.204–5; cf. Hegel 1991, paras. 299–302). Conservative
57
John Morrow
romantics in Germany did not welcome this innovation. While they thought
estates should incorporate economic and social groupings, romantics stressed
that these institutions were parts of the state, not organs representing sec-
tional interests. Schlegel, for example, rejected the idea that estates should
become part of a system of representation along English lines. Such an
arrangement was too mechanical for his taste and was also inconsistent with
the character and dignity of monarchy. The unity of the state was focused
in the monarch and he should retain all political and judicial functions in
his hands. He should, however, consult the various estates on matters which
affected their particular interests (Schlegel 1964,p.161).
Estates were part of an organic whole. In the modern world they were of
critical importance because they provided a means of integrating individuals
within the state so as to minimise the politically and socially dislocating
impact of rapid commercial and industrial development. The way in which
they performed this role depended on the attitude of the monarch, not
upon formal legal limitations of his power (Schlegel 1966,pp.529–33,
553–4, 584–5). Similar views were expressed by M
¨
uller. After toying with
a representative role for estates, he focused instead on the harmonious
interaction of the principal estates of land and trade, not on their location
within a formal system of political representation (M
¨
uller 1923,pp.51ff.).
This gave his constitutional pronouncements an air of vagueness but M
¨
uller
was not interested in analytic precision (cf. Berdahl 1988,p.180; Schmitt
1986,pp.126, 132–41). Since he believed that the structure of the state
was transmitted by history, M
¨
uller did not think that it was possible or
desirable for the political theorist to create neat constitutional edifices.
Rather, the relics of the past could, if properly understood, serve the present.
Estates were important because they provided a focus of identity that located
individuals within an organic whole by attaching them to impulses that
could be harmoniously related to their polar opposites.
This approach reflected a common romantic concern to imbue the econ-
omy with values that were compatible with the harmonious and communal
ends of the state. Like radical romantics in the 1790s and like their con-
servative contemporaries in England, M
¨
uller and Schlegel were alarmed at
the alienating and socially disintegrating implications of modern economic
ideas and practices (Beiser 1992,pp.232–6;Briefs1941,pp.283, 289;
Klaus 1985,pp.48–50; Koehler 1980,pp.92–9). Some of these unwelcome
developments were associated with absolutism, hence Novalis’ critique of
policies that gave priority to maximising the prince’s revenues (Beiser 1996,
p. 37 n.8). Others, however, were more modern. In M
¨
uller’s writings these
58
Romanticism and political thought in the early nineteenth century
misgivings gave rise to a sustained critique of the impact of capitalism on
the integrated state. The division of labour reduced labourers to ‘dead cog
wheels’ in a mechanical process which did not recognise their humanity and
undermined the basis of community; it produced a ‘metaphysical chilling of
the soul’ (M
¨
uller 1923,p.230; 1922, ii,p.217). In response, M
¨
uller wanted
to alleviate the mechanical aspects of capitalism by evoking the relationships
of medieval guilds and the herrschaft of a paternalistic nobility (M
¨
uller 1922,
ii,p.313; Berdahl 1988,pp.173–9;Hanisch1978,pp.135, 139–40).
M
¨
uller’s feudalisation of society found a parallel in Schlegel’s feudalisation
of monarchy. He argued that the king should be ‘overlord’ of all property
and should control foreign trade (Schlegel 1964,pp.127–9; Meinecke 1970,
p. 68). The first of these stipulations was meant to ensure that proper ty was
used in ways that were consistent with the state’s educational calling, while
the second not only reduced the risk of domination by those who enriched
themselves through trade, but also provided a source of revenue for the
state. This revenue would free the state from dependence upon taxation and
undercut attempts to introduce mechanical conceptions of representation.
In addition, economic dependence was to be avoided because of its harmful
effect on the symbolic position of the monarch; it reduced him to the status
of a paid servant of his people and thereby demeaned both him and the
state by undermining its moral and spiritual dimensions (Schlegel 1964,
pp. 129–30).
When those English and German romantics who had been politically
active in the 1790s abandoned radical reformism and identified the organic
community with the traditional order, they adopted positions which were
similar in many respects to those forged by conservative critics of the
Revolution. However, romantic ideas gave this conservatism a distinctive
character.
8
While adopting the historical perspective on institutions and on
social consciousness that was characteristic of the conservatism of the 1790s,
these romantics also thought that it was important to present traditional
institutions in a new light so that individuals would feel at home in their
world. This light had to appeal to the sensibilities of beings whose long-
ing for community, for a sense of belonging, was a consequence of their
susceptibility to ideas and institutions that captured the values of affection,
beauty and spiritual mystery which were both the products and the focus
of the romantic imagination.
8 This parallels Nicholas Boyle’s comment that in German literature early nineteenth-century roman-
ticism formed a ‘loyal opposition’ (Boyle 1991,p.23).
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John Morrow
2 The radical reaction to conservative romanticism
in the post-war years
Although Coleridge’s theory of the state possessed critical potentiali-
ties which were lacking in the less systematic accounts of Southey and
Wordsworth, it was still sufficiently attached to traditional institutions to
confirm the conservative image of the older generation of English roman-
tics in the minds of Byron, Hazlitt and Shelley. In the post-war years these
writers reacted sharply against what they saw as the apostasy of their elders
and forged a ‘cult of sexuality’ whose worship was part of a metaphor-
ical, legitimacy-sapping assault on church and state (Butler 1981,p.132;
Francis and Morrow 1994,pp.27–48; Mahoney 2002; McCalman 1988;
Thorslev 1989). At the same time, however, their critique of contempo-
rary society and government differed from that of later romantics in Britain
and France. Their contemporary reputation for freethinking and material-
ism linked them to the liberal pro-French culture of the pre-revolutionary
period (Butler 1988,pp.38, 56) that was condemned by their successors.
Moreover, Byron and his contemporaries focused on the political source
of oppression and its ideological outposts. While by no means blind to
economic injustice, their thinking lacked the critical focus on social and
economic developments that distinguished the ‘social politics’ of later
romantic thinkers in France and Great Britain.
Despite Byron’s reputation as the b
ˆ
ete noire of post-war romanticism his
political theory was less egalitarian than that of either Hazlitt or Shelley
(Murphy 1985; Southey, 1832e). His criticisms of the moral and religious
underpinnings of contemporary society, and his search for new and com-
plete forms of harmony compatible with the independence of individuals,
yielded a conception of the state which conjured up an aesthetic image of
symmetry to convey the mutually supporting interaction of reciprocating,
free individuals. Byron’s true commonwealth provided the political basis for
a harmonious sociability that was not possible within the corrupt, repres-
sive regimes of contemporary Europe. This state was founded on ‘shared
sovereignty’, but its structure was not democratic. As the tragic hero of
Marino Faliero Doge of Venice (1820)putit
We will renew the times of truth and justice,
Condensing in a fair free commonwealth
Not rash equality but equal rights,
Proportioned like the columns to the temple,
Giving and taking strength reciprocal,
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Romanticism and political thought in the early nineteenth century
And making firm the whole with grace and beauty,
So that no part could be removed without
Infringement of the general symmetry.
(Byron 1980–6, iii. ii, lines 168–75; cf. De Silva 1981;
Kelsall 1987,ch.4;Watkins1981)
This image of political symmetry recalled antique republics, but Byron
projected it into the future, and he looked to aristocratic leaders inspired by
the examples of Bolivar and Washington to create and nurture states which
reflected the values that Marino Faliero had unsuccessfully attempted to
restore in Venice. In his Ode (from the French) Byron attributed Napoleon’s fall
from power to his assumption of a kingly position – ‘goaded by ambition’s
sting, / The Hero sunk into the King / Then fell; – So perish all, /
Who would men by man enthral!’ – and contrasted his conduct with
that of George Washington. Having rid his country of tyranny, Washington
presided over the birth of a republic and then retired from the scene, making
way for another leader to guide the fortunes of a society of free men (Byron,
Ode (from the French), iii. ii, lines 32–5; Add. stanza iii, lines 23–4 (1980–6,
iii,pp.375–9)).
While Hazlitt shared Byron’s views on the repressive nature of post-war
government, he was concerned particularly with its effect on literary cul-
ture. Southey was a figure of fun for Byron, but Hazlitt regarded him in a
far more sinister light. He thought that the Poet Laureate was in the van-
guard of a concerted attempt to utilise the persuasive capacities of modern
print culture for repressive rather than liberating purposes. Although Hazlitt
portrayed individuals as bearers of inviolable natural rights, he thought that
their possession of a ‘moral sense’ meant that personal autonomy provided
the basis for a social rather than an abstract and isolated conception of
individuality (Hazlitt 1931–4d, pp. 305–20). This sense, a product of what
Hazlitt called the ‘imagination’, was essential to the formation of moral
judgements, and in the modern world it was refined through the influ-
ence of literature. Because literature allowed individuals to see themselves
and their actions as others saw them, it counteracted the blunting effect
of self-interest and prejudice; it also created a body of ‘public opinion’
which modified and regulated the jarring impulses of unenlightened indi-
viduality (Hazlitt 1931–4c, pp. 47–50). For Hazlitt, public opinion was a
product of the free exchange of ideas and of the sympathetic sociability that
resulted from it. Its defining characteristic was tolerance, that is, a marked
disinclination to apply physical, social or non-intellectual verbal weapons
to those propounding views which diverged from one’s own (Hazlitt 1819,
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John Morrow
p. 318). Hazlitt believed that Southey and his friends on the Quarterly Review
had subverted literature to the service of egotism, partiality and repression.
They had set up formal and informal barriers to the growth of public opin-
ion, thereby preventing the republic of letters from fulfilling its liberating
and humanising role, and retarding the intellectual pluralism which was a
precondition for the growth of a true ‘public’ and a true public opinion
(Hazlitt 1931–4e, p. 116, 1931–4b, p. 14). This line of thinking entailed an
explicit rejection of Coleridge’s claim that culture should be forged by an
intellectual elite and provided the focal point for a series of bitter exchanges
between these two writers between 1816 and 1818 (Dart 1999,p.238;Lapp
1999,pp.67–112).
In responding to these threats, Hazlitt focused on the literar y standard
bearers of legitimism, but he also criticised the religious and political insti-
tutions to which they appealed. He thus attacked the Established Church
and the principle of aristocracy and argued for a system of representative
democracy (Hazlitt 1819,pp.307, 318; Cook 1981,pp.140–1). Hazlitt
claimed that the failure to recognise the people’s political rights was a corol-
lary of an indifference to general rights. These hallmarks of legitimism could
only be erased by a system of democratic representation: ‘if the vote and the
choice of a single individual goes for nothing so, by parity of reasoning, may
that of all the rest of the community; but if the choice of every man . . . is
held sacred, then what must be the weight of the whole’ (Hazlitt 1931–4d,
p. 308).
Shelley’s critique of legitimism had much in common with those of
Byron and Hazlitt, but his perception of the political implications of liberty
was more visionary. In Queen Mab he rejected the theory of innate depravity
and traced wickedness to the opinions engendered by oppressive political
and social relationships:
Let priest-led slaves cease to proclaim that man
Inherits vice and misery, when force,
And Falsehood hang o’er the cradled babe,
Stifling with rudest grasp all natural good.
(Shelley, Queen Mab, iv, lines 117–20
(1965d, p. 93))
This critique echoed the arguments about the implications of necessity that
had appeared in Godwin’s Political Justice. It also pointed to the possibilities
for human improvement that would be opened up by the abolition of coer-
cive social and political relationships (Dawson 1980,pp.76–135; Scrivener
62
Romanticism and political thought in the early nineteenth century
1982,pp.5–34). In A Philosophical View of Reform, Shelley advanced a highly
critical history of the 1688 Revolution that traced the emergence of a
parasitic ‘monied’ aristocracy that was an ally rather than a rival of the
landed classes, and used constitutional monarchy as a vehicle for imposing
additional burdens on the general population. He praised the government
of the United States on the (erroneous) grounds that its constitution was
subject to periodic review by the citizen body. This requirement would
narrow the gap between political forms and practices and the real interests
of the community that was seen as one of the unavoidable shortcomings of
political and legal systems (Shelley 1965b, pp. 24–33, 10–12;Keach1996,
p. 44). But while much oppression could be eradicated through the radical
reform of social and political relationships, the success of these measures
and the viability of the anarchic condition to which they were a prelude,
depended upon nurturing the ‘imagination’ (Shelley 1965b, pp. 42–55).
Shelley believed that a sympathetic interest in the feelings of others was the
basis for the voluntary imposition of other-regarding conduct. Sympathy
was a product of non-oppressive social intercourse, of experience working
on the imaginative faculty, and its development was a requirement of the
effective exercise of distinctly human capacities:
Imagination or mind employed prophetically [imaging forth] its objects is that faculty
of human nature on which every gradation of its progress . . . depends. . . . The only
distinction between the selfish man and the virtuous man, is that the imagination of
the former is confined within a narrow limit, whilst that of the latter embraces a
comprehensive circumference. (Shelley 1965e, p. 75)
This faculty resembled Hazlitt’s moral sense, but for Shelley it was pre-
eminently a product of poetr y. In his Defence of Poetry (1821) Shelley denied
that poetry had a didactic role, but he claimed that it encouraged the devel-
opment of a potentially universal feeling of sympathy. The key element
here was the capacity to see others as objects of love, and this, Shelley main-
tained, provided the basis for non-coercive but orderly human interaction:
‘The great secret of morals is love; or a going out of our own nature, and
an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought,
action, or person, not our own’ (Shelley 1965c, p. 118).
Love affected both perception and volition. Poetry not only engendered
‘new materials of knowledge’; it also stimulated ‘a desire to reproduce and
arrange them according to a certain rhythm and order which may be called
the beautiful and the good’ (Shelley 1965c, p. 135). This perception of the
role of poetry bridged the gulf between knowledge and motivation that
63