This lecture explores the major political ideologies that emerged in Europe after the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars (conservatism, liberalism, and nationalism), examining their origins, core tenets, and the intellectual currents, particularly Romanticism, that influenced them.
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hello welcome back to our lecture series
for Western Civilization 102.
our topic today will be conservatism
liberalism and nationalism
and basically we're discussing what
happens in Europe after the revolution
after 1815 um
um
because of the chaos and because of the
instability that had occurred during the
French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars
Wars
the rulers in Europe as you've seen
wanted to restore stability and
re-establish as much of the old ways
in Europe when they met after the
Napoleonic Wars and after the French
Revolution of course
the people and institutions that wanted
to re-establish this old order and go
back to the way things were
became known as the conservatives the
we had already discussed the very
powerful countries in Europe such as Britain
Britain
Prussia Russia and Austria
deciding to guarantee peace and continue
to meet periodically after 1815
1815
and of course like I said before they
you know we're not going to see a major
war breakout of course we have World War
one but that's in 1914. and that's a
century later
of course we have a lot of revolutions
we had a very famous men participating
in the post-napolionic
Europe such as talirand who is the
French representative and we had
metternick was a very famous Austrian
Diplomat Clemens Von meternik um
um
we had a Viscount Castle Ray who was a
very prominent British Diplomat as well
British foreign secretary
we had Tsar Alexander
the first
very prominent figure here for Russia as well
well
and so all of these men in these
countries will continue discussing
Europe and and as you can imagine you
know the monarchs were mostly
conservatives well they were
conservatives because they want to restore
restore
they want to go back to the way it was
and restore the old days in fact the
bourbon Dynasty remember the Bourbons
the Dynasty in France the bourbon
dynasty was restored to France after the
Napoleonic Wars and Spain
and the wars of the Spanish secession
when Philip is allowed a relative of
Louis XIV was allowed to take over the
so
not everyone felt that way obviously I
mean the French Revolution had had um
put forth some very basic freedoms and
ideas that a lot of people in Europe
wanted to see happen
you know we also of course had had the
American Revolution as well
and so some of these ideas especially
the Constitutions
having it written down
became very appealing to a lot of people
the people that wanted these constitutions
constitutions
for the most part they were known as the
the liberals or of course liberalism as
we see here and there will be a lot of
liberal uprisings that will take place
where people are wanting to see these
constant written constitutions coming about
about
and of course the monarchs are not you
know not exactly enthused about that idea
and
of course we have nationalism Nations
Nations
this will become a huge problem
especially in the Austrian Empire but
elsewhere of course as well because
you will have a group of people who want
to to see their Nation created based on
ethnic ethnicity
common history
and when you have an Empire like the
Austrian Empire where you have so many
different ethnic groups
existing within the empire
and if one ethnic group
wants to see their Nation created out of
that you know out of their ethnic group
then that's going to create problems for
others within the empire
so you know you'll learn more about this
nationalism that is growing here after
the Napoleonic Wars as well
and so you know people also are wanting
to see not only written constitutions
but representative governments and we're
coming out of that age of absolutism
that you learn quite a lot about
and these absolute monarchs
such as Catherine the Great and
Frederick the great and Joseph II of
Austria people want were wanting to see
more representative governments and less
of this absolute
rule that had existed previous to the
French Revolution
so all of this will create
some chaos in Europe in the 1820s and 1830s
1830s
and quite a lot of revolutions that take
place in the year 1848 and 1849.
not major Wars of course but revolutions
so let's learn more about what's
happening in Europe with these different
beliefs and movements with conservatism
liberalism and nationalism
the French Revolution and Napoleonic era
spawned a number of ideologies that
became increasingly important in the
19th century and then continued to
influence life in the 20th and even in
the 21st centuries
among these are conservatism liberalism
nationalism and socialism
before we turn to these however it's
necessary for a moment to talk about a
different sort of intellectual movement
that occurred in the 19th century that
underlay all of these ideological isms
that I've just mentioned and that is romanticism
romanticism
Romanticism is often associated in the
popular mind with romantic novels with
romantic music romantic art and all of
that is a legitimate Association but
Romanticism is an intellectual movement
was to some extent a repudiation of the
Enlightenment The Romantics starting
with Rousseau and continuing on into the
19th century rejected the notion that
reason was the only sure guide to wisdom
the only sure guide to truth
they put greater emphasis upon what they
called sentiment or what we might call
emotion today they also resurrected the
importance of faith in many cases as
opposed to reason
there The Romantics also developed a
a a very great interest in the past and
in history and that interest in history
in turn led to a growing interest in nationalism
nationalism
nationalism Drew part of its impetus not
only from Romanticism but from the
actual events of the French Revolution
and Napoleonic era for one thing the
French had set an example with their
success in the 1790s and the early 19th
century as to what a people could do if
they were truly United as a nation and
even those Nations who regarded the
French as an enemy recognized that their
success came from their National Unity
at times when they were able to work
together and therefore other nations
after 1815 will imitate that a second
sort of negative way in which uh the
French Revolution and the Napoleonic era
fostered nationalism is that after
Napoleon had conquered uh much of Europe
it led to resistance to Napoleonic
conquest and to French imperialism that
helped to create nationalism in Germany
nationalism in Italy and so on so
nationalism was spawned in in a sense as
a reaction to the French Revolution
however it went on to become a
full-blown ideology as we'll see in a
few minutes first though let us turn to
conservatism and liberalism the two
ideologies which were the two most
direct products of the French Revolution
and I must caution you that the terms
conservative and liberal are
conservatism and liberalism meant
something very different in the 19th
century from whatever they might mean
now both terms have come rather
amorphous but they meant something very
precise in the 19th century and
something very different from what we
think of in terms of those labels today
a conservative in the period just after
1815 was someone who rejected the ideals
of the French Revolution someone who
wanted to go back to the way that Europe
had been prior to
1789. uh a the most prominent example of
a conservative thinker who influenced
thinking in the 19th century was the
British thinker Edmund Burke Edmund
Burke had at one point been what you
might think of as a 19th century liberal
he had been a supporter for example of
the American Revolution but when the
French Revolution broke out he reacted
against it and eventually wound up
strongly condemning the French Revolution
Revolution
furthermore he rejected the entire
ideology of John Locke the notion that
man is born with certain inalienable
rights to life liberty and property the
notion that government exists only to
protect those rights and the notion that
one has the right to Revolution if a
government fails to do that
Burke instead emphasized the organic
nature of the state The evolutionary
nature of the state the fact that the
state has been built up by generation
upon generation of history and he argued
that no one generation has the right to
overthrow that
this became the the underlying basis for
conservatism in the 19th century and
what many conservatives sought to do was
to restore the effectiveness of monarchy
to maintain the distinction among social
classes in which you had a monarch a
privileged aristocracy a less privileged
middle class and a subordinate working
class this was part of the whole ideology
ideology
conservatives as a general rule
therefore were resistant to any further
change some wanted to roll back things
to pre-1789 even the most
forward-thinking conservatives wanted to
keep things as they were and not change
any further that meant conservatives
were of course the opponents of liberals
but it also meant that conservatives
were the opponents of nationalists
because as we'll see shortly
nationalists also wanted to carry out
major changes in society in the 19th century
century
now if we turn to liberals in the period
just after 1815. those were individuals
who embraced the ideals of the French
Revolution not necessarily the violence
and the upheaval that had characterized
certain phases of the Revolution but
they did believe in the ideals of
Liberty equality and fraternity
furthermore liberals were very strongly
grounded in John Locke's ideas about
inalienable rights and the right of
Revolution therefore they were
diametrically opposed to the beliefs of
conservatives in fact classical liberals
which is the term that we use to
describe uh liberals in the 19th century
are really the ideological ancestors of
both modern conservatives and modern
liberals each group of which has taken
some ideas from the classical liberals
and gone on with them unless you are
someone who wants to bring back monarchy
and an aristocracy you can't really be a
conservative in the 19th century since
the word although it means something
very different right now
uh among the
um more prominent liberals in the early
19th century was a British thinker by
the name of Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham invented an approach to
liberalism that is sometimes called utilitarianism
utilitarianism
uh it if those of you familiar with the
political thought of Thomas Jefferson
were recommend recognize some of
bentham's ideas as well Bentham argued
that government should only do those
things that have utility that is only
those things that that are necessary
like defense are those things which
directly benefit the people of a state
in some way otherwise he believed
government's power should be restricted
again the emphasis that liberals tend to
embrace at this time is upon individual
rights as opposed to the rights of the
state whereas conservatives tend to be
State oriented and even monarchy
oriented liberals at this juncture are
more interested in individual rights
therefore for Bentham the only time
government should do anything is when
government could do it better than an
individual another important liberal
thing anchor who comes in the middle of
the 19th century is the English thinker
John Stuart Mill who again emphasized
individual liberty who emphasized the
rights of all individuals all social
classes but also of both men and women
placing him ahead of a great many
thinkers in that regard now
now
among conservatives then for much of the
19th century the emphasis is on stasis
upon keeping the monarchy strong upon
preserving the rights of the aristocracy
on maintaining the existing structure
among liberals the emphasis was upon
change moving towards more individual
freedom and also towards more
constitutional government
constitutional government would Place
limits on the monarchy if there was one
constitutional government would Place
limits upon the government whatever form
it might take and constitutional
government would enshrine protections of
individual rights to life liberty and property
property
now one of the things that you have to
keep in mind is that in the 19th century
in Europe at least almost every state
was still a monarchy whether it was a
constitutional monarchy in Britain or an
absolutist monarchy as in Russia or
something in between so even liberals in
their ideology are usually talking about
government that involves a king or a
queen or an emperor there was a subset
of liberals the the most radical group
if you will who were Republicans with a
small R you might say that is they
believe that the ideal State ought to be
a republic and a republic is any state
that has no Monarch so they advocated
the creation of states without monarchs
these Republicans are going to have only
limited success in the 19th century
among the Republicans even though not
all Republicans favored full-fledged
democracy uh the the Democrats with a
little D were those who wanted everyone
to have a vote and they are in in a
sense even more radical than the rest of
the Liberals
aside from political Notions about uh
liberalism there are also some other
thinkers who influence liberal ideas
about economics
nowadays we tend to think of Adam Smith
the 18th century Economist who wrote The
Wealth of Nations as a Bastion of
conservatism but he actually in the 19th
century was someone who informed liberal
thought about things because Adam Smith
argued for the idea of laissez-faire the
idea that government as much as possible
should stay out of the economy should
not regulate the economy and this was
entirely in keeping with liberal thought
in the 19th century liberal thought
favored as little government
interference in anything as possible
while conservatives tended to favor a
more statist monarchist approach
now alongside this there existed a
number of nationalistic thinkers
some of these thought about nationalism
in Fairly abstract philosophical terms
others of them were interested in making
nationalism into an active political
force let's talk first about those who
were theoreticians if you will
now one of these was the German thinker
Emmanuel Kant
is important for a number of reasons in
the history of philosophy but in respect
to the history of political thought he
is a pivotal figure in the development
of nationalist ideology he didn't
actually start out to create nationalist
ideology but his ideas helped to do so
one of the things that that Kant was
interested in was the uniqueness of Nations
Nations
and when he used the term Nation he
didn't necessarily mean State he meant
people who spoke the same language
people who were of the same ethnicity
this might be people who already had a state
state
the English were people who spoke a
Common Language shared a common
ethnicity and had an English State the
French were another people who spoke a
Common Language shared an ethnicity and
had a common state but the Germans at
this time although they spoke a Common
Language and shared an ethnicity were
spread out over close to 40 States the
Italians were in a similar position as
were a number of ethnic groups in
Southeastern Europe therefore when Kant
talks about Nations he's talking about
the groups with a common language and
ethnicity nevertheless what he
emphasizes is that each is unique that
each has its own character that each has
its own cultural peculiarities and again
the way that he gets at this is by
looking at their history
and Khan eventually came to the
conclusion that the best way for each
Nation to achieve freedom to maximize
Freedom was through the state
not to State as conservatives conceived
it necessarily with a class-oriented
monarchical society but a state which
had a constitution
this idea was picked up by a number of
his followers and among the most
prominent thinkers among the
nationalists were a lot of Germans
there's a good reason for this there
wasn't a single Germany yet many of the
Germans hoped to create a single Germany
and therefore this is a philosophical
problem that they focus on a great deal
uh the The Thinker ficta picked up on
kant's idea of the state being the ideal
source for freedom and emphasized that
greatly uh a Lutheran German Pastor by
the name of herder also put a great deal
of stress upon the importance of
creating a German Nation as did The
Thinker shelling but by far the most
influential of the German nationalist
thinkers was the great German
philosopher Hegel
now both Hegel and Kant can be very
daunting to read their writing is very
dense it's very abstract in many cases
but hegel's arguments about nationalism
can actually be summed up in a way that
is fairly simple Hegel
Hegel
started his theory by focusing upon history
history
and Hagel believed that history had
occurred in a series of stages
he identified those stages as first of
all the Oriental stage and and when he
says Oriental he doesn't mean the Far
East what he's talking about is the the
point in history when the Great
civilizations in the west were in what
we now call the Middle East in Egypt in
Mesopotamia and so on he characterized
this stage as a stage of despotism
that's his term for it the second stage
was what he called the Greco-Roman stage
in which a few people other than the
monarch enjoyed Freedom that is
aristocrats and he believed that the
ultimate stage of History would be a
third stage which he patriotically
identified as the German stage in which
all people would be free
that probably strikes you right away
that this is something of an
oversimplification of historic
periodization what you have to bear in
mind is that Hegel is doing his thinking
about this in the early 19th century
when the knowledge of medieval and
ancient history was much less than it is
now so it tended to lead to
simplifications about history regardless
of a person's ideology
what's more interesting about Hegel is
how he believed this historical process
of change from Oriental to Greco-Roman
to German stages took place or was
taking place
what he proposed is what we call a
dialectical theory of History
a dialectical theory is one in which you
have two opposing interests what Hegel
called a thesis and an antithesis that
is an existing situation or Paradigm and
an opposing situation of or Paradigm
which are in conflict
and out of that conflict between thesis
and antithesis and over a period of time
you get a new model or Paradigm through
a process of synthesis so you have a
thesis an antithesis you have struggle
and then you get a new thesis
that through the process of synthesis of
course says Hagel once you have a new
thesis there is a tendency for a new
antithesis to develop the struggle to
continue a new synthesis and so on Down
the Line
and he believed that this had occurred
in the following way in the Oriental
phase the phase of despotism the only
truly free individual in society was the
Monarch the king or the emperor so the
existing thesis was despotism
in opposition to that there was a group
The aristocracy according to Hegel who
opposed that who wanted a share of that
freedom and through struggle with the
existing despotism eventually brought
about a synthesis which gives us the
Greco-Roman period in which you have a
monarch and an aristocracy sharing power
however says Hegel there eventually is
opposition to that opposition that is
continuing in his own time in which all
people demand freedom and his belief was
that the struggle between a system
dominated by Monarch and aristocracy and
the desire of all people to have freedom
would eventually lead to a new synthesis
in which the state
especially the German state would become
the source of freedom for all hagel's
wish was for a German state with the
German Constitution which would
guarantee rights to all German people now
now
that is a
an explanation of history that is
oversimplified in all kinds of ways it
simply doesn't work when subjected to
closer analysis because in fact the kind
of conflict that Hegel describes has
occurred far more times and in far more
complex ways than his system allows for
again though it is a reasonably good
explanation for what people knew about
history at the time
where it becomes a particular interest
though is when other people began to
take up hegel's Theory
conservatives used it to justify the
existing state they said well if we look
at Hegel you know this could all go too far
far
liberals on the other hand used hegel's
dialectical structure to argue for
change to say where Hegel says things
are going is exactly where we want to go
but what really through an interesting
complexion onto all of this when was
when hegel's ideas were taken up by Karl
Marx Marx who was a a socialist and then
later on a communist before we get to
Marx however I need to talk a little bit
about the development of socialism and
again uh just as I emphasize that
conservatism and liberalism meant
different things in the 19th century
than they do now I also want to
emphasize that in the 19th century
socialism on the one hand and communism
on the other were two very distinct things
things
one grows out of the other but they are
nonetheless two different things
socialism is a mode of Life of course is
nothing new in the 19th century
socialism with a with a small s if you
like uh is something that existed
wherever uh primitive societies had
shared land or shared their goods or
shared the fruits of their labor
but socialism as a philosophy as a
political ideology is something
relatively new in the 19th century and
it too grows out of the French Revolution
Revolution
if the French Revolution suggested that
all men are equal
that all men should be free that all men
are brothers it was very easy for some
people to go from that to saying that
not only should all people have equal
Liberty and an equal role in politics
but that all men should have an equal
share of wealth and out of that grow
grows a sort of informal notion of
socialism that will become more
prominent as the 19th century goes along
uh there were in fact a handful of
socialists in France during the
revolution there was even a small group
of full-fledged French Communists who
wanted to do away with private property altogether
altogether
they were led by a French communist
named bobeff who alarmed the directory
to a considerable degree in the late
1790s but he and his followers wound up
being arrested and put in jail and
proved to be far less of a threat to the
directory than a certain fellow named
Napoleon Bonaparte turned out to be
still the ideas survived 1815 and
continued to exist and gained some
footing among people because of the
Industrial Revolution as the Industrial
Revolution progressed It produced more
and more jobs in a new sort of social
class the urban proletariat that is
people who lived in the cities who
worked for wages in factories or who
worked for wages in mines and what have
you and who did not fall into the
traditional peasant class the
traditional middle class or certain the
traditional aristocracy and these
individuals often lived in in Fairly
harsh conditions and there were
therefore were susceptible to an
ideology that proposed to improve their
lot in life
socialists in the 19th century had some
common characteristics about what they
believed for one thing they believed
that the distribution of wealth is
unjust if some people have far more
wealth than they need to survive and
others have just barely enough are not
enough at all
they also suggested that the way to deal
with this what they saw as an unjust
situation was by Common ownership of
property common ownership of the means
of production common profit from
anything that was produced so for them
in agriculture this would mean common
ownership of the land in Industry it
would mean common ownership of the
factory in mining it would mean common
ownership of the mine and so on
and they believed that each person who
worked should receive a more or less
equal share or at least Equitable share
based on what he contributed
so socialists obviously were talking
about far-reaching changes in society
changes that went well beyond what
liberals were talking about and
certainly far beyond what conservatives
found acceptable
early in the 19th century there was a a
group of thinkers who subsequently have
come to be labeled the utopian
socialists now that label is an insult
it was not adopted by the these thinkers
themselves it was used about them by
Marx and others who came later a Utopia
of course is an imaginary perfect
society and to call somebody a utopian
is in one way to suggest that he's sort
of living in a fantasy world so when
Marx and some of his communist Brethren
described the the Socialists that we're
about to discuss as utopian they didn't
mean that as a compliment at all
of course one could argue and I will
that Marx was in many ways utopian
himself but first of all let's take a
look at the so-called utopian socialists
uh the first of them was a Frenchman
interestingly a French Aristocrat the
account already de San Simon who was alarmed
alarmed
by what he saw as social and economic
injustices in France and by the way you
don't have to be a socialist or a
liberal or anything else to recognize
that there were certainly social
injustices in France at the time
uh he believed sensimal did that many of
these injustices stemmed from the
practice of laissez-faire
that is he blamed capitalism for these
injustices and he argued that the state
the French State
ought to reorganize Society in such a
way that people did not exploit one another
another
was not very specific about how that
ought to happen he is in many ways the
most abstract of the utopian socialist
because he talks about what should be
but he doesn't talk about how it should
be accomplished he is however the the
source of a quote often attributed to to
many different socialists that actually
stems from him from each according to
his capacity to each according to his
work in other words he believed that
Society should use each individual in
terms of what he was capable of doing or
she was capable of doing and reward each accordingly
