Isaac Nakhimovsky

The Closed Commercial State: Perpetual Peace and Commercial Society from Rousseau to Fichte

Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Perpetual Peace and Fichtes Theory of the State 15 Herders Letter 15 Perpetual Peace and Power Politics 17 The Citizen of Frejus and the Philosopher of Konigsberg 22 The Citizen of Frejus, the Philosopher of Konigsberg, and the Professor at Jena 35 Toward The Closed Commercial State 61 Chapter 2: Commerce and the European Commonwealth in 1800 63 Gentzs Review 63 Perpetual Peace and The Closed Commercial State 65 Fichtes History of Commerce 74 Prussia and the Anglo-French Debate of 1800 84 Fichtes Contribution to the Debate 98 Chapter 3: R epublicanization in Theory and Practice 103 Fichtes Proposal 103 Fichtes Implementation Strategy 106 The Closed Commercial State and the Political Economy of Prussian Reform 115 Fichtes Moral Challenge Continued 126 Chapter 4: Fichtes Political Economy of the General Will 130 Hestermanns Review 130 Open Commercial State versus Closed Commercial State 134 Needs and Rights in Fichtes Theory of Property 143 The Transcendental Industrialism of The Closed Commercial State 157 Conclusion 166 Bibliography 177 Index 195

Vattel's theory of the international order: Commerce and the balance of power in the Law of Nations

Vattels Law of Nations (1758) claimed that a system of independent states could maintain the liberty of each without undermining the ideal of an international society. The chief institution serving this purpose was the balance of power. In Vattels account, the balance of power could be stabilized if it operated primarily through a process of commercial preferences and restrictions. These limits on how states ought to defend themselves were grounded in Vattels thoroughly forgotten writings on the mid-eighteenth-century luxury debates, which addressed the political economy of reforming the state and pacifying the international order. An examination of Vattels Law of Nations in this context shows that his approach to the law of nations should not be dismissed as a capitulation to the harsh reality of international politics.

An International Dilemma: The Postwar Utopianism of Gunnar Myrdal's Beyond the Welfare State

Abstract:This article shows how Myrdal sought to build on the success of his An American Dilemma (1954) by showing American liberals that the conduct of Western states toward the developing postcolonial world was in conflict with their fundamental ideals. Judging by his contacts at Yale, Myrdal’s Beyond the Welfare State (1960) was aimed at an audience that, in the late 1950s, perceived America’s relationship to the postcolonial world to be at a critical juncture. Myrdal’s book offered them an attractive and reassuring, but ultimately unconvincing, narrative that reconciled the Western commitment to national welfare with international solidarity.

The enlightened epicureanism of Jacques Abbadie: L'art de se connoître soi-même and the morality of self-interest

Jacques Abbadies L’Art de se connoı^tre soi-même (1692) was an influential attempt to describe an alternative to Jansenist moral theory. Abbadie drew upon René Descartes’ theory of the passions in order to arrive at an Epicurean moral theory that was based on the pursuit of happiness as pleasure, but that avoided the materialism of Epicurean physics. In this way, Abbadie was able to distinguish between the natural and legitimate principle of self-love and its corruption, and to argue that genuine moral behaviour and ultimately even human moral perfection could arise from the former.