PHIL2634 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Democratic Peace Theory, Cosmopolitanism, Political Philosophy
Document Summary
(8): progress, cosmopolitanism, and law: kant and hegel. Conditions in germany were very different to either france or england. In fact, before 1871, we cannot speak of germany" in the modern sense as a nation-state . Medieval germania" was a region of europe with literally hundreds of different political entities , some large, some small. These had gradually been consolidated into larger units , but at the end of the 1700s there were still many independent kingdoms and principalities . Many german thinkers looked at the political developments taking place in france and britain and wanted to try and emulate them. The two greatest philosophers of the era were immanuel kant and georg wilhelm friedrich. Hegel. they were both wide-ranging thinkers but political philosophy was a major concern for both of them. Kant was writing in the kingdom of prussia which was committed to modernisation but in a very top-down authoritarian manner in which public criticism was not readily accepted.
