01:510:102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 22: Germaine De Staël, Franz Liszt, Immanuel Kant
12 May 2018
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Chapter 22 - Political Upheavals and Social Transformations
Congress of Vienna 1814-1815
• Attempted to reconstruct Europe after the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars
• Meeting was hosted and controlled by the Austrian Foreign Minister Klemens Von
Metternich
• Castlereagh: England
• Tallyrand: France
• Fredrick William III: Prussia
• Alexander I: Russia
Goal: Accomplish reconstruction through the creation of a "balance of powers" among the great
European states
Five Main Principles:
• Powers fighting Napoleon stick together, rather than compete against one another
1. Quadruple Alliance
• Napoleon had to be deposed and the Bourbon monarchy restored
1. Principle of Legitimacy
• Principle rights of monarchs was to be upheld in the face of the right to "self-
determination", which would have supported revolution
• The great nations would no longer seek to cannibalize smaller states as a means to
increasing their power, as had been the model in the 18th century
• It was the responsibility of the great powers of Europe to maintain and control existing
boarders and boundaries of all nations by working together
Results of the Congress of Vienna
• France: 1792 boarders Louis XVIII were restored
• Netherlands was created as a buffer against French power
• Poland remained weak and partitioned among their three powerful neighbors
• Alliance system was implemented to deal with future problems
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Problem: Congress of Vienna was trying to undo history. The Napoleonic Wars spread
the ideals of revolution and nationalism, which once unleashed could not be undone.
New Ideologies
• Conservatism: People who supported traditional monarchical rule
1. Often times sought to limit opposition by limiting free speech and self expression
• Relied on the use of autocratic power
• Believed that society needed government to maintain order
• Metternich is a classic example
•
Liberalism: Grew out of the belief of the freedom of the individual and the corruptibility
of power
1. Based on Enlightenment rationalism, liberals sought the right to vote, civil
liberties, legal equality, constitutional government, parliamentary sovereignty and
a free market economy.
2. Believed that less government was better government, the less interference
the better
Jeremy Bentham
• followed the liberal belief of utilitarianism (greatest happiness for the greatest number of
people)
1. Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation
2. Rational of Punishments and Rewards
• Argued that social harmony was the only objective more important than personal liberty
James Mills (son of John Stewart Mills) rejected Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarian beliefs
• Placed a greater emphasis on human emotion and accused Bentham of “mass tyranny”
1. On Liberty (1859)
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2. Priniciples of Political Economy (1848), applied economic doctrines to social
problems
3. Later in life, began to question sacred status of private property
David Ricardo, wrote Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1817)
• Argued that govt. should not intervene in trade
• “iron law of wages”: wages will inevitably fall to subsistence levels
• Reaction to Ricardo was to call for limited govt. intervention to the “iron law of wages”
3. Romanticism: Intellectual movement of the late 18th and first half 19th centuries, both
conservatives and liberals alike embraced and rejected Romanticism
• Romantics shared a common view of the world, who rejected the confinement of
classical forms and refused to accept the supremacy of reason over emotions
1. Mediums: poetry, painting, literature, music, architecture, literature
• Romantics valued nature (19th century English gardens v. Versailles gardens)
• Romantics valued intuition over scientific learning
• Embraced Immanuel Kant, all knowledge is subjective (based on our own experience)
• Germaine de Stael: founder of French romanticism
• Victor Hugo: French romantic poet, wrote Notre-Dame de Paris and Les Miserables –
provided a view of social change in the FR
• Frederic Chopin and Franz Liszt (musicians)
• J.M.W. Turner painter English landscapes
• Eugene Delacroix painter – iconoclastic French scenes, strong political messages
(Liberty Leading the People, 1831)
Romanticism’s validation of the individual and the individual’s experience, justification of
subjective knowledge challenged traditional authority
• Romantic’s involvement in politics varied, but the movement led to a new understanding
life
4. Nationalism: a movement which sought to create a collective identity and
political allegiance of a people based upon a common cultural history /
understanding.
• Focused on the people rather than the monarch as a nation, seen
as a threat by the great powers (Congress of Vienna)
• Spread by the French Revolution
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