Counter-Enlightenment

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-Enlightenment 

 

Commentators beginning in the mid 20th century have used the term Counter-Enlightenment to describe multiple strains of thought that arose in the late 18th and early 19th centuries in opposition to the 18th-century Enlightenment.

Though the first known use of the term in English was in 1949 and there were several uses of it, including one by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, Counter-Enlightenment is usually associated with Isaiah Berlin, who is often credited for re-inventing it. The starting point of discussion on this concept in English started with Isaiah Berlin's 1973 Essay, The Counter-Enlightenment. He published widely about the Enlightenment and its challengers and did much to popularise the concept of a Counter-Enlightenment movement that he characterized as relativist, anti-rationalist, vitalist, and organic, which he associated most closely with German Romanticism.

Development and significant people

Joseph-Marie, Comte de Maistre was one of the more prominent altar-and-throne counter-revolutionaries who vehemently opposed Enlightenment ideas.

Early stages

Despite criticism of the Enlightenment being a widely discussed topic in twentieth-century thought, the term 'Counter-Enlightenment' was underdeveloped. It was first mentioned briefly in English in William Barrett's 1949 article "Art, Aristocracy and Reason" in Partisan Review. He used the term again in his 1958 book on existentialism, Irrational Man; however, his comment on Enlightenment criticism was very limited. In Germany, the expression "Gegen-Aufklärung" has a longer history. It was probably coined by Friedrich Nietzsche in "Nachgelassene Fragmente" in 1877.

Lewis White Beck used this term in his Early German Philosophy (1969), a book about Counter-Enlightenment in Germany. Beck claims that there is a counter-movement arising in Germany in reaction to Frederick II's secular authoritarian state. On the other hand, Johann Georg Hamann and his fellow philosophers believe that a more organic conception of social and political life, a more vitalistic view of nature, and an appreciation for beauty and the spiritual life of man have been neglected by the eighteenth century.

Isaiah Berlin

Isaiah Berlin established this term's place in the history of ideas. He used it to refer to a movement that arose primarily in late 18th- and early 19th-century Germany against the rationalism, universalism and empiricism, which are commonly associated with the Enlightenment. Berlin's essay "The Counter-Enlightenment" was first published in 1973, and later reprinted in a collection of his works, Against the Current, in 1981. The term has been more widely used since.

Isaiah Berlin traces the Counter-Enlightenment back to J. G. Hamann (shown).

Berlin argues that, while there were opponents of the Enlightenment outside of Germany (e.g. Joseph de Maistre) and before the 1770s (e.g. Giambattista Vico), Counter-Enlightenment thought did not start until the Germans 'rebelled against the dead hand of France in the realms of culture, art and philosophy, and avenged themselves by launching the great counter-attack against the Enlightenment.' This German reaction to the imperialistic universalism of the French Enlightenment and Revolution, which had been forced on them first by the francophile Frederick II of Prussia, then by the armies of Revolutionary France and finally by Napoleon, was crucial to the shift of consciousness that occurred in Europe at this time, leading eventually to Romanticism. The consequence of this revolt against the Enlightenment was pluralism. The opponents to the Enlightenment played a more crucial role than its proponents, some of whom were monists, whose political, intellectual and ideological offspring have been terreur and totalitarianism.

Darrin McMahon

In his book Enemies of the Enlightenment (2001), historian Darrin McMahon extends the Counter-Enlightenment back to pre-Revolutionary France and down to the level of 'Grub Street,' thereby marking a major advance on Berlin's intellectual and Germanocentric view. McMahon focuses on the early opponents to the Enlightenment in France, unearthing a long-forgotten 'Grub Street' literature in the late 18th and early 19th centuries aimed at the philosophes. He delves into the obscure world of the 'low Counter-Enlightenment' that attacked the encyclopédistes and fought to prevent the dissemination of Enlightenment ideas in the second half of the century. Many people from earlier times attacked the Enlightenment for undermining religion and the social and political order. It later became a major theme of conservative criticism of the Enlightenment. After the French Revolution, it appeared to vindicate the warnings of the anti-philosophes in the decades prior to 1789.

Graeme Garrard

Graeme Garrard traces the origin of the Counter-Enlightenment to Rousseau.

 

Cardiff University professor Graeme Garrard claims that historian William R. Everdell was the first to situate Rousseau as the "founder of the Counter-Enlightenment" in his 1971 dissertation and in his 1987 book, Christian Apologetics in France, 1730–1790: The Roots of Romantic Religion. In his 1996 article, "the Origin of the Counter-Enlightenment: Rousseau and the New Religion of Sincerity", in the American Political Science Review (Vol. 90, No. 2), Arthur M. Melzer corroborates Everdell's view in placing the origin of the Counter-Enlightenment in the religious writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, further showing Rousseau as the man who fired the first shot in the war between the Enlightenment and its opponents. Graeme Garrard follows Melzer in his "Rousseau's Counter-Enlightenment" (2003). This contradicts Berlin's depiction of Rousseau as a philosophe (albeit an erratic one) who shared the basic beliefs of his Enlightenment contemporaries. But similar to McMahon, Garrard traces the beginning of Counter-Enlightenment thought back to France and prior to the German Sturm und Drang movement of the 1770s. Garrard's book Counter-Enlightenments (2006) broadens the term even further, arguing against Berlin that there was no single 'movement' called 'The Counter-Enlightenment'. Rather, there have been many Counter-Enlightenments, from the middle of the 18th century to 20th-century Enlightenment among critical theorists, postmodernists and feminists. The Enlightenment has opponents on all points of its ideological compass, from the far left to the far right, and all points in between. Each of the Enlightenment's challengers depicted it as they saw it or wanted others to see it, resulting in a vast range of portraits, many of which are not only different but incompatible.

James Schmidt

The idea of Counter-Enlightenment has evolved in the following years. The historian James Schmidt questioned the idea of 'Enlightenment' and therefore of the existence of a movement opposing it. As the conception of 'Enlightenment' has become more complex and difficult to maintain, so has the idea of the 'Counter-Enlightenment'. Advances in Enlightenment scholarship in the last quarter-century have challenged the stereotypical view of the 18th century as an 'Age of Reason', leading Schmidt to speculate on whether the Enlightenment might not actually be a creation of its opponents, but the other way round. The fact that the term 'Enlightenment' was first used in 1894 in English to refer to a historical period supports the argument that it was a late construction projected back onto the 18th century.

The French Revolution

Political thinker Edmund Burke opposed the French Revolution in his Reflections on the Revolution in France.

By the mid-1790s, the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution fueled a major reaction against the Enlightenment. Many leaders of the French Revolution and their supporters made Voltaire and Rousseau, as well as Marquis de Condorcet's ideas of reason, progress, anti-clericalism, and emancipation central themes to their movement. It led to an unavoidable backlash to the Enlightenment as there were people opposed to the revolution. Many counter-revolutionary writers, such as Edmund Burke, Joseph de Maistre and Augustin Barruel, asserted an intrinsic link between the Enlightenment and the Revolution. They blamed the Enlightenment for undermining traditional beliefs that sustained the ancien regime. As the Revolution became increasingly bloody, the idea of 'Enlightenment' was discredited, too. Hence, the French Revolution and its aftermath have attributed to the development of Counter-Enlightenment thought.

Edmund Burke was among the first of the Revolution's opponents to relate the philosophes to the instability in France in the 1790s. His Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) refers the Enlightenment as the principle cause of the French revolution. In Burke's opinion, the philosophes provided the revolutionary leaders with the theories on which their political schemes were based.

Augustin Barruel's Counter-Enlightenment ideas were well developed before the revolution. He worked as an editor for the anti-philosophes literary journal, L'Année Littéraire. Barruel argues in his Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism (1797) that the Revolution was the consequence of a conspiracy of philosophes and freemasons.

In Considerations on France (1797), Joseph de Maistre interprets the Revolution as divine punishment for the sins of the Enlightenment. According to him, "the revolutionary storm is an overwhelming force of nature unleashed on Europe by God that mocked human pretensions."

Romanticism

In the 1770s, the 'Sturm und Drang' movement started in Germany. It questioned some key assumptions and implications of the Aufklärung and the term 'Romanticism' was first coined. Many early Romantic writers such as Chateaubriand, Federich von Hardenberg (Novalis) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge inherited the Counter-Revolutionary antipathy towards the philosophes. All three directly blamed the philosophes in France and the Aufklärer in Germany for devaluing beauty, spirit and history in favour of a view of man as a soulless machine and a view of the universe as a meaningless, disenchanted void lacking richness and beauty. One particular concern to early Romantic writers was the allegedly anti-religious nature of the Enlightenment since the philosophes and Aufklarer were generally deists, opposed to revealed religion. Some historians, such as Hamann, nevertheless contend that this view of the Enlightenment as an age hostile to religion is common ground between these Romantic writers and many of their conservative Counter-Revolutionary predecessors. However, not many have commented on the Enlightenment, except for Chateaubriand, Novalis, and Coleridge, since the term itself did not exist at the time and most of their contemporaries ignored it.

The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, c. 1797, 21.5 cm × 15 cm. One of the most famous prints of the Caprichos.

 

The historian Jacques Barzun argues that Romanticism has its roots in the Enlightenment. It was not anti-rational, but rather balanced rationality against the competing claims of intuition and the sense of justice. This view is expressed in Goya's Sleep of Reason, in which the nightmarish owl offers the dozing social critic of Los Caprichos, a piece of drawing chalk. Even the rational critic is inspired by irrational dream-content under the gaze of the sharp-eyed lynx. Marshall Brown makes much the same argument as Barzun in Romanticism and Enlightenment, questioning the stark opposition between these two periods.

By the middle of the 19th century, the memory of the French Revolution was fading and so was the influence of Romanticism. In this optimistic age of science and industry, there were few critics of the Enlightenment, and few explicit defenders. Friedrich Nietzsche is a notable and highly influential exception. After an initial defence of the Enlightenment in his so-called 'middle period' (late-1870s to early 1880s), Nietzsche turned vehemently against it.

Totalitarianism

In the intellectual discourse of the mid-20th century, two concepts emerged simultaneously in the West: enlightenment and totalitarianism. After World War II, the former re-emerged as a key organizing concept in social and political thought and the history of ideas. The Counter-Enlightenment literature blaming the 18th-century trust in reason for 20th-century totalitarianism also resurged along with it. The locus classicus of this view is Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947), which traces the degeneration of the general concept of enlightenment from ancient Greece (epitomized by the cunning 'bourgeois' hero Odysseus) to 20th-century fascism. They mentioned little about Soviet communism, only referring to it as a regressive totalitarianism that "clung all too desperately to the heritage of bourgeois philosophy".

The authors take 'enlightenment' as their target including its 18th-century form – which we now call 'The Enlightenment'. They claim it is epitomized by the Marquis de Sade. However, there were philosophers rejecting Adorno and Horkheimer's claim that Sade's moral skepticism is actually coherent, or that it reflects Enlightenment thought.

Many postmodern writers and feminists (e.g. Jane Flax) have made similar arguments. They regard the Enlightenment conception of reason as totalitarian, and as not having been enlightened enough since. For Adorno and Horkheimer, though it banishes myth it falls back into a further myth, that of individualism and formal (or mythic) equality under instrumental reason. 

Michel Foucault, for example, argued that attitudes towards the "insane" during the late-18th and early 19th centuries show that supposedly enlightened notions of humane treatment were not universally adhered to, but instead, the Age of Reason had to construct an image of "Unreason" against which to take an opposing stand. Berlin himself, although no postmodernist, argues that the Enlightenment's legacy in the 20th century has been monism (which he claims favours political authoritarianism), whereas the legacy of the Counter-Enlightenment has been pluralism (associates with liberalism) These are two of the 'strange reversals' of modern intellectual history.

Isaiah Berlin

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaiah_Berlin 

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Sir Isaiah Berlin OM CBE FBA
Berlin in 1983
Born	6 June 1909 Riga, Livonia, Russian Empire
Died	5 November 1997 (aged 88) Oxford, England
Alma mater	Corpus Christi College, Oxford
Era	20th-century philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Analytic social liberalism
Institutions	St Paul's School, London New College, Oxford All Souls College, Oxford Wolfson College, Oxford
Doctoral students	Frederick C. Beiser James H. Billington David McLellan Larry Siedentop Yuli Tamir Charles Taylor
Other notable students	Marshall Berman Christopher Hitchens[citation needed] Bob Rae
Main interests	Political philosophy philosophy of history history of ideas ethics Marxism modern history Russian history Russian literature Romanticism
Notable ideas	Negative/Positive liberty distinction Counter-Enlightenment value pluralism

Sir Isaiah Berlin OM CBE FBA (6 June 1909 – 5 November 1997) was a Latvian-born British social and political theorist, philosopher and historian of ideas. Although he became increasingly averse to writing for publication, his improvised lectures and talks were sometimes recorded and transcribed, and many of his spoken words were converted into published essays and books, both by himself and by others, especially his principal editor from 1974, Henry Hardy.

Born in Riga (now capital of Latvia, then a part of the Russian empire) in 1909, he moved to Petrograd, Russia, at the age of six, where he witnessed the revolutions of 1917. In 1921 his family moved to the UK, and he was educated at St Paul's School, London, and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. In 1932, at the age of twenty-three, Berlin was elected to a prize fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford. In addition to his own prolific output, he translated works by Ivan Turgenev from Russian into English and, during World War II, worked for the British Diplomatic Service. From 1957 to 1967 he was Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at the University of Oxford. He was president of the Aristotelian Society from 1963 to 1964. In 1966, he played a critical role in creating Wolfson College, Oxford, and became its founding President. Berlin was appointed a CBE in 1946, knighted in 1957, and appointed to the Order of Merit in 1971. He was President of the British Academy from 1974 to 1978. He also received the 1979 Jerusalem Prize for his lifelong defence of civil liberties, and on 25 November 1994 he received the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws at the University of Toronto, for which occasion he prepared a "short credo" (as he called it in a letter to a friend), now known as "A Message to the Twenty-First Century", to be read on his behalf at the ceremony.

An annual Isaiah Berlin Lecture is held at the Hampstead Synagogue, at Wolfson College, Oxford, at the British Academy, and in Riga. Berlin's work on liberal theory and on value pluralism, as well as his opposition to Marxism and Communism, has had a lasting influence. In its obituary of the scholar, the Independent stated that:

Isaiah Berlin was often described, especially in his old age, by means of superlatives: the world's greatest talker, the century's most inspired reader, one of the finest minds of our time [...]. [T]here is no doubt that he showed in more than one direction the unexpectedly large possibilities open to us at the top end of the range of human potential.

Early life

Plaque marking what was once Berlin's childhood home (designed by Mikhail Eisenstein) in Riga, engraved in Latvian, English, and Hebrew with the tribute "The British philosopher Sir Isaiah Berlin lived in this house 1909–1915"

 

The Angliyskaya Embankment in Saint Petersburg, where Berlin lived as a child during the Russian Revolutions

 

Born on 6 June 1909, Berlin was the only surviving child of a wealthy Jewish family, the son of Mendel Berlin, a timber trader (and a direct descendant of Shneur Zalman, founder of Chabad Hasidism), and his wife Marie, née Volshonok. His family owned a timber company, one of the largest in the Baltics, as well as forests in Russia, from where the timber was floated down the Daugava river to its sawmills in Riga. As his father, who was the head of the Riga Association of Timber Merchants, worked for the company in its dealings with Western companies, he was fluent not only in Yiddish, Russian and German, but also French and English. His Russian-speaking mother, Marie (Musya) Volshonok, was also fluent in Yiddish and Latvian. Isaiah Berlin spent his first six years in Riga, and later lived in Andreapol (a small timber town near Pskov, effectively owned by the family business) and Petrograd (now St Petersburg). In Petrograd, the family lived first on Vasilevsky Island and then on Angliiskii Prospekt on the mainland. On Angliiskii Prospekt, they shared their building with other tenants, including Rimsky-Korsakov's daughter, an assistant Minister of Finnish affairs and Princess Emeretinsky. With the onset of the October Revolution of 1917, the fortunes of the building's tenants were rapidly reversed, with both the Princess Emeretinsky and Rimsky-Korsakov's daughter soon being made to stoke the building's stoves and sweep the yards.^[15] Berlin witnessed the February and October Revolutions both from his apartment windows and from walks in the city with his governess, where he recalled the crowds of protesters marching on the Winter Palace Square.

One particular childhood memory of the February Revolution marked his life-long opposition to violence, with Berlin saying:

Well I was seven and a half and something, and then I was – did I tell you the terrible sight of the policeman being dragged – not policeman, a sharp shooter from the rooftop – being dragged away by a lynching bee […] In the early parts of the revolution, the only people who remained loyal to the Tsar was the police, the Pharaon, I've never seen [the term] Pharaon in the histories of the Russian Revolution. They existed, and they did sniping from the rooftops or attics. I saw a man like that, a Pharaon […]. That's not in the books, but it is true. And they sniped at the revolutionaries from roofs or attics and things. And this man was dragged down, obviously, by a crowd, and was being obviously taken to a not very agreeable fate, and I saw this man struggling in the middle of a crowd of about twenty […] [T]hat gave me a permanent horror of violence which has remained with me for the rest of my life.

Feeling increasingly oppressed by life under Bolshevik rule where the family was identified as bourgeoisie, the family left Petrograd, on 5 October 1920, for Riga, but encounters with anti-Semitism and difficulties with the Latvian authorities convinced them to leave, and they moved to Britain in early 1921 (Mendel in January, Isaiah and Marie at the beginning of February), when Berlin was eleven. In London, the family first stayed in Surbiton where he was sent to Arundel House for preparatory school, then within the year they bought a house in Kensington, and six years later in Hampstead 

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Berlin's native language was Russian, and his English was virtually nonexistent at first, but he reached proficiency in English within a year at around the age of 12. In addition to Russian and English, Berlin was fluent in French, German and Italian, and knew Hebrew, Latin, and Ancient Greek. Despite his fluency in English, however, in later life Berlin's Oxford English accent would sound increasingly Russian in its vowel sounds. Whenever he was described as an English philosopher, Berlin always insisted that he was not an English philosopher, but would forever be a Russian Jew: "I am a Russian Jew from Riga, and all my years in England cannot change this. I love England, I have been well treated here, and I cherish many things about English life, but I am a Russian Jew; that is how I was born and that is who I will be to the end of my life."

Education

Berlin was educated at St Paul's School in London, where he made astonishing feats in the school's Junior Debating Society and the School Union Society. The rapid, even flow of his ideas, the succession of confident references to authors whom most of his contemporaries had never heard, left them mildly stupefied. Yet there was no backlash, no resentment at these breathless marathons, because Berlin's essential modesty and good manners eliminated jealousy and disarmed hostility.

After leaving St Paul's, Berlin applied to Balliol College, Oxford, but was denied admission after a chaotic interview. Berlin decided to apply again, only to a different college: Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Berlin was admitted and commenced his literae humaniores degree. He graduated in 1928, taking first-class honours in his final examinations and winning the John Locke Prize for his performance in the philosophy papers, in which he outscored A. J. Ayer. He subsequently took another degree at Oxford in philosophy, politics and economics, again taking first-class honours after less than a year on the course. He was appointed a tutor in philosophy at New College, Oxford, and soon afterwards was elected to a prize fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford, the first unconverted Jewish to achieve this fellowship at All Souls.

While still a student, he befriended Ayer (with whom he was to share a lifelong amicable rivalry), Stuart Hampshire, Richard Wollheim, Maurice Bowra, Stephen Spender, Inez Pearn, J. L. Austin and Nicolas Nabokov. In 1940, he presented a philosophical paper on other minds to a meeting attended by Ludwig Wittgenstein at Cambridge University. Wittgenstein rejected the argument of his paper in discussion but praised Berlin for his intellectual honesty and integrity. Berlin was to remain at Oxford for the rest of his life, apart from a period working for British Information Services in New York from 1940 to 1942, and for the British embassies in Washington, DC, and Moscow from then until 1946. Prior to this service, however, Berlin was barred from participation in the British war effort as a result of his being born in Latvia, and because his left arm had been damaged at birth. In April 1943 he wrote a confidential analysis of members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for the Foreign Office; he described Senator Arthur Capper from Kansas as a solid, stolid, 78-year-old reactionary from the corn belt, who is the very voice of Mid-Western "grass root" isolationism. For his services, he was appointed a CBE in the 1946 New Year Honours. Meetings with Anna Akhmatova in Leningrad in November 1945 and January 1946 had a powerful effect on both of them, and serious repercussions for Akhmatova (who immortalised the meetings in her poetry).

Personal life

In 1956 Berlin married Aline Halban, née de Gunzbourg (1915–2014) who was the former wife of an Oxford colleague and a former winner of the ladies' golf championship of France. She was from an exiled half Russian-aristocratic and half ennobled-Jewish banking and petroleum family (her mother was Yvonne Deutsch de la Meurthe, granddaughter of Henri Deutsch de la Meurthe) based in Paris.

The Berlin Quadrangle, Wolfson College

He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1959. He was instrumental in the founding, in 1966, of a new graduate college at Oxford University: Wolfson College. The college was founded to be a centre of academic excellence which, unlike many other colleges at Oxford, would also be based on a strong egalitarian and democratic ethos. Berlin was a member of the Founding Council of the Rothermere American Institute at Oxford University. As later revealed, when he was asked to evaluate the academic credentials of Isaac Deutscher, Isaiah Berlin argued against a promotion, because of the profoundly pro-communist militancy of the candidate.

Berlin died in Oxford on 5 November 1997, aged 88. He is buried there in Wolvercote Cemetery. On his death, the obituarist of The Independent wrote: "he was a man of formidable intellectual power with a rare gift for understanding a wide range of human motives, hopes and fears, and a prodigiously energetic capacity for enjoyment – of life, of people in all their variety, of their ideas and idiosyncrasies, of literature, of music, of art". The front page of The New York Times concluded: "His was an exuberant life crowded with joys – the joy of thought, the joy of music, the joy of good friends. ... The theme that runs throughout his work is his concern with liberty and the dignity of human beings .... Sir Isaiah radiated well-being."

Thought

Though like Our Lord and Socrates he does not publish much, he thinks and says a great deal and has had an enormous influence on our times

—Maurice Bowra on Isaiah Berlin's publishing record.

Lecturing and composition

Berlin did not enjoy writing, and his published work (including both his essays and books) was produced by means of conversational dictation to a tape-recorder, or through the transcription of his improvised lectures and talks from recorded tapes. The work of transcribing his spoken word often placed a strain on his secretaries. This method of dictation even extended to his letters, which were produced by speaking to a Grundig tape recorder, often while simultaneously in conversation with his friends, and then transcribed with difficulty by his secretary, who at times would inadvertently include his jokes and laughter into the transcribed text itself. The results are a darting and leaping style of thought, which literally reflected his own conversation, and the ornate grammar and punctuation which was contained in his everyday speech.

"Two Concepts of Liberty"

Berlin is popularly known for his essay "Two Concepts of Liberty", delivered in 1958 as his inaugural lecture as Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at Oxford. The essay, with its analytical approach to the definition of political concepts, reintroduced the methods of analytic philosophy to the study of political philosophy. Spurred by his background in philosophy of language, Berlin argued for a nuanced and subtle understanding of our political terminology, where what was superficially understood as a single concept could mask a plurality of different uses and therefore meanings. Berlin argued that these multiple and differing concepts, otherwise masked by rhetorical conflations, showed the plurality and incompatibility of human values, and the need for us to distinguish and trade off analytically between, rather than conflate, them if we are to avoid disguising underlying value-conflicts. The two concepts are 'negative freedom', or freedom from interference, which Berlin derived from the British tradition, and 'positive freedom', or freedom as self-mastery, which asks not what we are free from, but what we are free to do. Berlin points out that these two different conceptions of liberty can clash with each other.

Counter-Enlightenment

Berlin's lectures on the Enlightenment and its critics (especially Giambattista Vico, Johann Gottfried Herder, Joseph de Maistre and Johann Georg Hamann, to whose views Berlin referred as the Counter-Enlightenment) contributed to his advocacy of an irreducibly pluralist ethical ontology. In Three Critics of the Enlightenment, Berlin argues that Hamann was one of the first thinkers to conceive of human cognition as language – the articulation and use of symbols. Berlin saw Hamann as having recognised as the rationalist's Cartesian fallacy the notion that there are "clear and distinct" ideas "which can be contemplated by a kind of inner eye", without the use of language – a recognition greatly sharpened in the 20th century by Wittgenstein's private language argument.

Value pluralism

For Berlin, values are creations of mankind, rather than products of nature waiting to be discovered. He argued, on the basis of the epistemic and empathetic access we have to other cultures across history, that the nature of mankind is such that certain values – the importance of individual liberty, for instance – will hold true across cultures, and this is what he meant by objective pluralism. Berlin's argument was partly grounded in Wittgenstein's later theory of language, which argued that inter-translatability was supervenient on a similarity in forms of life, with the inverse implication that our epistemic access to other cultures entails an ontologically contiguous value-structure. With his account of value pluralism, he proposed the view that moral values may be equally, or rather incommensurably, valid and yet incompatible, and may, therefore, come into conflict with one another in a way that admits of no resolution without reference to particular contexts of a decision. When values clash, it may not be that one is more important than the other: keeping a promise may conflict with the pursuit of truth; liberty may clash with social justice. Moral conflicts are "an intrinsic, irremovable element in human life". "These collisions of values are of the essence of what they are and what we are." For Berlin, this clashing of incommensurate values within, no less than between, individuals, constitutes the tragedy of human life. Alan Brown suggests, however, that Berlin ignores the fact that values are commensurable in the extent to which they contribute to the human good.

"The Hedgehog and the Fox"

"The Hedgehog and the Fox", a title referring to a fragment of the ancient Greek poet Archilochus, was one of Berlin's most popular essays with the general public, reprinted in numerous editions. Of the classification that gives the essay its title, Berlin once said "I never meant it very seriously. I meant it as a kind of enjoyable intellectual game, but it was taken seriously."

Berlin expands upon this idea to divide writers and thinkers into two categories: hedgehogs, who view the world through the lens of a single defining idea (examples given include Plato), and foxes, who draw on a wide variety of experiences and for whom the world cannot be boiled down to a single idea (examples given include William Shakespeare: "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt in our philosophy". Hamlet 1.5 167–168).

Positive liberty

Berlin promoted the notion of "positive liberty" in the sense of an intrinsic link between positive freedom and participatory, Athenian-style, democracy. There is a contrast with "negative liberty." Liberals in the English-speaking tradition call for negative liberty, meaning a realm of private autonomy from which the state is legally excluded. In contrast French liberals ever since the French Revolution more often promote “positive liberty”—that is, liberty insofar as it is tethered to collectively defined ends. Thewy praise the state as the state as an essential tool to emancipate the people.

Other work

Berlin's lecture "Historical Inevitability" (1954) focused on a controversy in the philosophy of history. Given the choice, whether one believes that "the lives of entire peoples and societies have been decisively influenced by exceptional individuals" or, conversely, that whatever happens occurs as a result of impersonal forces oblivious to human intentions, Berlin rejected both options and the choice itself as nonsensical. Berlin is also well known for his writings on Russian intellectual history, most of which are collected in Russian Thinkers (1978; 2nd ed. 2008) and edited, as most of Berlin's work, by Henry Hardy (in the case of this volume, jointly with Aileen Kelly). Berlin also contributed a number of essays on leading intellectuals and political figures of his time, including Winston Churchill, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Chaim Weizmann. Eighteen of these character sketches were published together as "Personal Impressions" (1980; 2nd ed., with four additional essays, 1998; 3rd ed., with a further ten essays, 2014).

Commemoration

A number of commemorative events for Isaiah Berlin are held at Oxford University, as well as scholarships given out in his name, including the Wolfson Isaiah Berlin Clarendon Scholarship, The Isaiah Berlin Visiting Professorship, and the annual Isaiah Berlin Lectures. The Berlin Quadrangle of Wolfson College, Oxford, is named after him. The Isaiah Berlin Association of Latvia was founded in 2011 to promote the ideas and values of Sir Isaiah Berlin, in particular by organising an annual Isaiah Berlin day and lectures in his memory. At the British Academy, the Isaiah Berlin lecture series has been held since 2001. Many volumes from Berlin's personal library were donated to Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beer Sheva and form part of the Aranne Library collection. The Isaiah Berlin Room, on the third floor of the library, is a replica of his study at the University of Oxford. There is also the Isaiah Berlin Society which takes place at his alma mater of St Paul's School. The society invites world famous academics to share their research into the answers to life's great concerns and to respond to students' questions. In the last few years they have hosted: A.C. Grayling, Brad Hooker, Jonathan Dancy, John Cottingham, Tim Crane, Arif Ahmed, Hugh Mellor and David Papineau.

Published works

Apart from Unfinished Dialogue, all books/editions listed from 1978 onwards are edited (or, where stated, co-edited) by Henry Hardy, and all but Karl Marx are compilations or transcripts of lectures, essays, and letters. Details given are of first and latest UK editions, and current US editions. Most titles are also available as e-books. The twelve titles marked with a '+' are available in the US market in revised editions from Princeton University Press, with additional material by Berlin, and (except in the case of Karl Marx) new forewords by contemporary authors; the 5th edition of Karl Marx is also available in the UK.

• +Karl Marx: His Life and Environment, Thornton Butterworth, 1939. 5th ed., Karl Marx, 2013, Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-15650-7.
• The Age of Enlightenment: The Eighteenth-Century Philosophers, New American Library, 1956. Out of print. Second edition (2017) available online only.
• +The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy's View of History, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1953. 2nd ed., 2014, Phoenix. ISBN 978-1-7802-2843-3. 2nd US ed., Princeton University Press, 2013. ISBN 978-1-4008-4663-4.
• Four Essays on Liberty, Oxford University Press, 1969. Superseded by Liberty.
• Vico and Herder: Two Studies in the History of Ideas, Chatto and Windus, 1976. Superseded by Three Critics of the Enlightenment.
• Russian Thinkers (edited by Henry Hardy and Aileen Kelly), Hogarth Press, 1978. 2nd ed. (revised by Henry Hardy), Penguin, 2008. ISBN 978-0-14-144220-4.
• +Concepts and Categories: Philosophical Essays, Hogarth Press, 1978. Pimlico. ISBN 978-0-7126-6552-0. 2nd ed., 2013, Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-15749-8.
• +Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas, Hogarth Press, 1979. Pimlico. ISBN 978-0-7126-6690-9. 2nd ed., 2013, Princeton University Press.
• +Personal Impressions, Hogarth Press, 1980. 2nd ed., Pimlico, 1998. ISBN 978-0-7126-6601-5. 3rd ed., 2014, Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-15770-2.
• +The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas, John Murray, 1990. 2nd ed., Pimlico, 2013. ISBN 978-1-8459-5208-2. 2nd ed., 2013, Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-15593-7.
• The Magus of the North: J. G. Hamann and the Origins of Modern Irrationalism, John Murray, 1993. Superseded by Three Critics of the Enlightenment.
• +The Sense of Reality: Studies in Ideas and their History, Chatto & Windus, 1996. Pimlico. ISBN 978-0-7126-7367-9. 2nd ed., 2019, Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-18287-2.
• The Proper Study of Mankind: An Anthology of Essays (edited by Henry Hardy and Roger Hausheer) [a one-volume selection from the whole of Berlin's work], Chatto & Windus, 1997. 2nd ed., Vintage, 2013. ISBN 978-0-0995-8276-2.
• +The Roots of Romanticism (lectures delivered in 1965), Chatto & Windus, 1999. Pimlico. ISBN 978-0-7126-6544-5. 2nd ed., 2013, Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-15620-0.
• +Three Critics of the Enlightenment: Vico, Hamann, Herder, Pimlico, 2000. 2nd ed., 2013. ISBN 978-1-8459-5213-6. 2nd ed., 2013, Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-15765-8.
• +The Power of Ideas, Chatto & Windus, 2000. Pimlico. ISBN 978-0-7126-6554-4. 2nd ed., 2013, Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-15760-3.
• +Freedom and Its Betrayal: Six Enemies of Human Liberty (lectures delivered in 1952), Chatto & Windus, 2002. Pimlico. ISBN 978-0-7126-6842-2. 2nd ed., 2014, Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-11499-6.
• Liberty [revised and expanded edition of Four Essays On Liberty], Oxford University Press, 2002. ISBN 978-0-19-924989-3.
• The Soviet Mind: Russian Culture under Communism, Brookings Institution Press, 2004. ISBN 978-0-8157-2155-0. 2nd ed., Brookings Classics, 2016. ISBN 978-0-8157-2887-0.
• Flourishing: Letters 1928–1946, Chatto & Windus, 2004. Pimlico. ISBN 978-0-7126-3565-3.
• +Political Ideas in the Romantic Age: Their Rise and Influence on Modern Thought (1952), Chatto & Windus, 2006. ISBN 0-7011-7909-0. Pimlico, ISBN 978-1-84413-926-2. 2nd ed., 2014, Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-12695-1.
• (with Beata Polanowska-Sygulska) Unfinished Dialogue, Prometheus, 2006. ISBN 978-1-59102-376-0.
• Enlightening: Letters 1946–1960 (edited by Henry Hardy and Jennifer Holmes), Chatto & Windus, 2009. ISBN 978-0-7011-7889-5. Pimlico, ISBN 978-1-8441-3834-0.
• Building: Letters 1960–1975 (edited by Henry Hardy and Mark Pottle), Chatto & Windus, 2013. ISBN 978-0-701-18576-3.
• Affirming: Letters 1975–1997 (edited by Henry Hardy and Mark Pottle), Chatto & Windus, 2015. ISBN 978-1-7

Radicalism (historical)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The term "Radical" (from the Latin radix meaning root), during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, identified proponents of democratic reform, in what subsequently became the parliamentary Radical Movement.

During the 19th century in the United Kingdom, continental Europe and Latin America, the term "Radical" came to denote a progressive liberal ideology inspired by the French Revolution. Historically, Radicalism emerged in an early form with the French Revolution and the similar movements it inspired in other countries. It grew prominent during the 1830s in the United Kingdom (the Chartists) and Belgium (see the Revolution of 1830), then across Europe in the 1840s–50s (see the Revolutions of 1848). In contrast to the social conservatism of existing liberal politics, Radicalism sought political support for a "radical reform" of the electoral system to widen the franchise. It was also associated with republicanism; civic nationalism; abolition of titles; rationalism and the resistance to a single established state religion; redistribution of property; and freedom of the press.

In nineteenth-century France, Radicalism had emerged as a minor political force by the 1840s, as the extreme left of the day (in contrast to the socially conservative liberalism of the Moderate Republicans and Orléanists monarchists, and the anti-parliamentarianism of the Legitimist monarchists and Bonapartists). By the 1890s the French Radicals were not organised under a single nationwide structure, but had become a significant political force in parliament; in 1901 they consolidated their efforts by forming the country's first major extra-parliamentary political party, the Republican, Radical and Radical-Socialist Party, which became the most important party of government during the second half (1899 to 1940) of the Third Republic. The success of the French PRRRS encouraged Radicals elsewhere to organise themselves into formal parties in a range of other countries in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, with Radicals holding significant political office in Switzerland, Greece, Portugal, Italy, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany, Ireland, Bulgaria, Romania, and Russia. During the interwar, European Radical parties organised their own international, the Radical Entente.

As social democracy emerged as a distinct political force in its own right, the differences that once existed between left-wing radicalism and conservative liberalism diminished, and between 1940 and 1973 Radicalism became defunct in most of its European heartlands, its role and philosophy taken on by social democratic and conservative-liberal parties.

Radicalism and liberalism

The two Enlightenment philosophies of Liberalism and Radicalism both shared the goal of liberating humanity from traditionalism. But Liberals regarded it as sufficient to establish individual rights that would protect the individual. Radicals, however, sought institutional, social/economic, and especially cultural/educational reform to allow every citizen to put those rights into practice. For this reason we could say that Radicalism went beyond the demand for liberty, by seeking also equality, that is, universality.

In some countries, Radicalism represented a minor wing within the Liberal political family, as in the case of England's Radical Whigs. Sometimes the Radical wing of the Liberals were hardline or doctrinaire, and in other cases more moderate and pragmatic.

In other countries, Radicalism had had enough electoral support on its own, or a favourable electoral system or coalition partners, to maintain distinct Radical parties: Switzerland and Germany (Freisinn), Bulgaria, Denmark, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands, but also Argentina (Radical Civic Union), Chile and Paraguay.

Victorian era Britain possessed both trends: In England the Radicals were simply the left wing of the Liberal coalition, though they often rebelled when the coalition's socially conservative Whigs resisted democratic reforms, whereas in Ireland Radicals lost faith in the ability of parliamentary gradualism to deliver egalitarian and democratic reform and, breaking away from the main body of liberals, pursued a radical-democratic parliamentary republic through separatism and insurrection. 

This does not mean that all radical parties were formed by left-wing liberals. In French political literature, it is normal to make a clear separation between Radicalism as a distinct political force to the left of Liberalism but to the right of Socialism. Over time, as new left-wing parties formed to address the new social issues, the right wing of the Radicals would splinter off in disagreement with the main Radical family and became absorbed as the left wing of the Liberal family—rather than the other way around, as in Britain and Belgium.

However, the distinction between Radicals and Liberals was made clear by the two mid-20th-century attempts to create an international for centrist democratic parties. In 1923-4, the French Radicals created an Entente Internationale des Partis Radicaux et des Partis Démocratiques similaires: it was joined by the centre-left Radical parties of Europe, and in the democracies where no equivalent existed—Britain and Belgium—the liberal party was to allowed attend instead. After the Second World War the Radical International was not reformed; instead, a centre-right Liberal International was established, closer to the conservative-liberalism of the British and Belgian Liberal parties. This marked the end of Radicalism as an independent political force in Europe, though some countries such as France and Switzerland retained politically-important Radical parties well into the 1950s–1960s.

Thus, many European parties that are nowadays categorised in the group of social-liberal parties have a historical affinity with radicalism and may therefore be called "liberal-radical".

United Kingdom

According to Encyclopædia Britannica, the first use of the word "Radical" in a political sense is generally ascribed to the English parliamentarian Charles James Fox, a leader of the left wing of the Whig party who dissented from the party's conservative-liberalism and looked favourably upon the radical reforms being undertaken by French republicans, such as universal male suffrage. In 1797, Fox declared for a "radical reform" of the electoral system. This led to a general use of the term to identify all supporting the movement for parliamentary reform.

Initially confined to the upper and middle classes, in the early 19th century "popular radicals" brought artisans and the "labouring classes" into widespread agitation in the face of harsh government repression. More respectable "philosophical radicals" followed the utilitarian philosophy of Jeremy Bentham and strongly supported parliamentary reform, but were generally hostile to the arguments and tactics of the "popular radicals". By the middle of the century, parliamentary Radicals joined with others in the Parliament of the United Kingdom to form the Liberal Party, eventually achieving reform of the electoral system.

Origins

The Radical movement had its beginnings at a time of tension between the American colonies and Great Britain, with the first Radicals, angry at the state of the House of Commons, drawing on the Leveller tradition and similarly demanding improved parliamentary representation. These earlier concepts of democratic and even egalitarian reform had emerged in the turmoil of the English Civil War and the brief establishment of the republican Commonwealth of England amongst the vague political grouping known as the Levellers, but with the English Restoration of the monarchy such ideas had been discredited. Although the Glorious Revolution of 1688 had increased parliamentary power with a constitutional monarchy and the union of the parliaments brought England and Scotland together, towards the end of the 18th century the monarch still had considerable influence over the Parliament of Great Britain which itself was dominated by the English aristocracy and by patronage. Candidates for the House of Commons stood as Whigs or Tories, but once elected formed shifting coalitions of interests rather than splitting along party lines. At general elections, the vote was restricted to property owners in constituencies which were out of date and did not reflect the growing importance of manufacturing towns or shifts of population, so that in many rotten borough seats could be bought or were controlled by rich landowners while major cities remained unrepresented. Discontent with these inequities inspired those individuals who later became known as the "Radical Whigs". 

William Beckford fostered early interest in reform in the London area. The "Middlesex radicals" were led by the politician John Wilkes, an opponent of war with the colonies who started his weekly publication The North Briton in 1764 and within two years had been charged with seditious libel and expelled from the House of Commons. The Society for the Defence of the Bill of Rights which he started in 1769 to support his re-election, developed the belief that every man had the right to vote and "natural reason" enabling him to properly judge political issues. Liberty consisted in frequent elections and for the first time middle-class radicals obtained the backing of the London "mob". Middlesex and Westminster were among the few parliamentary constituencies with a large and socially diverse electorate including many artisans as well as the middle class and aristocracy and along with the county association of Yorkshire led by the Reverend Christopher Wyvill were at the forefront of reform activity. The writings of what became known as the "Radical Whigs" had an influence on the American Revolution. 

Major John Cartwright also supported the colonists, even as the American Revolutionary War began and in 1776 earned the title of the "Father of Reform" when he published his pamphlet Take Your Choice! advocating annual parliaments, the secret ballot and manhood suffrage. In 1780, a draft programme of reform was drawn up by Charles James Fox and Thomas Brand Hollis and put forward by a sub-committee of the electors of Westminster. This included calls for the six points later adopted in the People's Charter (see Chartists below).

The American Revolutionary War ended in humiliating defeat of a policy which King George III had fervently advocated and in March 1782 the King was forced to appoint an administration led by his opponents which sought to curb Royal patronage. In November 1783, he took his opportunity and used his influence in the House of Lords to defeat a Bill to reform the British East India Company, dismissed the government and appointed William Pitt the Younger as his Prime Minister. Pitt had previously called for Parliament to begin to reform itself, but he did not press for long for reforms the King did not like. Proposals Pitt made in April 1785 to redistribute seats from the "rotten boroughs" to London and the counties were defeated in the House of Commons by 248 votes to 174.

Popular agitation

In the wake of the French Revolution of 1789, Thomas Paine wrote The Rights of Man (1791) as a response to Burke's counterrevolutionary essay Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), itself an attack on Richard Price's sermon that kicked off the so-called "pamphlet war" known as the Revolution Controversy. Mary Wollstonecraft, another supporter of Price, soon followed with A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. They encouraged mass support for democratic reform along with rejection of the monarchy, aristocracy and all forms of privilege. Different strands of the movement developed, with middle class "reformers" aiming to widen the franchise to represent commercial and industrial interests and towns without parliamentary representation, while "Popular radicals" drawn from the middle class and from artisans agitated to assert wider rights including relieving distress. The theoretical basis for electoral reform was provided by "Philosophical radicals" who followed the utilitarian philosophy of Jeremy Bentham and strongly supported parliamentary reform, but were generally hostile to the arguments and tactics of the "popular radicals".

In Ireland the United Irishmen movement took another direction, adding to the doctrine of a secular and parliamentary republic inspired by the American and French republican revolutions, another doctrine of the French Revolution: civic nationalism. Dismayed by the inability of British parliamentarianism to introduce the root-and-branch democratic reforms desired, Irish Radicals channelled their movement into a republican form of nationalism that would provide equality as well as liberty. This was pursued through armed revolution and often with French assistance at various points over the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Popular Radicals were quick to go further than Paine, with Newcastle schoolmaster Thomas Spence demanding land nationalisation to redistribute wealth in a penny periodical he called Pig's Meat in a reference to Edmund Burke's phrase "swinish multitude". Radical organisations sprang up, such as the London Corresponding Society of artisans formed in January 1792 under the leadership of the shoemaker Thomas Hardy to call for the vote. One such was the Scottish Friends of the People society which in October 1793 held a British convention in Edinburgh with delegates from some of the English corresponding societies. They issued a manifesto demanding universal male suffrage with annual elections and expressing their support for the principles of the French Revolution. The numbers involved in these movements were small and most wanted reform rather than revolution, but for the first time working men were organising for political change. 

The government reacted harshly, imprisoning leading Scottish radicals, temporarily suspending habeas corpus in England and passing the Seditious Meetings Act 1795 which meant that a license was needed for any meeting in a public place consisting of fifty or more people. Throughout the Napoleonic Wars, the government took extensive stern measures against feared domestic unrest. The corresponding societies ended, but some radicals continued in secret, with Irish sympathisers in particular forming secret societies to overturn the government and encourage mutinies. In 1812, Major John Cartwright formed the first Hampden Club, named after the English Civil War Parliamentary leader John Hampden, aiming to bring together middle class moderates and lower class radicals. 

After the Napoleonic Wars, the Corn laws (in force between 1815 and 1846) and bad harvests fostered discontent. The publications of William Cobbett were influential and at political meetings speakers like Henry Hunt complained that only three men in a hundred had the vote. Writers like the radicals William Hone and Thomas Jonathan Wooler spread dissent with publications such as The Black Dwarf in defiance of a series of government acts to curb circulation of political literature. Radical riots in 1816 and 1817 were followed by the Peterloo massacre of 1819 publicised by Richard Carlile, who then continued to fight for press freedom from prison. The Six Acts of 1819 limited the right to demonstrate or hold public meetings. In Scotland, agitation over three years culminated in an attempted general strike and abortive workers' uprising crushed by government troops in the "Radical War" of 1820. Magistrates powers were increased to crush demonstrations by manufacturers and action by radical Luddites.

To counter the established Church of England doctrine that the aristocratic social order was divinely ordained, radicals supported Lamarckian Evolutionism, a theme proclaimed by street corner agitators as well as some established scientists such as Robert Edmund Grant.

Political reform

Economic conditions improved after 1821 and the United Kingdom government made economic and criminal law improvements, abandoning policies of repression. In 1823, Jeremy Bentham co-founded the Westminster Review with James Mill as a journal for "philosophical radicals", setting out the utilitarian philosophy that right actions were to be measured in proportion to the greatest good they achieved for the greatest number. Westminster elected two radicals to Parliament during the 1820s. 

The Whigs gained power and despite defeats in the House of Commons and the House of Lords the Reform Act 1832 was put through with the support of public outcry, mass meetings of "political unions" and riots in some cities. This now enfranchised the middle classes, but failed to meet radical demands. The Whigs introduced reforming measures owing much to the ideas of the philosophic radicals, abolishing slavery and in 1834 introducing Malthusian Poor Law reforms which were bitterly opposed by "popular radicals" and writers like Thomas Carlyle. Following the 1832 Reform Act, the mainly aristocratic Whigs in the House of Commons were joined by a small number of parliamentary Radicals as well as an increased number of middle class Whigs. By 1839, they were informally being called "the Liberal party".

Chartists

From 1836, working class Radicals unified around the Chartist cause of electoral reform expressed in the People's Charter drawn up by six members of Parliament and six from the London Working Men's Association (associated with Owenite Utopian socialism), which called for six points: universal suffrage, equal-sized electoral districts, secret ballot, an end to property qualification for Parliament, pay for Members of Parliament and Annual Parliaments. Chartists also expressed economic grievances, but their mass demonstrations and petitions to parliament were unsuccessful.

Despite initial disagreements, after their failure their cause was taken up by the middle class Anti-Corn Law League founded by Richard Cobden and John Bright in 1839 to oppose duties on imported grain which raised the price of food and so helped landowners at the expense of ordinary people.

Liberal reforms

The parliamentary Radicals joined with the Whigs and anti-protectionist Tory Peelites to form the Liberal Party by 1859. Demand for parliamentary reform increased by 1864 with agitation from John Bright and the Reform League.

When the Liberal government led by Lord Russell and William Ewart Gladstone introduced a modest bill for parliamentary reform, it was defeated by both Tories and reform Liberals, forcing the government to resign. The Tories under Lord Derby and Benjamin Disraeli took office and the new government decided to "dish the Whigs" and "take a leap in the dark" to take the credit for the reform. As a minority government, they had to accept radical amendments and Disraeli's Reform Act 1867 almost doubled the electorate, giving the vote even to working men.

The Radicals, having been strenuous in their efforts on behalf of the working classes, earned a deeply loyal following—British trade unionists from 1874 until 1892, upon being elected to Parliament, never considered themselves to be anything other than Radicals and were labeled Lib-Lab candidates. Radical trade unionists formed the basis for what later became the Labour Party.

Belgium

The territories of modern Belgium had been merged into the Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1815. Aside from various religious and socioeconomic tensions between the Dutch north and proto-Belgian south, over the 1820s a young generation of Belgians, heavily influenced by French Enlightenment ideas, had formulated criticisms of the Dutch monarchy as autocratic. The monarch enjoyed broad personal powers, his ministers were irresponsible before parliament; the separation of powers was minimal; freedom of press and association were limited; the principle of universal suffrage was undermined by the fact that the largely Catholic south, despite possessing two-thirds of the population, received as many seats to the Estates-General (parliament) as the smaller Protestant north; and the Dutch authorities were suspected of forcing Protestantism onto Catholics. These concerns combined to produce a pro-Catholic Radicalism distinct from both the anticlerical Radicalism of France, and the Protestant Liberalism of the Dutch north.

Following the political crisis of 1829, where the Crown Prince was named prime minister, a limited reform was introduced establishing constitutional rights, similar to the charter of rights of France's autocratic Restoration Monarchy; the Belgian Radicals, like their French counterparts, regarded such a charter of rights as insufficient, potentially revocable by a whim of the monarch. Belgian Radicals closely followed the situation in France when, on 26 July to 1 August 1830, a conservative-liberal revolution broke out, overthrowing the autocratic monarchy for a liberal constitutional monarchy. Within a month a revolt had erupted in Brussels before spreading to the rest of the Belgian provinces. After Belgian independence, the Constitution of 1831 established a constitutional monarchy and parliamentary regime, and provided a list of fundamental civil rights inspired by the French Declaration of the Right of Man.

As in Britain, Radicals in Belgium continued to operate within the Liberal Party, campaigning throughout the 19th Century for the property-restricted suffrage to be extended. This was extended a first time in 1883, and universal male suffrage was achieved in 1893 (though female suffrage would have to wait until 1919). After this Radicalism was a minor political force in Belgium, its role taken over by the emergence of a powerful social-democratic party.

France

Main articles: Radical-Socialist Party (France), Radical Party of the Left, and Independent Radicals

During the nineteenth century, the Radicals in France were the political group of the far-left, relative to the centre-left "opportunists" (Gambetta: conservative-liberal and republican), the centre-right Orléanists (conservative-liberal and monarchist), the far-right Legitimists (anti-liberal monarchist), and the supporters of a republican military dictatorship,the Bonapartists.

Following the Napoleonic Wars and until 1848, it was technically illegal to advocate republicanism openly. Some republicans reconciled themselves to pursuing liberalism through the socially-conservative monarchy—the 'opportunists'. Those who remained intransigent in believing that the French Revolution needed to be completed through a republican regime based on parliamentary democracy and universal suffrage therefore tended to call themselves "Radicals" – a term meaning 'Purists'.

Under the Second Republic (1848–52), the Radicals, on a platform of seeking a "social and democratic republic", sat together in parliament in a group named The Mountain. When Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte launched his military coup, Radicals across France rose up in insurrection to defend the democratic republic. This experience would mark French Radicalism for the next century, prompting permanent vigilance against all those who – from Marshall Mac-Mahon to General De Gaulle – were suspected of seeking to overthrow the constitutional, parliamentary regime.

After the return to parliamentary democracy in 1871, the Radicals emerged as a significant political force: led by Georges Clemenceau, they claimed that the socially-conservative liberal republicanism of Léon Gambetta and Jules Ferry had drifted away from the ideals of the French Revolution, and that the Radicals were the true heirs to 1791. In 1881, they put forward their programme of broad social reforms: from then on, the tactic of the main Radical Party was to have 'no enemies to the left' of the Republic, allying with any group that sought social reform while accepting the legality of the parliamentary republic.

But the Radicals were not yet a political party: they sat together in parliament out of kinship, but they possessed minimal organisation outside of parliament. The first half of the Third Republic saw several events that caused them to fear a far-right takeover of parliament that might end democracy, as Louis-Napoléon had: Marshall Mac-Mahon's self-coup in 1876, the General Boulanger crisis in the 1880s, the Dreyfus Affair in the 1890s. The Radicals were swept to power first in a coalition government (1899) then in governments of their own from 1902. They finally managed to implement their long-standing programme of reforms, such as the separation of Church and State, or the introduction of secret ballotting. In order to ensure that their legacy would remain unreversed, they unified the local Radical committees into an elector party: the Radical-Socialist Party, the first major modern political party in French history.

Intellectuals played a powerful role. A major spokesman of radicalism was Émile Chartier (1868-1951), who wrote under the pseudonym "Alain." He was a leading theorist of radicalism, and his influence extended through the Third and Fourth Republics. He stressed individualism, seeking to defend the citizen against the state. He warned against all forms of power – military, clerical, and economic. To oppose them he exalted the small farmer, the small shopkeeper, the small town, and the little man. He idealized country life and saw Paris as a dangerous font of power.

The Radical–Socialist Party was the main governmental party of the Third Republic between 1901 and 1919, and dominated government again between 1924–26, 1932–33 and 1937–40; the centre-right governments dominated by the conservative-liberal centre-right often gave a portfolio to a Radical, who would join cabinet in a personal capacity as the most left-leaning minister.

The party itself was discredited after 1940, due to fact that many (though not all) of its parliamentarians had votedto establish the Vichy regime. Under the dictatorship several prominent Radicals, such as the young left-leaning former education minister Jean Zay, and the influential editorialist Maurice Sarraut (brother to the more famous Radical party leader Albert), were assassinated by the regime's paramilitary police, while others, notably Jean Moulin, participated in the resistance movement to restore the Republic.

The Democratic and Socialist Union of the Resistance was established after World War II to combine the politics of French Radicalism with credibility derived from members' activism in the French resistance.

In the 1950s, Pierre Mendès-France attempted to rebuilt the Radical Party as an alternative to both the Christian-democratic MRP, while also leading the opposition to Gaullism which he feared to be another attempt at a right-wing coup. During this period the Radicals frequently governed as part of a coalition of centrist parties, spanning from the Socialists to the Christian-democrats.

Ultimately the installation of the Fifth Republic in 1958, and the subsequent emergence of a two-party system based on the Socialist and Gaullist movements, destroyed the niche for an autonomous Radical party. The Radical Party split into various tendencies. Its leading personality, Mendès-France himself, left in 1961 in protest at the party's acceptance of De Gaulle's military coup and joining the small social-democratic Unified Socialist Party. A decade later, a second faction advocated maintaining an alliance with the Socialist-dominated coalition of the left; it broke away in 1972 to form the Radical Party of the Left, which maintains close ties to the Socialist Party. The remainder of the original Radical Party became a de facto liberal-conservative party of the centre-right: renamed as the 'Valoisien' Radical Party, it advocated alliances with the rest of the liberal centre-right, participating first in the pro-Giscard d'Estaing Union for French Democracy (1972), then with the conservative Union for a Popular Movement (2002).

Continental Europe and Latin America

In continental Europe and Latin America, as for instance in France, Italy, Spain, Chile and Argentina (Radical Civic Union), Radicalism developed as an ideology in the 19th century to indicate those who supported at least in theory a republican form of government, universal male suffrage and, particularly, anti-clerical policies.

In German-speaking countries, this current is known as Freisinn (literally "free mind", or "freethought"), as in German Freeminded Party from 1884 to 1893, then Eugen Richter's Freeminded People's Party; and the Free Democratic Party of Switzerland.

The 'Freethinker' parties, located mainly in the Netherlands, Scandinavia and German-speaking countries, included:

• In Switzerland:
  • the Radical movement (or "Free-thinking" movement in the German-speaking cantons), not yet a political party, emerged during the period of Regeneration, starting 1830 (coincident with the French July Revolution). It became the dominant political force under the 1848 Constitution, holding all seven posts in the Federal Council until 1891.
  • the Radical-Democratic Party (PRD; in French-speaking Switzerland), also known as the Free-minded Democratic Party (FDP; in German-speaking Switzerland) existed from 1894 to 2009. It started as a centre-left party but gradually moved to the centre-right in the course of time. It was still by far the strongest party until the 1940s, holding at least four of seven posts in the Federal Council. Under the 1959 "magic formula" it held two of seven posts in the Federal Council.
  • the Radical-Liberal Party (PLR), or FDP.The Liberals (in the German-speaking regions), was formed in 2009 by the merger of PRD/FDP with the smaller, more right-leaning Liberal Party of Switzerland.
• In the Netherlands:
  • Free-minded Democratic League, a political party in the Netherlands from 1901 to 1946
• In Germany, a succession of Radical parties existed:
  • The German Free-minded Party (1884 to 1893), which split into two successors:
  • the left-leaning Free-minded People's Party (1893 to 1910)
  • and the centre-leaning Free-minded Union (1893 to 1910)
  • These merged as the Progressive People's Party (1910 to 1918)
  • This was reformed as the German Democratic Party (DDP; 1918 to 1930)
  • The Radical Democratic Party formed by left-leaning and pacifist members of the DDP (1930 to 1933)
• In Denmark:
  • The current Liberal Party began as a radical party in 1870, hence its name in Danish (Venstre, meaning 'Left'). When it became more conservative, the Radical wing split in 1905 to form a new party, known as Radikale Venstre ('Radical Left').

In Mediterranean Europe, Radical parties were often labelled 'Democratic' or 'Republican' parties:

• In France, during the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century, radicalism was intertwined with republicanism to the point that radical parties were often simply labelled 'republicans'. The election of Alexandre Ledru-Rollin in 1841 is generally considered the start of the radical-republican movement as a political force in France. Over the next century a pattern emerged of Radicals forming a party on the left of the parliamentary spectrum (but to the right of socialists), only for the party to drift to the centre, which would cause the party's left to splinter off and re-establish a new main Radical party while the weakened parent party was eventually absorbed by the liberal centre. This meant that there were generally two rival Radical parties at any one time, one leaning relatively towards socialism, and the other relatively towards liberalism.
  
  • La Montagne (The Mountain) (1848-51) was the first parliamentary group to provide a home for France's miscellaneous radical republicans. Its official name, the Socialist Democrat group, signalled its two tendencies: the more socialist-leaning tendency of Louis Blanc, and the more middle-class democratic-reformist tendency of Alexandre Ledru-Rollin. At that time it represented a very small political current situated on the far-left of the parliamentary spectrum.
  • The Republican Union (1871-84), led by Léon Gambetta, was the Mountain's spiritual successor during the transition to democracy; its members included former parliamentarians of the Montagne such as Louis Blanc, and prominent Radical intellectuals like Victor Hugo. A minor force at first, by 1876 it had grown in parliamentary strength but begun to drift towards centrist cooperation with liberal Catholics; this prompted the party's more fervent radicals to splinter off in several waves and form new Radical parties (Georges Clemenceau in 1876; René Goblet's Radical Left in 1881; Isambart's Progressive Union in 1894).
  • The Progressive Union (1894-1902) was originally a splinter of the Republican Union by left-leaning radicals during the Dreyfus Affair. In 1902 the formation of the major new Radical-Socialist Party to its immediate left forced it to pick a political family, and it chose to ally then merge with other centrist parties to form the politically-liberal Republican Democratic Alliance.
  • Radical Left (1881-1940), a parliamentary group initially formed by hardline anticlerical radicals dissatisfied with the Republican Union's centrism. It was a major political force in centre-left and centrist governments between 1898 and 1918, and regularly provided ministers in centrist and right-wing governments between 1918 and 1940; the importance of this current was underlined by its leader, the veteran Radical Georges Clemenceau, being called to lead the war government during the First World War. The foundation of the PRRRS to its left in 1901 pushed it one space towards the centre and it increasingly drifted into alliance with the liberal republican centre-right. By 1918 it was de facto a party of the centre-right, and from 1936 was essentially absorbed by the liberal right, its old political niche taken over by the PRRRS.
  • .
  • The Radical-Socialist Party (officially the Radical, Republican and Radical-Socialist Party or PRRRS), the most famous of France's many radical parties. It was the dominant political force in France from 1901 to 1919, and a major force from 1920 to 1940. Due to its central political role it could alternate in and out of alliance with both socialists and with conservative-liberals; this prompted several splinters by the party's most left- and right-wing members:
  • Centrist and centre-right Radical splinters: The Social and Unionist Radical Party (1928-37) was a small splinter of anti-socialist radicals from the PRRRS, led by Henry Franklin-Bouillon, who preferred to ally with the centrist Radical Left and other liberal rifhtwing parties. The French Radical Party (1937-38) was a similar small anti-communist splinter, led by André Grisoni. These two small groups merged in 1938 as the short-lived Independent Radical Party, which was itself restored after the Second World War and was a founding organisation of the Alliance of Left Republicans.
  • Independent Radical Party (1937-40), a merger of the Unionist Radical Party and the French Radical Party.
  • Social-democratic Radical splinters: The Republican-Socialist Party (1911-1935) and the French Socialist Party (1923-35) were two small parties formed of left-wing Radicals philosophically close to social-democracy or rightwing social-democrats philosophically close to Radicalism, but unable or unwilling to join either the official socialist party or the PRRRS. Although electorally small, they were a significant political force as they regularly provided ministers and heads of government in left-wing and centrist coalitions. They merged with other social-democratic parties and independents in 1935 as the Socialist Republican Union.
  • The Camille Pelletain Radical Party, a small splinter of anti-fascists from the PRRRS that briefly existed between 1934-36. The party opposed the willingness by the PRRRS's party leaders during 1934-35 to prefer cooperation with the right and far-right rather than with other left-wing parties. Its name was a reference to a leading historical figure of left-wing Radicalism, Camile Pelletain, as a way to lay claim to an authentic Radical tradition felt to have been abandoned by the official party. Once the PRRRS returned to allying with the rest of the left in 1936, the Pelletanist Radicals returned to the old party.
  • After the Second World War, the pre-war Radical-Socialist Party, Radical Left party and their smaller counterparts were left discredited and weakened as communism, social-democracy, Christian-democracy and Gaullism exploded in popularity. The remaining Radicals mostly banded together with the remnants of other pre-war liberal parties to form a centre-right umbrella party named the Rally of the Republican Left: this was no longer distinctly Radical in ideology, but espoused laissez-faire parliamentary liberal-democracy.
• In Spain, Radicalism took the form of various 'democratic', 'progressive', 'republican' and 'radical' parties.
  • The Progressive Party (1835-69), formed by former participants in the radical Revolution of 1820;
  • the Democratic Party (1849–69), split from the Progressive Party, a progressive party of Jacobin inspiration, mainly active in the 1850s. It split into two successor parties:
  • the Federal Democratic Republican Party (1868–1910) or "Federal Party" for short, whose leaders Estanislao Figueras, Francesc Pi i Margall and Emilio Castelar were Presidents during the First Republic (1873–74), and
  • the Radical Democratic Party (or just "Radical Party") (1869/71–76), whose leader Manuel Ruiz Zorrilla was Prime Minister for two short periods in 1871 and 1872–73; later known as the Republican Reformist Party (1876–80). It was refounded as the Progressive Republican Party (1880–1912), whose majority merged into the Republican Union Party (1903–10)
  • The Democratic Party (1876–79), split from the Federal Democratic Republican Party, reformed as the Possibilist Democratic Party (1879–90)
  • The Radical Republican Party (1908–36), a splinter of the Republican Union Party, becoming the major radical party of the Second Republic (1931–1936/39), moving to the centre-right under Alejandro Lerroux (Prime Minister from 1933 to 1935);
  • Its leftist splinter, the Radical-Socialist Republican Party (1928–34). This merged with others to form the Republican Left (1934–59)
  • A second splinter of the Radical-Republican Party formed the Republican Democratic Party and Republican Union (1934–59)
  • Reformist Party (1912–24) and its successor Republican Action (1925–34) which was to the left of Radical Republican Party; merged into the Republican Left; its leader Manuel Azaña was two-time Prime Minister of the Second Republic (1931–33 and 1936)

• In Italy:
  • Action Party, formed by Risorgimento leaders around Giuseppe Mazzini, striving for a unitary, secular Italian republic with universal suffrage, popular sovereignty and freedom of speech (1848/53–1867)
  • "Historical Far Left" also known as "Party of Democracy" (1867/77–1904)
  • Italian Republican Party (founded in 1895)
  • Italian Radical Party (1904–1922)
  • Liberals–Democrats–Radicals (1919–1921)
  • Democratic Liberal Party (Italy) (1921–26)
  • Action Party (1942–47)
  • Radical Party (1955–1989)

Serbia and Montenegro

Radicalism had played a pivotal role in the birth and development of parliamentarism and the construction of the modern Serbian state leading to the Yugoslavian unification. The People's Radical Party formed in 1881 was the strongest political party and was in power in the Kingdom of Serbia more than all others together. The 1888 Constitution of the Kingdom of Serbia that defined it as an independent nation and formalised parliamentary democracy was among the most advanced in the entire world due to Radical contribution and it is known as The Radical Constitution. In 1902, a crack had occurred in which the Independent Radical Party left and "the Olde" remained in the party, leading the original People's Radical Party to stray far from progressivism and into right-wing nationalism and conservatism. In the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, the Independent Radicals united with the rest of the Serbian opposition and the liberal and civic groups in the rest of the new country, forming the Yugoslav Democratic Party, while several Republican dissidents formed a Republican Party. The NRS had promoted Serb nationalism and put itself as the defender of Serb national interests. Democrats and Radicals were the dominant political parties, especially since the exclusion of the Communists.

In Montenegro, a People's Party was formed in 1907 as the country's first political party and remained the largest in the period of country's parliamentary history until the Yugoslavian unification. Later, a True People's Party was formed, which never got widespread popular support and whose bigger part had joined the original NS, but the difference was not ideological and instead was opposition and support of the Crown and sometimes in foreign relations to Serbia (the clubbists were the crown's dissidents and supporters of the people as well as Serbia as a regional power and brotherly ally—the rightists were generally anti-democratic and autocratic monarchist and also distrustful to the Serbian government's acts on the national plan).