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179 9 Post-Kantian Perfectionism Douglas Moggach Virtue and Economy Like many British and French republicans of the century before them, German Left Hegelians in the period described as the Vormärz (preceding the outbreak of revolution in March 1848) shared the view that a deep-seated opposition exists between virtue and commerce.1 They thus appear—at first sight—inattentive to the reworking of this problematic in the later eighteenth century by Condorcet, Payne, and Smith: a fundamental shift in republican thinking to which Gareth Stedman Jones2 and Istvan Hont3 have alerted us, in which the idea of virtue is redefined in ways compatible with the practices of mercantile society. Though the older republican tradition was far from unitary, it tended, in many of its variants, to follow Aristotle in contrasting sober household management to chrematistic (an excessive concern with things, or accumulation) and to pleonexia or immoderate appetite. The Aristotelian tradition had considered the pursuit of excessive wealth to be a cause of corruption among citizens, since it dissuaded them from political participation, or subverted its proper ends, the pursuit of the common good. Superfluous wealth was inimical to political virtue, and to the maintenance of just political constitutions. While Rousseau continued to hold a position of this kind, it had been decisively challenged by his time. In the mid and latter parts of the eighteenth century, Enlightenment theorists undertook a thorough and fundamental revision of the republican vocabularies of virtue, seeking to mitigate the conflict with emergent commercial relations and standards: under the revised definitions of virtue, the market and its values did not necessarily undermine the capacity of citizens to seek a common interest.4 Indeed, the market, it was argued, was uniquely able to promote virtues of honesty and reciprocity , and it provided more reliably the material means to ensure the safety and welfare of the state. Similar adjustments had occurred before, though without supplanting the Aristotelian criticisms. One of the characteristics of Roman republicanism was that, instead of the direct and 180 D O U G L A S M O G G A C H transparent relations which, ideally, prevailed in the Greek political community , it had conceived of citizens in relations mediated by property. Roman thought thus introduced a tension into the idea of citizenship between juridical and political status, between the abstract legal person and the active co-legislator.5 Italian Renaissance humanists were far from unanimous in their views of the political significance of property and wealth;6 recent research distinguishes Greek and Roman influences in these debates.7 It was primarily the new commercial realities of the eighteenth century, however, which led to a profound reappraisal of the Aristotelian tradition, with Scottish theorists in the vanguard, but with important representatives in France, the German territories, and elsewhere .8 In reverting to a position reminiscent of Aristotle, members of the Hegelian school seem perhaps oblivious to these fundamental conceptual changes. If we were to apply the older interpretative approach to the Left Hegelians, one which saw them as purely religious or philosophical critics , with little to say about concrete social issues, this inadvertence would not be surprising. In these readings, the Left Hegelians were depicted as mere way stations on the road (whether upward or downward) leading from Hegel to Marx.9 This interpretation also connects with criticisms like those of Engels regarding “die deutsche Misere,” or German political, economic, and cultural retardation, capable of generating only vapid intellectual posturing, but no serious political engagement or understanding :10 a claim whereby Engels and Marx sought to distinguish themselves from their own milieu. It would be evidence of the Left Hegelians ’ disinterest in or ignorance about the pressing questions of the day, confirming their status as isolated intellectuals, detached from political and social struggles. Yet, beginning with the work of Ingrid Pepperle11 in the 1970s, and ranging through recent studies in several languages,12 this older framework has now been quite effectively dismantled, and republicanism has been established as a fruitful perspective in which to view the writings of figures like Eduard Gans, Arnold Ruge, Ludwig Feuerbach, and Bruno Bauer, as well as the young Marx and Engels themselves. Are the views of the Left Hegelians on the opposition of citizenship and chrematistic then an anachronistic reversion to discredited republican positions? I want to argue that they are not. They are forwardlooking , and informed both by new ethical conceptions and by insights into the characteristics and problems of modern civil society...

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