The Helsinki Centre for Intellectual History hosts a public lecture by
Professor Isaac Nakhimovsky (Yale University)
The Political Thought of the Holy Alliance as a Liberal Idea of a Federal Europe
The Holy Alliance of 1815, usually taken to be an ideological mask for Russian power, is now most familiar as a label for conspiratorial reaction. However, it was initially embraced by many contemporary liberals, across northern Europe and even in New England, as a prototype of a federal European constitution and the dawning of a peaceful and prosperous age of progress. By showing how the Holy Alliance could figure as both an idea of liberal progress and an emblem of reaction, this lecture presents a challenge to standard typologies that are often applied to the broader landscape of nineteenth-century political history and intellectual life. By exploring how historical analogies to the Holy Alliance continued to be drawn throughout the twentieth century, the lecture also offers a map for tracking how some of the fundamental political problems raised by the Holy Alliance have continued to reappear in new forms under new circumstances.
Professor Nakhimovsky is the author of the much-acclaimed book The Closed Commercial State. Perpetual Peace and Commercial Society from Rousseau to Fichte (Princeton University Press, 2011).
Comments by Academy Research Fellow Timo Miettinen
Chaired by Professor Markku Peltonen
Tuesday, 18 October 2022, at 5pm
Venue: Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies (Fabianinkatu 24)
Organised by the Helsinki Centre for Intellectual History
TERVETULOA / WELCOME!