Freedom and Perfection: German Political Thought from Leibniz to Marx
Author(s): Douglas Moggach (Author)
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publication Date: August 14, 2025
Language: English
Print length: 356 pages
ISBN-10: 100959043X
ISBN-13: 9781009590433
Book Description
Leibniz, this study argues, is the genuine initiator of German Idealism. His analysis of freedom as spontaneity and the relations he establishes among freedom, justice, and progress underlie Kant’s ideas of rightful interaction and his critiques of Enlightened absolutism. Freedom and Perfection offers a historical examination of perfectionism, its political implications and transformations in German thought between 1650 and 1850. Douglas Moggach demonstrates how Kant’s followers elaborated a new ethical-political approach, ‘post-Kantian perfectionism’, which, in the context of the French Revolution, promoted the conditions for free activity rather than state-directed happiness. Hegel, the Hegelian School, and Marx developed this approach further with reference to the historical process as the history of freedom. Highlighting the decisive importance of Leibniz for subsequent theorists of the state, society, and economy, Freedom and Perfection offers a new interpretation of important schools of modern thought and a vantage point for contemporary political debates.
Editorial Reviews
Review
‘Kant transformed political philosophy by making freedom rather than happiness the ‘essential end’ of humankind, and Fichte, Hegel, and Marx rang variations on this theme. True enough, but so did Schiller and von Humboldt, and it all began with Leibniz, whom Kant adapted as well as criticized, and who remained the source of so much in German philosophy. Douglas Moggach tells this important story with verve as well as accuracy!’ Paul Guyer, Brown University
‘Douglas Moggach unfolds the subjectivity-theoretical foundations of freedom by tracing the multi-layered paths from Leibniz to Marx. He demonstrates their relevance for contemporary ethics with impressive historical depth and great systematic clarity. For all readers interested in an up-to-date practical philosophy Freedom and Perfection is simply THE book to read.’ Michael Quante, University of Münster
‘Douglas Moggach’s Freedom and Perfection is a remarkable achievement. By tracing the development of German idealist thought from Leibniz, and with a focus on its political expression, Moggach has revealed a movement with that ‘unity in diversity’ which for Leibniz had characterized the goal of the modern political community itself.’ Paul Redding, The University of Sydney
Book Description
A historical study of perfectionism and its political implications in the German lands, linking Leibniz with German Idealism and Marx.
About the Author
Douglas Moggach is Distinguished University Professor in Political Studies and Philosophy at the University of Ottawa, and Honorary Professor, School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry at the University of Sydney. Publications, in nine languages, include Philosophy and Politics of Bruno Bauer (Cambridge, 2003); The New Hegelians (Cambridge, 2006); Politics, Religion, and Art (2011); and (as co-editor), The 1848 Revolutions and European Political Thought (Cambridge, 2018).
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