Unity and difference: John Robert Seeley and the political theology of international relations

Review of International Studies

Volumn 31, Issue 3, 2005, Pages 559-579

  Bell, Duncan S A ^a  

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EID: 22144458734     PISSN: 02602105     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0260210505006637     Document Type: Review

References (208)

1. [J. R. Seeley], Ecce Homo: A Survey of the Life and Work of Jesus Christ (London: Macmillan, 1866).
2. For the wider context see, for example, Frank M. Turner, Between Science and Religion: The Reaction to Scientific Naturalism in Late Victorian England (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1974).
3. J. R. Seeley, 'A Midlands University', Fortnightly Review, 42 (1887), pp. 703-16
4. and Seeley, Introduction to Political Science: Two Series of Lectures, ed. Henry Sidgwick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1923 [1896]).
5. See also, Peter Burroughs, 'John Robert Seeley and British Imperial History', Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 1 (1973), pp. 191-213;
6. Reba N. Soffer, Discipline and Power: The University, History, and the Making of an English Elite, 1870-1930 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994);
7. and John Burrow, Stefan Collini, and Donald Winch, That Noble Science of Politics: A Study in Nineteenth-Century Intellectual History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
8. See Seeley, The Expansion of England: Two Courses of Lectures (London: Macmillan, 1883), ch. 1
9. and his unfinished project, The Growth of British Policy: An Historical Essay (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1895).
10. The most useful studies on Seeley are: Deborah Wormell, Sir John Seeley and the Uses of History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980);
11. Richard Shannon, 'John Robert Seeley and the Idea of a National Church: A Study in Churchmanship, Historiography, and Politics', in Robert Robson (ed.), Ideas and Institutions of Victorian Britain: Essays in Honour of George Kitson Clark (London: Bell, 1967), pp. 236-67;
12. H. S. Jones, Victorian Political Thought (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), pp. 55-9;
13. Burrow, Collini, and Winch, That Noble Science of Politics, ch. 7;
14. Reba Soffer, 'History and Religion: J. R. Seeley and the Burden of the Past', in R. W. Davis and R. J. Helmstadter (eds.), Religion and Irreligion in Victorian Society: Essays in Honor of R. K. Webb (London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 133-51;
15. and, David Worsley, 'Sir John Robert Seeley and his Intellectual Legacy: Religion, Imperialism, and Nationalism in Victorian and Post-Victorian Britain', unpublished Ph.D., University of Manchester, 2001.
16. On realist interpretations, including that of W. T. R. Fox, see the discussion in Worsley, 'Sir John Robert Seeley', pp. 130-3.
17. Worsley himself declares Seeley a realist (pp. 133 and 165). See also Burrow et al., That Noble Science, pp. 227 and 232.
18. Karma Nabulsi, Traditions of War: Occupation, Resistance, and the Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), ch. 4;
19. and Deudney, 'Greater Britain or Greater Synthesis? Seeley, Mackinder, and Wells on Britain in the Global Industrial Era', Review of International Studies, 27:2 (2001), pp. 187-208.
20. See here Alistair Murray, Reconstructing Realism: Between Power Politics and Cosmopolitan Ethics (Edinburgh: Keele University Press, 1996);
21. Charles A. Jones, 'Christian Realism and the Foundations of the English School', International Relations, 17 (2003), pp. 371-87;
22. and Ian Hall, 'History, Christianity, and Diplomacy: Sir Herbert Butterfield and International Relations', Review of International Studies, 28:4 (2002), pp. 719-36.
23. The phrase is adapted from Ira Katznelson, Desolation and Enlightenment: Political Knowledge after Total War, Totalitarianism, and the Holocaust (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003). Interestingly this fascinating book - which focuses on the post-World War II intellectual effort to develop a disenchanted variety of robust liberalism - fails to mention International Relations scholars, although Morgenthau in particular would find a place within its argument.
24. Nabulsi, Traditions of War, p. 80.
25. Martialists, 'glorified struggle as the highest activity of man, and romanticized wars and violence' (p. 126).
26. Nabulsi, Traditions of War, pp. 111-19.
27. Henley, 'Epilogue' [1897], in Henley, Poems (London: Macmillan, 1926), p. 241.
28. Nabulsi, Traditions of War, p. 110, and pp. 115-16. It is hard to see how Charles Dilke fits into this picture of glorification (p. 113).
29. See, for example, Dilke, Problems of Greater Britain (London: Macmillan, 1890). On Dilke.
30. , see David Nicholls, The Lost Prime Minister: A Life of Sir Charles Dilke (London: Hambledon Press, 1995)
31. and Miles Taylor, 'Republics Versus Empires: Charles Dilke's Republicanism Reconsidered' in David Nash and Anthony Taylor (eds.), Republicanism in Victorian Society (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 2003), pp. 25-34.
32. Eliga Gould, 'A Virtual Nation? Greater Britain and the Imperial Legacy of the American Revolution', American Historical Review, 104 (1999), p. 486.
33. This quote is found in Seeley 'Roman Imperialism', Part I [1869] in Lectures and Essays (London: Macmillan, 1870), p. 2.
34. See also Seeley, A Short History of Napoleon the First (London: Seeley & Co., 1886).
35. On the military character, see Seeley, 'Roman Imperialism', Part II [1869] in Lectures and Essays, p. 54.
36. On his ambivalent attitudes towards India, see Part II of Expansion of England. It is interesting to note that he did not take any public stand on the Governor Eyre controversy, in which all those who might be termed 'martialists' came out in support of Eyre.
37. See Bernard Semmel, The Governor Eyre Controversy (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1962). On shifting liberal attitudes to India
38. see Karuna Mantena, 'The Crisis of Liberal Imperialism', paper presented at 'Victorian Visions of Global Order', University of Cambridge, July 2004.
39. See also Duncan Bell, 'Empire and International Relations in Victorian Political Thought', Historical Journal (forthcoming, 2005).
40. Seeley, 'The United States of Europe', Macmillan's Magazine, 23 (1871), p. 436. For subsequent peace society discussion of this lecture
41. see the Herald of Peace (April 1871), pp. 197-9
42. and the discussion in Martin Ceadel, Semi-Detached Idealists: The British Peace Movement and International Relations, 1854-1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 93-4. I thank Professor Ceadel for bringing this response to my attention.
43. Seeley, 'The United States of Europe', p. 437.
44. 'It is in comparison with no justice at all that the justice of war is admirable; compared with any properly organized legal system, it is surely deplorable' (p. 438).
45. His criticism of the 'utopia' of a world without war can also be found in 'The Impartial Study of Politics', Contemporary Review, 54 (1888), p. 57.
46. Seeley, 'The United States of Europe', pp. 439 and 447:
47. 'War tramples on the sense of right and wrong, and on the precepts of Christianity, as inevitably as it crushes the physical happiness of individuals' (p. 447).
48. Seeley, 'The English Revolution of the Nineteenth Century', Part I, Macmillan's Magazine, 22 (1870), p. 242.
49. Seeley, 'The English Revolution', Part I, p. 242.
50. Nabulsi, Traditions of War, pp. 126-7.
51. Seeley, The Life and Times of Stein, or Germany and Prussia in the Napoleonic Age, Part II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1878), pp. 41-2.
52. Seeley, Stein, Part I, pp. 96-7.
53. Seeley, Stein Ibid., pp. 386-7.
54. On the 'republican' elements of late Victorian imperial political thought, see Duncan S. A. Bell, 'The Idea of a Patriot Queen? The Constitution, the Monarchy, and the Iconographic Order of Greater Britain, 1860-1900', Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History (forthcoming, 2005).
55. On imperial federation, see Michael Burgess, The British Tradition of Federalism (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1995);
56. J. E. Kendle, Federal Britain: A History (London: Routledge, 1997);
57. and Duncan S. A. Bell, 'The Debate About Federation in Empire Political Thought', unpublished Ph.D., University of Cambridge, 2004.
58. See Duncan S. A. Bell, 'The Victorian Idea of a Global State', paper presented at 'Victorian Visions of Global Order'.
59. It is worth noting that J. A. Froude was not the first to advance the idea of imperial federation (fn. 31): loose ideas about federation appeared throughout the century, but the first proper federalist scheme most likely originated in the 1850s; see [Rev. William Arthur?], 'Our Australian Possessions', London Quarterly Review, 1 (1853), p. 550.
60. Part of the problem here is that Deudney appears to be relying heavily for his references on C. A. Bodelson, Studies in Mid-Victorian Imperialism (London: Heinemann, 1960 [1924]); this book is now very dated, though it is still illuminating in parts.
61. Deudney, 'Greater Britain or Greater Synthesis?' p. 202.
62. Exceptions include, Sir Charles Tupper, 'Federating the Empire, A Colonial Plan', The Nineteenth Century, 30 (1891), pp. 509-20
63. and C. E. Howard Vincent, 'Inter-British Trade and its Influence on the Unity of the Empire', Proceedings of the Royal Colonial Institute, 22 (1891-2), pp. 265-88.
64. Frank Trentman, 'The Strange Death of Free Trade: The Erosion of the "Liberal Consensus" in Great Britain, c. 1903-1932', in Euginio Biagini (ed.), Citizenship and Community: Liberals, Radicals and Collective Identities in the British Isles, 1865-1931 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 219-51.
65. Deudney, 'Greater Britain or Greater Synthesis?' p. 189.
66. He writes: 'A second solution to the impending crisis of Britain's world position was for Britain to unite or integrate with the United States' (p. 203).
67. Deudney, 'Greater Britain or Greater Synthesis?' p. 189.
68. Carnegie, 'Imperial Federation: An American View', The Nineteenth Century, 30 (1891), pp. 490-508.
69. Moreover, it should be stressed that the term federalism was (often) employed very loosely. This led to much confusion at the time: Richard Jebb, 'Imperial Organization', in Charles Sydney Goldman (ed.), The Empire and the Century: A Series of Essays on Imperial Problems and Possibilities (London: John Murray, 1905), pp. 333-6.
70. See, for example, John Redpath Dougall, 'An Anglo-Saxon Alliance', Contemporary Review, 48 (1885), p. 706
71. and C. W. Oman, England in the Nineteenth-Century (London: Edward Arnold, 1899), p. 261.
72. Deudney, 'Greater Britain or Greater Synthesis?' p. 191.
73. For example, Seeley, 'Introduction' to Her Majesty's Colonies: A Series of Original Papers Issued under the Authority of the Royal Commission, Colonial and Indian Exhibition, 1886 (London: William Clowes and Sons, 1886), p. xiv.
74. On the influence of Ranke on Seeley's historical thinking, see J. L. Herkless, 'Introduction' to Gustav Adolf Rein, Sir John Robert Seeley, trans. Herkless (Wolfeboro, NH Longwood Academic, 1987 [1912]), pp. i-xxiv. On the centrality of the state
75. see Seeley, 'History and Politics', Macmillan's Magazine, 40 (1879), Parts I-III, pp. 289-99, 369-78 and 449-58;
76. Expansion, ch. 1;
77. and Political Science, ch. 1.
78. Seeley, The Teaching of Politics', p. 105.
79. This was a fairly common liberal position; see Christopher Harvie, The Lights of Liberalism: University Liberals and the Challenge of Democracy, 1860-86 (London: Allen Lane, 1976), ch. 5.
80. See, for example, Seeley, Expansion, p. 183
81. and Seeley, Natural Religion, p. 221.
82. Deborah Wormell asserts (inaccurately) that Seeley disdained the civilising mission: Wormell, Sir John Seeley, p. 159.
83. Although most realists today separate the domestic from the international, this has not always been the case. See Michael Williams, The Realist Tradition and the Limits of International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
84. Compare, for example, Seeley, 'The English Revolution', Part I, p. 251
85. with J. R. Seeley to Bessie Seeley, 9 April 1881, Seeley papers, University of London Library, MS903/2B/1;
86. Seeley, 'Political Somnambulism', Macmillan's Magazine, 43 (1880), p. 31;
87. and, explicating the role of home rule in this switch, Seeley, letter to Oscar Browning, 6 April 1887-8[?], Browning Papers, Modern Archive Centre, King's College, Cambridge, OB/1/1455A.
88. Seeley, 'Liberal Education in Universities' [1867], p. 215
89. and Seeley, 'English in Schools' [1867]
90. both in Seeley, Lectures and Essays, p. 238.
91. John Stuart Mill, 'Democracy in America' [1835] in John M. Robson (ed.), The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1963-1991), pp. 47-91;
92. and Arnold, Culture and Anarchy and Other Writings, ed. Stefan Collini (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
93. Seeley, 'The Object to be Gained by Imperial Federation', Imperial Federation, 1/6 (1886), p. 206.
94. See also his comments in Seeley, 'Introduction' to Her Majesty's Colonies, pp. x and xxii-iii.
95. This was one of the reasons that the prominent journalist (and imperial federalist) W. T. Stead suggested that Seeley be put in charge of a college teaching the ideal of the English global nation: Frederick Whyte, The Life of W. T. Stead, Part II (London: Jonathan Cape, 1925), pp. 209-10.
96. Seeley to J. B. Mayor, 2 March 185?, Seeley Papers, MS903/1A/1.
97. In this attempt to learn from but surpass Comte, Seeley was not alone amongst the Liberal Anglicans; see also F. D. Maurice, Social Morality (London: Macmillan, 1869), pp. 18-19 and Lecture XIX.
98. Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols [1888]
99. in Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols
100. and The Anti-Christ, ed. Michael Tanner (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2003), p. 80. Although the degree to which Seeley 'got rid' of the traditional deity and the supernatural paraphernalia accompanying it is far from clear - in Ecce Homo (1866) he gestured repeatedly to a belief in the transcendent realm, in Natural Religion (1882) his starting point was to disavow such a belief, and in the preface to the 3rd edition (1891) he restated his non-traditional Christianity, therein describing supernaturalism as 'accidental' to the religion - this passage illustrates aptly the post-1860 currents of British moral thought in which he swam.
101. Boyd Hilton, The Age of Atonement: The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought, 1795-1865 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988), p. 334. On the 'familial' context of Victorian patterns of faith
102. see Frank Turner, Contesting Cultural Authority: Essays in Victorian Intellectual Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 73-101.
103. By the late 1850s, in his correspondence with his family, Seeley was demonstrating his admiration for the broad church. See for example, J. R. Seeley to R. B. Seeley, 29 September 185?, Seeley Papers, MS903/2A/2 and J. R. Seeley to Mary Seeley, 3 April 1855, Seeley Papers, MS903/2B/1. See also Seeley, 'The Church as a Teacher of Morality', in W. L. Clay (ed.), Essays in Church Policy (London: Macmillan, 1868).
104. See for example, [W. J. Conybeare], 'Church Parties', Edinburgh Review, 98 (1853), pp. 273-342.
105. See also the discussion in Boyd Hilton, 'Apologia Pro Vitis Veteriorum Hominum', Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 50 (1999), pp. 117-30.
106. See Coleridge, On the Idea of the Constitution of the Church and State (London: Hurst, Chance & Co., 1830).
107. The most explicit of Seeley's (published) references to Coleridge can be found in, 'Milton's Political Opinions', Lectures and Essays, p. 99;
108. see also his, 'Ethics and Religion', Fortnightly Review, 45 (1889), pp. 501-14.
109. Wormell, Sir John Seeley and the Uses of History, ch. 1.
110. His educational environment was also notably liberal: John Burrow, 'The Age of Reform' in David Reynolds (ed.), Christ's: A Cambridge College Over Five Centuries (London: Palgrave, 2004), pp. 111-43.
111. Interestingly, they also lacked any substantial trace of the evolutionism so common at the time. On the far-reaching societal impact of the 'evolutionary moment', see Theodore K. Hoppen, The Mid-Victorian Generation, 1846-1886 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), ch. 13.
112. See also John Burrow, Evolution and Society: A Study in Victorian Social Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966).
113. Seeley, Natural Religion, pp. 43 and 135-7.
114. See also, 'The Church as a Teacher of Morality'.
115. See the comments by Henry Sidgwick, 'Editor's Preface', to Seeley, Political Science, p. xi.
116. Seeley, Natural Religion, p. 218. Religion was, he argued, 'the soul of all healthy political organisation' (p. 259).
117. See Caroline Jebb, The Life and Letters of Sir Richard Claverhouse Jebb (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1907), pp. 85-6.
118. Natural Religion was first published in serial form in Macmillan's Magazine between 1875-8, during the period in which Seeley was researching and writing Stein. It was published in 1882, the year during which the lectures on which the Expansion of England were being delivered.
119. See, for example, Turner, Between Science and Religion
120. and Turner, Contesting Cultural Authority, essays 1-7.
121. Seeley, Natural Religion, p. 52.
122. Seeley, Natural Religion Ibid., p. 53.
123. Ibid., pp. 66 and 68.
124. Ibid., p. 66.
125. Ibid., p. 56. In a sense, then, Seeley's views can be seen as part of what David Newsome has labelled the Broad Church understanding of the human intellect as a tool for 'progressive revelation'; Broad Church adherents consequently held a 'dynamic concept' of revelation.
126. Newsome, The Victorian World Picture (London: John Murray, 1997), pp. 214-15.
127. Seeley, Natural Religion, p. 257.
128. Seeley, Natural Religion Ibid., pp. 131-2. See also the discussion on p. 158.
129. Seeley, Natural Religion Ibid., pp. 131-2.
130. Seeley wrote widely on literature, including essays on Milton and a book on Goethe. Seeley, Goethe Reviewed After Sixty Years (London: Seeley, 1894).
131. He also published, anonymously, some (bad) poetry of his own: [Seeley], David and Samuel; With other Poems, Original and Translated (London: Seeley, 1869).
132. Seeley, Natural Religion, pp. 96-111
133. and also his Goethe Reviewed After Sixty Years.
134. See also, The Life of Frederick Denison Maurice (London: Macmillan, 1884), Part II, p. 59.
135. Seeley, Stein, Part III, p. 556.
136. Seeley, Natural Religion, p. 160. He labelled this form of moral reasoning the 'legal school in morals' (p. 166).
137. Seeley, Natural Religion Ibid., p. 254.
138. Seeley, letter to Sidgwick, 2 July 1867, Sidgwick Papers, Trinity College, Cambridge, Add Ms c95/64-73.
139. Seeley, Natural Religion, p. 166. This was, of course, a position derived partially from Comtean positivism, but brought within the sphere of Christian belief.
140. On Seeley's debt to positivism, see Wormell, Sir John Seeley, ch. 1.
141. Seeley, Natural Religion, p. 168.
142. Seeley, Natural Religion Ibid., pp. 183-5. Note that this was an inaccurate picture of Victorian politics, which were infused with religion, and that Seeley relied on a caricature of the actual state of affairs pertaining at the time. The most radical account of the persistence of religion in
143. Britain is Callum Brown, The Death of Christian Britain: Understanding Secularisation, 1800-2000 (London: Routledge, 2000).
144. See also the persuasive comments in Jeremy Morris, 'The Strange Death of Christian Britain: Another Look at the Secularization Debate', Historical Journal, 46 (2003), pp. 963-76.
145. Seeley, Natural Religion, p. 185.
146. Seeley, Natural Religion Ibid., p. 200.
147. Seeley wrote admiringly that when 'the state fell to pieces the nation held together and proceeded to put forth out of its own vitality a new form of state'. Seeley, Stein, II, p. 20.
148. The 'state which is also a nation is an organism far surpassing in vigour and vitality the state which is only a state'. Seeley, Stein, Part II, p. 17.
149. See also Seeley, 'Georgian and Victorian Expansion', Fortnightly Review, 48 (1887), p. 126.
150. On the importance of organic romanticism in nineteenth-century thought, see Mark Bevir, 'The Long Nineteenth Century in Intellectual History', Journal of Victorian Culture, 6 (2001), pp. 313-36.
151. See the extensive discussion in Seeley, Stein, Part II, pp. 29-42.
152. See also Fichte, Addresses to the German Nation, ed. George A. Kelly (New York: Harper Torch Books, 1968 [1807-8]).
153. Seeley, Stein, Part II, p. 34.
154. Seeley, Stein Ibid., p. 34.
155. Seeley, Stein Ibid., p. 41.
156. Seeley, Expansion, pp. 11, 50 and 220.
157. See also Seeley, Political Science, p. 68.
158. Seeley, Expansion, p. 225.
159. Seeley, Political Science, p. 137.
160. On the reasons for the general British disinclination to follow the biological and radically organicist trends apparent in much continental thought, see Peter Mandler, "Race' and 'Nation' in Mid-Victorian Thought' in Stefan Collini, Richard Whatmore, and Brian Young (eds.), History, Religion, and Culture: British Intellectual History, 1750-1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 224-45.
161. Seeley, Stein, Part II, p. 17.
162. Seeley, 'Milton's Political Opinions', p. 99.
163. The claim about Coleridge can be found in Seeley, 'Milton's Political Opinions', p. 98.
164. He once wrote in a letter to his father that he was 'more of an Arnoldite than a Mauriceite': Seeley to R. B. Seeley, n.d. 185?, Seeley Papers, MS903/2A/2
165. . The respectful distance was reciprocal, as Maurice wrote of Ecce Homo, which he admired greatly (Maurice to A. Macmillan, 2 January 1886, Seeley Papers, MS903/3A/1). Despite these proclamations, I would argue that whilst Seeley might have shared more theological ground with Arnold (at least in the 1850s), his political thought appears to owe considerably more to Maurice, although this might simply be because Maurice lived longer and thus wrote on questions which were also pressing to Seeley.
166. Coleridge, On the Idea of the Constitution of the Church and State.
167. [Richard Whatley], Letters on the Church, By an Episcopalian (London, 1826) posed a serious liberal challenge to this central link in 'broad church' thinking.
168. Arnold, 'The Church and the State' [1839]
169. and 'National Church Establishments' [1840] in Arthur P. Stanley (ed.), The Miscellaneous Works of Thomas Arnold . . . Collected and Republished (London: B. Fellowes, 1845), pp. 466-75 and 486-92.
170. Arnold, Postscript to Principles of Church Reform (London: B. Fellowes, 1833), p. 19. This was a vision supported by many Whig MPs.
171. See Maurice, The Kingdom of Christ (London: Darnton & Clark, 1838);
172. and Maurice, Social Morality.
173. See especially T. H. Green, Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation and Other Writings, eds. Paul Harris and John Morrow (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).
174. On the links between idealism and the liberal Anglicans, see Jones, Victorian Political Thought, ch. 3
175. and also the comments in James Allard, 'Idealism in Britain and the United States' in Thomas Baldwin (ed.), The Cambridge History of Philosophy, 1870-1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 43-59.
176. The best recent account of idealism, which stresses its British roots, is Sandra Den Otter, British Idealism and Social Explanation (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996).
177. This was also true, for example, of much 'patriotic' poetry until the closing decades of the century, in writers such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning and the early Tennyson. See Tricia Lootens, 'Victorian Poetry and Patriotism', in Joseph Bristow (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Victorian Poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 255-80.
178. See also Matthew Reynolds, The Realms of Verse, 1830-1870: English Poetry in a Time of Nation-Building (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). This is the poetic milieu that Seeley, obsessed with literature, would have grown up immersed in.
179. Seeley, Natural Religion, p. 207. On the universalism of the Church,'
180. see also: Seeley letter to Sidgwick, 15 May 1866, Sidgwick Papers.
181. See, for example, The Life of Frederick Denison Maurice, Part I, p. 166.
182. This was most apparent in his essay on the 'The United States of Europe'.
183. Seeley, 'Our Insular Ignorance', p. 869.
184. He continued: 'In the main I hold that it is healthy for a nation to live in society. Like an individual a nation should study its behaviour to its fellows, and for this purpose it should listen respectfully and anxiously to their opinion' (p. 869).
185. See also the comments in Expansion, p. 225.
186. Seeley, Political Science, p. 88.
187. Seeley, Natural Religion, p. 200.
188. See, for example, the comments in Seeley, 'The Eighty-Eights', Good Words (1888), p. 380.
189. Maurice, Social Morality, p. 19.
190. Seeley, Ecce Homo: A Survey of the Life and Work of Jesus Christ, ed. John A. T. Robinson (London: Dent, 1970 [1866]), p. 121. He was here critical of the purported abstract 'universal man' of Jacobinism, preferring to focus attention on individual, embodied persons and their communities.
191. See also the discussion in Shannon, 'John Robert Seeley and the Idea of a National Church', pp. 245-6
192. and Maurice, Social Morality, pp. 122-3.
193. Seeley, Stein, Part II, pp. 384-8.
194. Seeley, 'The Church as a Teacher of Morality', p. 277. Coleridge had counterposed his conception of the national church (focusing on the Church of England in particular) with the universal church of Christ, which knew no legal or political borders. The two could coexist in the same space, but should not be confused.
195. Coleridge, Constitution of the Church and State.
196. Maurice, Social Morality, p. 209. Italics in original. The intimate connection between nationalism and internationalism was discussed widely at the time:
197. Georgios Varouaxakis, '"Patriotism", " Cosmopolitanism" and "Humanity" in Victorian Political Thought', European Journal of Political Theory (forthcoming, 2005).
198. Maurice, Social Morality, Lecture XIII. 'I have endeavored to shew [sic] you how much mischief has proceeded from every effort to constitute a Universal divine Society which shall swallow up . . . distinctions into itself (p. 481).
199. See here, Immanuel Kant, 'Idea for A Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose' [1784] in Kant, Political Writings, ed. Hans Reiss (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 41-54. For a critique of the parochial qualities of Kant's cosmopolitan vision
200. see James Tully, 'The Kantian Idea of Europe: Critical and Cosmopolitan Perspectives', in Anthony Pagden (ed.), The Idea of Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 331-58.
201. See also the comments in E. S. Hurd, 'The Political Authority of Secularism in International Relations', European Journal of International Relations, 10 (2004), pp. 235-62.
202. As made most explicit in John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971).
203. The philosophical difficulties in the private/public distinction are elaborated in Raymond Geuss, Private Goods, Public Goods (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001).
204. Neo-Thomism is especially prominent in discussions of the Just War tradition. For a recent statement, see Oliver O'Donovan, The Just War Revisited (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). On more radical departures in political theology
205. see John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990);
206. Milbank, 'Sovereignty, Empire, Capital, and Terror', South Atlantic Quarterly, 101 (2002), pp. 305-23;
207. Milbank, Catherine Pickstock and Graham Ward (eds.), Radical Orthodoxy (London: Routledge, 1998);
208. and, from a somewhat different direction, Oliver O'Donovan, The Desire of the Nations: Rediscovering the Roots of Political Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).