Krausism and its legacy

Abstract

ABSTRACT Krausismo or Krausism (named after an early nineteenth-century German philosopher named Karl Friedrich Christian Krause) was one of many overlapping ways of thinking about the politics of reform in nineteenth-century Europe. It was once more widely known than it has become, notably because of its connection to the thought of both Pierre Leroux and Lorenz von Stein. The aim of this article to show how this way of thinking about reform had its origins in the federal side of the political thought of Rousseau and Kant and, subsequently, in Hegel's concept of civil society. It was reinforced, with Krause, by a strong emphasis on individual capability that paralleled the German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher's conception of the relationship between individuality and the division of labour. Like many of these reform movements, Krausism disappeared from historical view, mainly because of the difficulty its supporters faced in finding ways to reconcile political pluralism with unitary sovereignty. Part of the point of the paper is to try to show why these attempts still have a bearing on thinking about federalism.