Abstract

A doctoral dissertation which analyzes the decline of the politically optimistic spirit of the Enlightenment. This decline is the result of two forces, "the cultural alienation of the romantic" and "the despair of Christian fatalism." The author's analysis of these forces is critical and scholarly but her sympathies are with neither: "A reasoned skepticism is consequently the sanest attitude for the present." Consideration of other political traditions--e.g. that of Greek political philosophy, or that of natural law--would have been helpful.--G. B.