Abstract:Thomas Abbt's Vom Tode für das Vaterland (On Dying for the Fatherland) (1761) is a central text of eighteenth-century German patriotism. This article explores its philosophical and political content against the backdrop of the French debates of the 1750s on modern monarchical patriotism. Montesquieu launched these debates by describing the moral life of modern commercial monarchies in Mandevillian terms as a quagmire of materialist selfishness. Civil and military service, he argued, could only be entrusted to … Show more
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