Restoration of Political Science

Karl Ludwig von Haller’s Restoration of Political Science is one of the key texts of the Counter-Enlightenment, but has never been available in English until now. In this first volume, he fatally wounds liberal political theory, taking on Grotius, Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Kant, and others one by one. Haller shows how their ideas were perfectly embodied in the French Revolution before its total failure and culmination in the exact opposite of liberalism—the absolute personal rule of Napoleon.

Out of the ashes Haller raises a sensible and workable theory—patrimonialism, the personal rule of a strong man, a social state in which private law is the only law. Along the way, he refutes many of our most sacred ideas: popular sovereignty, the social contract, the Hobbesian state of nature, and the delegation of power for national interests, and offers his famous critique of Roman law.

In the Restoration of Political Science, we get a powerful antidote to liberalism, with personal power as the source of political authority and legitimacy. Haller is one of the giants of European counter-revolutionary thought, and now his insights are available to the English-speaking world.