Ruler Before Philosopher

Abstract

THE LIFE WORK of Frederick the Great can be viewed in many contexts that are significant for universal history. One of the most important for the history of European thought is the context in which we shall seek to view it here. If any man of the eighteenth century had the vocation and the strength to solve the problem for his time, and to confer on raison d’état the aims and standards of universal human reason, then it was Frederick. It can be said that his whole life was dedicated to this task. With a heroism that was just as philosophical as it was political, he took it upon himself from the beginning and directed upon it all the divergent energies of his mind (which was by no means either simple or unambiguous) and all the scientific means of his time. The solution which he found and which satisfied him was certainly one which, in the main, he succeeded in discovering relatively quickly and early; but he did not allow it to deteriorate into a useful convention, but was ever reconsidering it freshly and intensively, and so even latterly was able to add something new to it. So that, as will presently be shown, it was ultimately capable of leading on to new stages of historical and political knowledge. But he himself remained confined all the time within the limitations of his own time and its mode of thought.