The World According to Kant: Appearances and Things in Themselves in Critical Idealism by Anja Jauernig (review)

Abstract

together. This overlooks the growing importance that Macaulay’s political framework, suitably recast in contemporary secular terms, has in republican discourse today. Green says little in the book about modern republicanism, other than to distance her reading of Macaulay from the current republican ideal of “non-domination” (223–24). What this omission obscures, however, is the increasing awareness by present-day republicans that women contributed in significant numbers to the history of this tradition, challenging many of the male-dominated assumptions that have beset it (see Alan Coffee, “Women and Republicanism,” Australasian Philosophical Review 3/4 [2020]: 361–69). Particularly through her influence on Wollstonecraft, but also on her own account, Macaulay is at the forefront of this reappraisal. This is, in my view, a missed opportunity. In her conclusion, for example, Green includes a subsection on “Macaulay on the Tradition of Liberal Feminism,” but she is silent on republican feminism. One final observation about Green’s focus on the particular substantive principles in Macaulay, rather than on her framework, is that it also sometimes leads Green to take a narrower view than she might of some of the principles she identifies. On the question of liberty, Green twice says that Macaulay “clearly” uses a positive notion as understood through Isaiah Berlin’s famous distinction (220–21). However, while it cannot be denied that in some sense Macaulay does invoke a positive notion, Berlin’s sharp dichotomy is not helpful when thinking in terms of a framework of ideas in which Macaulay makes use of both positive and negative elements within her broader system. These methodological differences aside, Green has produced a magnificent intellectual biography that will be indispensable for scholars interested in Macaulay specifically or in late eighteenth-century politics in general. As Bridget Hill ushered in a new era of Macaulay studies a generation ago with The Republican Virago (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), Green too has likely produced the definitive guide for the generation to come. A l a n C o f f e e King’s College London