What is the State For?: Karl von Dalberg’s Critique of Liberalism and the Defence of Enlightened Absolutism: 1 (Anthem Impact, 1)

Karl von Dalberg (1744-1817) was the scion of a prominent aristocratic family in the Holy Roman Empire.He served as the Empire’s last Reichskanzler (1802-1806) before its dissolution by Napoleon, and subsequently as Prince-Primate of the Confederation of the Rhine (1806-1813), implementing Napoleonic reforms in the Rhineland.In the 1790s, he had been active as a political theorist and a member of Friedrich Schiller’s intellectual circle in Jena.Dalberg’s early text of 1793, ‘Von den wahren Grenzen der Wirksamkeit des Staats’ [‘The True Limits of the Effectiveness of the State’], published anonymously but securely attributed, defends Christian Wolff’s perfectionist theory of the state against Kantian critiques, especially as these were formulated in 1792 by Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835).The confrontation between Dalberg and Humboldt illustrates the early reception of Kant’s moral, political and juridical thought, and varying German responses to the French Revolution.Dalberg offers an