One of the fundamental questions for International Relations is whether the value system of liberalism can be universalised, of if, in fact, the illiberal reality of international politics systematically rules out such a universalisation. The book addresses this issue by focusing on the rise and fall of a specific liberal project supported by influential German intellectuals from the French Revolution up to the rise of Nazism, and manifested in the political philosophies of Immanuel Kant, Georg Hegel, Max Weber, and Hans Morgenthau. The book historically contextualises the thought of these influential authors from within the context of Germany's comparative 'backwardness' vis-à-vis republican France and capitalist Britain. In so doing, the book provides new vistas from which to theoretically and substantively reassess the condition of individual freedom in an illiberal world of politics.

PART I
Introduction
1789: The Revolution of Backwardness
PART II
Kant's Corporate Enlightenment
Hegel's Revolution of Philosophy
Interlude: Vormärz
Weber's Realpolitik
PART III
Epilogue: Weimar
Morgenthau's Existential Crisis
Conclusion

ROBBIE SHILLIAM is Lecturer in International Relations at the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Prior to this he was the Hedley Bull Junior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, UK.