Events

On April 5, at 16:00, at A 101 auditorium of Ilia State University, at the invitation of Iliauni Social and Cultural Research Institute, Research Associate in history and politics at the University of Cambridge, Thomas Hopkins, will deliver the public lecture: Democracy and Industry in Post-Revolutionary France.

In the 19th century, widespread was the belief according to which the foundation of ancient states, in fact, was slavery, while modern European societies rested on the industry formed by their citizens.
Public life was deemed to be the system of means and aims the basis of which was the so-called "Division of Labour."
Politics could have been viewed as an extension of this system, with its selective similarity between its representative governance and commercial society.

This lecture will shed light on the importance of the ideas of the 19th century in the 20th century, as well as the part these ideas played to create a proper ground for the development of socialist reasoning. The story revolves around Henri Saint-Simon and his thoughts. His aspiration to replace "People's Government" with "the administration of things" influenced such critically different thinkers as: Ogist Kont, Karl Marx, John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spenser.
Regarding the speaker:

Historian of politics, Thomas Hopkins, has delivered lectures in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge since 2015; at the same time, he has been a bye-fellow in History and Politics at Christ’s College, University of Cambridge.
In 2014-2015, he taught the history of political thought at the University of London.

In 2011, at Christ's College of the University of Cambridge, Thomas Hopkins defended his PHD thesis in the field of history, with the title: "Say and Sismondi on the political economy of post-revolutionary. Europe."

In 2005-2006, Hopkins studied at the same university on the Master's programme of philosophy with special emphasis on political thought and intellectual history.

Selected publications:

2015 ‘The Limits of “Cosmopolitical Economy”: Smith, List and the Paradox of Peace through Trade’, in T. Hippler and M. Vec, eds, Paradoxes of Peace in Nineteenth-Century Europe, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 77-91.
2014, "Ordering the World in the Nineteenth Century'; ‘Property and Poverty: Perspectives on the nineteenth-century Social Question’; ‘Before Socialism: Political economy and the Social Question in nineteenth-century France’, in M. Koskenniemi and B. Stråth, eds., Europe 1815-1914: Creating Community and Ordering the World, (Helsinki: University of Helsinki, 2014), pp. 33-43, 84-92, 93-106.
2016, Industrial Civilization: Political Thought in Post-Revolutionary France (monograph in preparation, estimated completion late 2016).

Date and time: April 5, 16:00
Venue:  lecture hall A 101 of Ilia State University, #32 Ilia Chavchavadze Ave.

The lecture is free and everyone is welcome to attend.