About

Isaac Nakhimovsky is an Associate Professor of History and Humanities at Yale University. He is the author of The Closed Commercial State: Perpetual Peace and Commercial Society from Rousseau to Fichte (Princeton, 2011), and has collaborated on editions and volumes related to eighteenth-century political thought and its post-revolutionary legacies. His work explores themes of commerce, peace, and political ideas in the Enlightenment and post-revolutionary periods. In June 2022, he delivered the Quentin Skinner Lecture at the University of Cambridge, and his forthcoming book, Holy Alliance: Liberalism and the Politics of Federation, is scheduled for publication by Princeton University Press in 2024.

Research topics

• Philosophy
• Humanities
• Sociology
• Political Science
• Psychoanalysis
• Epistemology
• Psychology
• Environmental ethics
• Art
• Law

Selected publications

• chapter two Friend of Mankind

  Princeton University Press eBooks · 2024

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Philosophy
  • Psychology
  • Psychoanalysis
  PublisherDOI

• Georg Lukács and Revolutionary Realpolitik, 1918–19: An Essay on Ethical Action, Historical Judgment, and the History of Political Thought

  Journal of the History of Ideas · 2022

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Epistemology

  "Bolshevism as a Moral Problem" and "Tactics and Ethics" were discussions of political ethics closely related to Max Weber's contemporaneous "Politics as a Vocation." They diverged from one another in their historical assessments of possibilities for ethically responsible revolutionary action. They are best understood as developments of an approach to political judgment originally forged by Johann Gottlieb Fichte, whose concerns were associated by Weber with Realpolitik and which continue to animate discussions of "political realism." Overwriting these concerns as transitional moments in personal conversion narratives or the history of political thought has an inhibiting effect on historical and political judgment.

  PublisherDOI

• <i>L’héritage des Lumières: Ambivalences de la modernité</i>. By Antoine Lilti. Hautes Études. Paris: Éditions du Seuil/Éditions Gallimard, 2019. Pp. 404. €25.00 (paper).

  The Journal of Modern History · 2021

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Humanities
  • Art
  • Humanities
  PublisherDOI

• Envisioning Europe after Utrecht: Voltaire and the Historiography of the Balance of Power

  2019-11-29 · 1 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  This chapter attempts to bring the historiography of the European balance of power in the eighteenth century into focus by examining the forms it took in the aftermath of the Peace of Utrecht in 1713, above all in the hands of the eminent philosopher François-Marie Arouet de Voltaire (1694–1778). Voltaire envisioned a post-Utrecht Europe in which large monarchies like Britain and France were both locked into a system of diplomatic and commercial relations, thereby forming, in his words, “a kind of great republic divided into many states.” This vision of the balance of power and of the European states system proliferated widely and was discussed in many contexts. Though many challenges to this vision were expressed at the time, particularly in the wake of the Seven Years War, a version of it was also embedded into Emer de Vattel’s famous treatise on the law of nations, published in 1758. As Vattel’s status as a leading authority on international law throughout the nineteenth century suggests, this was a vision of the European balance of power with enduring appeal.

  PublisherDOI

• Markets, Morals, Politics: Jealousy of Trade and the History of Political Thought

  2018-03-19 · 18 citations

  bookOpen access

  When Istvan Hont died in 2013, the world lost a giant of intellectual history. A leader of the Cambridge School of Political Thought, Hont argued passionately for a global-historical approach to political ideas. To better understand the development of liberalism, he looked not only to the works of great thinkers but also to their reception and use amid revolution and interstate competition. His innovative program of study culminated in the landmark 2005 book Jealousy of Trade, which explores the birth of economic nationalism and other social effects of expanding eighteenth-century markets. Markets, Morals, and Politics brings together a celebrated cast of Hont's contemporaries to assess his influence, ideas and methods. Richard Tuck, John Pocock, John Dunn, Raymond Geuss, Gareth Stedman Jones, Michael Sonenscher, John Robertson, Keith Tribe, Pasquale Pasquino, and Peter N. Miller contribute original essays on themes Hont treated with penetrating insight....

  PublisherOA PDF

• Markets, Morals, Politics

  Harvard University Press eBooks · 2018-03-19 · 5 citations

  book
  PublisherDOI

• An International Dilemma: The Postwar Utopianism of Gunnar Myrdal’s Beyond the Welfare State

  Humanity · 2017-01-01 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  This article shows how Myrdal sought to build on the success of his An American Dilemma (1954) by showing American liberals that the conduct of Western states toward the developing postcolonial world was in conflict with their fundamental ideals. Judging by his contacts at Yale, Myrdal’s Beyond the Welfare State (1960) was aimed at an audience that, in the late 1950s, perceived America’s relationship to the postcolonial world to be at a critical juncture. Myrdal’s book offered them an attractive and reassuring, but ultimately unconvincing, narrative that reconciled the Western commitment to national welfare with international solidarity.

  PublisherDOI

• Introduction

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2017-07-12 · 2 citations

  book-chapter
  PublisherDOI

• Introduction: Power, prosperity, and peace in Enlightenment thought

  IRIS · 2017-01-01 · 1 citations

  article
  Publisher

• The enlightened prince and the future of Europe

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2017-07-12 · 4 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Richard Whatmore

  St. Andrews University

  4 shared

• Béla Kapossy

  University of Helsinki

  4 shared

• Sophus A. Reinert

  2 shared

• Peter N. Miller

  1 shared

• Richard Tuck

  University of Helsinki

  1 shared

• Pasquale Pasquino

  1 shared

• J. G. A. Pocock

  1 shared

• Michael Sonenscher

  University of Cambridge

  1 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Political Science

  Harvard University

  2008

• M.Phil, Political Thought and Intellectual History

  University of Cambridge

  2002

• A.B., History

  Harvard University

  2001

Awards & honors

• Quentin Skinner Lecture at the University of Cambridge (2022…