"The Business of War": William Godwin, Enmity, and Historical Representation

Abstract

William Godwin introduces Political Justice through a vision of human history as war. But his revisions of the text increasingly attend to the particular problem of the modern scene of battle, which produces atrocities that no longer depend upon resentment and anger. This essay connects Godwin's distress over modern war to his simultaneous critique of post-1688 English history, in order to address the counterintuitive fascination with enmity that emerges in his philosophy and fiction. Culminating in his historical novel Mandeville , Godwin's broader project of enmity ultimately defies Walter Scott's contemporary attempts to imagine a commercial end to history.

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