ABSTRACT
Those who thought about the social and political order directed their attention to a new centre of interest towards the end of the seventeenth century. It was not that speculation about political authority was forgotten, but rather that it came to be complemented with a concern for the social order. This concern was primarily political, in the sense that it focused on how people might live well in groups. Sometimes this addressed their morals (the french term moeurs1 captures this meaning) and sometimes their prosperity. To put the matter generally, where the political theorists of the preceding century had looked at politics with an eye chiefly to preserving the citizen and his interests, their successors in the eighteenth century looked much more at how people might live well. Public morals, civic culture, social justice, education (including aesthetic education), ‘improvement’ in its manifold forms and political economy were their preoccupations.
