We are in Königsberg, in the East Prussia of King Frederick the Great, in 1776, and the person who appears presiding over a table of philosophers, merchants and other more or less illustrious professions, comments on the events of that year, proclaiming at the end:
The most important thing that has happened is the uprising of the English in their Thirteen Colonies of North America against King George of England, to form a new country called the United States of America. They intend to establish a new political order, which begins by demonstrating with popular sentiment in favor of freedoms and democracy, against the tyranny of the absolute monarchy.
Exactly, teacher – says a young disciple who is at the right hand of Immanuel Kant, the aforementioned character –, they say that in times of the Enlightenment, the freedom to express oneself and act means that the true coming of age of our long-suffering humanity has been reached. It is no small thing, and the entire world is generally warned of the great changes that are foreseeable in the immediate future.
The old ideas of a country ruled by a monarch will be thrown away – said another of the attendees in a thoughtful and thoughtful manner, we could say, who must be a merchant by the way he expressed himself. And business will also flourish with the idea of free seas and commerce as a creative force of exchange between increasingly free nations, not dependent on metropolises. There we have the recently published book An Investigation into the Wealth of Nations to illustrate the progress of the economy. I have just received a copy from London, sent to me by a certain David Hume, a colleague of a certain Adam Smith, already very famous for his philosophical theories and who has set out to systematize the set of previously somewhat diffuse chrematistic ideas.
The conversation of the philosophers in Königsberg around Prof. Kant continues at length. There are the distinguished attendees of the conversation who think about a new era.