This article investigates Godwin's and Shelley's political ideas within the broad backdrop established by the emergence and crisis of the English "jacobin" radicalism. The following analysis explores the development of and problems faced by the libertarian ideals of those thinkers and their reactions to the dramatic social and political changes which took place between the end of the XVIIIth and beginnings of the XIXth centuries.
Anarchy; revolution; modernity; reason; Utopia