The Life of the Mind: Key Texts in European Thought, 1512-1697
|
Reading for Week 11
Conjectural history: the origins and nature of political
society
The jurists' interest in fundamental natural law and the philosophers'
attempts to identify the essential features of the human mind climaxed in
the second half of the seventeenth century in the conjectural history of
early political society developed by Thomas Hobbes and John Locke.
Hobbes's famous work, pitched into the bitter controversies of the English
Republic, offered not only a disturbing justification for total obedience
to sovereign authority but also a worryingly pragmatic view of both human
motivation and religious allegiance. Locke's more obviously liberal
conclusion, which was reached just as parliamentary monarchy was emerging
in England and Britain, was that governments arose out of a contract
between governors and governed, which the former needed to fulfil. Both
studies, along with the extraordinary progressive values expounded by the
exiled French scholar Pierre Bayle, pointed the way forward to the
eighteenth-century Enlightenment and the development of the modern social
sciences.
Set texts
- Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan [cap. 13; cap. 30 (1st ten paras);
cap. 42 (extract); cap. 47 (extract)]
- John Locke, Two Treatises of Government [Second Treatise, caps
II, VIII]
- Pierre Bayle, Philosophical Dictionary ['Philosophy and
Religion'; 'Scepticism' (extract)]
Other reading
- Quentin Skinner, 'Hobbes's Leviathan', Historical Journal
(1964)
- Quentin Skinner, 'The Ideological Context of Hobbes's Political
Thought', Historical Journal (1966)
- J.W.N. Watkins, Hobbes's System of Ideas (1965)
- T. Sorrell, (ed.), Cambridge Companion to Hobbes (1996)
- A. Lister, 'Scepticism and Pluralism in Thomas Hobbes's Political
Thought', History of Political Thought (1998)
- G.A.J. Rogers, (ed.), Leviathan: Contemporary Responses to the
Political Theory of Thomas Hobbes (1995)
- John Dunn, The Political Thought of John Locke (1969)
- G. Parry, John Locke (1978)
- L. Simonutti, 'Between Political Loyalty and Religious Liberty',
History of Political Thought (1996)
- G.A.J. Rogers, (ed.), Locke's Philosophy: Content and Context
(1994)
- G.A.J. Rogers, Locke's Enlightenment: Aspects of the Origin, Nature
and Impact of his Philosophy (1998)
- S. Chen, 'Locke's Political Arguments for Toleration', History of
Political Thought (1998)
- J.R. Milton, 'Dating Locke's Second Treatise', History of Political
Thought (1995)
- M. Hunter and D. Wootton, (eds.), Atheism from the Reformation to
the Enlightenment (1992)
- A.C. Kors and P.J. Korshin, (eds.), Anticipations of the
Enlightenment in England, France and Germany (1987)
- P. Hazard, The European Mind, 1680-1715 (1964)
- W. Rex, Essays on Pierre Bayle and Religious Controversy (1965)
- H.T. Mason, Pierre Bayle and Voltaire (1963)
Web resources
|