Rethinking Liberty before Liberalism

Front Cover
Hannah Dawson, Annelien de Dijn
Cambridge University Press, Feb 3, 2022 - History - 330 pages
Opens up new histories of freedom and republicanism by building on Quentin Skinner's ground-breaking Liberty before Liberalism nearly twenty five years after its initial publication. Leading historians and philosophers reveal the neo-Roman conception of liberty that Skinner unearthed as a normative and historical hermeneutic tool of enormous, ongoing power. The volume thinks with neo-Romanism to offer reinterpretations of individual thinkers, such as Montaigne, Grotius and Locke. It probes the role of neo-Roman liberty within hierarchies and structures beyond that of citizen and state - namely, gender, slavery, and democracy. Finally, it reassesses the relationships between neo-Romanism and other languages in the history of political thought: liberalism, conservatism, socialism, and the human rights tradition. The volume concludes with a major reappraisal by Skinner himself.
 

Contents

The Case of Montaigne
17
Liberty before Licence in Locke
60
Liberty and Hierarchy in Miltons Revolutionary Prose
79
Democratic Republicanism in the Early Modern Period
100
What
117
Liberty Death and Slavery in the Age of Atlantic
134
Liberalism Freedom
157
The Idea of NeoRoman
178
Liberty and Domination
194
NeoRoman Liberty in the Philosophy of Human Rights
215
and Reassessment
233
Bibliography
267
Index
295
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About the author (2022)

Hannah Dawson is Senior Lecturer in the History of Political Thought at King's College London. She is an expert on early modern thought and the history of feminism. Her previous publications include Locke, Language and Early Modern Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 2007), Life Lessons from Hobbes (2013), and The Penguin Book of Feminist Writing (2021), as well as numerous scholarly articles. She is a regular contributor to radio, television and festivals. Annelien de Dijn is Professor of Modern Political History at Utrecht University. She is the author of French Political Thought from Montesquieu to Tocqueville (Cambridge University Press, 2008) and Freedom: An Unruly History (2020) which was awarded the 2021 PROSE Prize in Philosophy by the American Association of Publishers.

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