Contract Theory in Historical Contet (Brill's Studies in Intellectual History, Book 187) by Deborah Baumgold
English | 2010 | ISBN: 9004184252 | 190 pages | PDF | 1,6 MB
English | 2010 | ISBN: 9004184252 | 190 pages | PDF | 1,6 MB
These essays contest the truism that the social contract is a modern political idea. Just as Rawls came to acknowledge that his political theory built in the parochial horizon of his time, Hobbes s, Grotius s, and Locke s theories presuppose their ancien regime world. Despite their universalizing language, Hobbes s and Locke s theories addressed the age-old issue of resistance to tyrants and assumed the framework of hereditary monarchy. Essays in the volume also relate the logic of their contract claims back to Bodin s and Grotius s defenses of absolute sovereignty and direct attention to the affinity between an absolutism of fear and Hume s sensibility. For politically-inclined readers, these theories come to life by being read as treatises on politics in the early-modern state."