ARTICLE: Sébastien BAUER, "Genèse et structure du Léviathan" (Revue philosophique de la France et de l'étranger CL (2025), n°3, pp. 291-309)

 

(image source: Cairn)

First paragraph:

Dans sa préface à la deuxième édition du De Cive, Hobbes explique en 1647 que les troubles de son pays l’ont contraint à bouleverser l’ordre de parution de sa philosophie :   Ma patrie, quelques années avant l’éclatement de la guerre civile, était en proie à des questions sur le droit de gouvernement et l’obéissance due par les citoyens, précurseurs véritables de la guerre désormais imminente. C’est pourquoi cette troisième partie a été conçue et achevée en hâte, retardant les autres. C’est ainsi que ce qui était logiquement dernier est devenu premier chronologiquement [2].

Read more here: DOI 10.3917/rphi.253.0291. 

BOOK: Benjamin STRAUMANN, The Just State: Greek and Roman Theories of Justice and Their Legacy in Western Thought (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2025), ISBN 978-1-118-63468-4, 288 p., 85 USD

 

(image source: Wiley)

Abstract:

The Just State explores influential Greek and Roman ideas about justice and their institutional context, and discusses their legacy in later political thought. Bringing Greco-Roman and modern ideas into conversation with each other, Benjamin Straumann traces the history of ancient political thought by focusing on classical ideas about justice. With a readable narrative style, Straumann places Greek and Roman theories of justice in their historical context, starting from Homer and the pre-Socratic period through to the later Roman Empire, and outlines the respective contribution of the Greek and Roman traditions of thinking about justice to early modern and Enlightenment political thought. Concise chapters address Athenian democracy, the Sophist movement, the political philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, the origins of constitutionalism in the Roman Republic, classical influences on the American and French revolutions, and more.

Table of contents:

Preface and Acknowledgments x

Maps and Figures xi

Abbreviations and Text Editions xii

Introduction: Why Greeks and Romans? Why Ideas? 1

The Gradual Encroachment of Ideas 2

Why Greeks and Romans? 5

The Use and Energy of Ideas and Concepts 10

The Cult of Contingency, or: Is Everything Constructed? 12

Overview of Contents 13

Part I The Greek Debate 15

1 The Polis, Equality, and the Growth of Political Thought 17

The World of Homer’s Poems and the Emergence of Greek Political Life 17

Hesiod’s Justice 23

The Ancient Near Eastern Context 25

The Polis and Greek Colonization 27

A Mere Spider’s Web? Solon and the Rise of Written Law 31

2 Athenian Democracy, Early Antidemocratic and Democratic Thought, and the Sophist Movement 38

The Historical Background: Athenian Democracy in Practice in the Fifth Century 42

Antidemocratic Sentiment and Early Elements of Democratic Theory 45

Accountability 47

The Sophists 50

3 Knowledge, Paternalistic Justice, and Law: Plato 56

The Republic, a Theory of Justice? 56

The Ideal State: Women, Communism, Rule of Reason 59

Plato and Democracy 64

Plato, the Law and the Laws 70

4 The State as Teacher: Aristotle 78

The Unity of Politics and Ethics 78

Aristotle’s Criticism of Plato and His Views on Women and Slavery 80

Justice and the Classification of Constitutions 85

Is Aristotle’s Best State Just? 91

The Second-Best: Democracy, Law, and Rights in Aristotle’s Politics 93

Aristotle and Liberalism 101

5 The Epicurean Contract and Stoic Natural Law 103

Epicurean Ideas about Justice as Contract 103

The Stoics on Ethics and Politics 108

What Goods Are Relevant? 109

Stoic Antipolitics? 110

Egalitarianism and Cosmopolitanism 111

A New Idea: Natural Law 113

Did the Stoics Have the Concept of Rights? 115

Conclusion 116

Part II The Roman Contribution 119

6 The Roman Republic and the Origins of Constitutionalism 121

Institutional Background: The Popular Assemblies 122

Institutional Background: The Magistrates and the Right of Appeal 126

Institutional Background: The Senate 130

Criminal Courts 131

Constitutional Conflict and the Emergence of Constitutionalism 132

Polybius on Rome’s Well-Balanced Constitution 137

An Ambassador Conception of Representation 141

The Constitutional Machine Runs Itself (Until It Does Not) 142

Appendix: The Achaean League, an Early Model of Federalism 143

7 Justice, Not Happiness: Cicero’s Roman Political Thought 145

Does this Egalitarian Anthropology Imply the Equality of Women? 147

Cicero’s Theory of the State 148

Cicero’s Constitutionalism 149

A New Theory of Justice? Cicero on the Just State 150

Controlling the State: The State as a Guarantor of Rights 152

Controlling the State: Property Rights and Justice in the Strict Sense 155

Magistrates as Representatives and Fiduciaries 158

Cicero’s Use of the Idea of Natural Law 160

Natural Law and Natural (Even Human?) Rights Outside the State 163

8 The Principate, the Rise of Christianity, and Augustine’s Peace 166

Augustus and the Principate: Autocracy or Legal Order? 166

The Rise of Christianity 174

Lactantius 177

Ambrose 180

The Tranquility of Order: Augustine 182

Just War and Religious Toleration 184

Part III Ancient and Modern Justice: Virtue, Peace, or Rights? 187

9 Greek Justice: Virtue and the Common Good 189

Thomas Aquinas and Aristotelian Theory 191

Property and the Common Good 195

Does the Common Good Imply Justice or Justice the Common Good? 198

The Legacy of Perfectionism 199

10 Roman Justice: Law and Rights 203

The Rediscovery of Roman Law 204

The State of Nature 207

A New Natural Law for the State of Nature 210

Sovereignty and Government 214

The Roman Tradition in the Eighteenth Century 217

Conclusion: Natural Law and Roman Law 219

11 Ideas in Action: The Atlantic Revolutions 220

The “Real American Revolution” 220

Ancient Founders and American Constitution-Making 228

The French Experience 236

Rousseau, Sparta, and Rome 236

Rights Declarations and Constitutions 240

Implications and Consequences: Slavery, Women, Property 241

Conclusion: The Three Traditions of Virtue, Peace, and Justice 244

Bibliography 250

Index 260

 

On the author:

ERC Professor of History at the University of Zurich and Research Professor of Classics at New York University. He is also Alberico Gentili Senior Fellow at New York University School of Law. His publications include Roman Law in the State of Nature: The Classical Foundations of Hugo Grotius’ Natural Law (Cambridge, 2015) and Crisis and Constitutionalism: Roman Political Thought from the Fall of the Republic to the Age of Revolution (Oxford, 2016).

 Read more here.

BOOK: Simon P. KENNEDY, Reforming the Law of Nature. The Secularisation of Political Thought, 1532–1689 [Edinburgh Studies in Comparative Political Theory] (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2021), ISBN 9781474493987, 216 p.

 

(image source: Edinburgh UP)

On the book:

Uncovers the relationship between early modern natural law ideas and secular conceptions of politics Provides a fresh interpretation of the historical relationship between early modern developments in natural law theories and important features of modern political thought, including secularization and liberalism Offers a fresh, interdisciplinary reading of early Reformed Protestant natural law jurisprudence and political thought Reframes the relationship of the Reformed Protestant tradition to both medieval and Enlightenment political thought and jurisprudence in a way that has a lasting impact on scholarly discourse in law, intellectual history, theology, and political science Reforming the Law of Nature is a stimulating study of the development of natural law ideas in the early modern period, uncovering their connection to conceptions of the origins of politics. It brings sixteenth and seventeenth century jurisprudence, theology and political philosophy into conversation with one another to uncover the ways in which developments in political thought affected the emergence of a secular understanding of political life.

On the author:

Simon P. Kennedy is Senior Lecturer in Humanities at Christian Heritage College and the Director of the Millis Institute, in Brisbane, Queensland. He is also a Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Queensland. He researches the intersections between political ideas, law, and religion.

Table of contents:

Introduction

1. John Calvin’s Political Naturalism
2. Richard Hooker’s Theistic Naturalism
3. Johannes Althusius and Political Society as Pactum
4. Thomas Hobbes: Reforming Nature, Profaning Politics
5. John Locke on Conventional Politics

Conclusion

 (source: Edinburgh University Press)