Description
Book SynopsisDeals with the theory of the city or commonwealth, what would come to be called the state, in early modern natural law discourse. This book takes an approach by looking at this political entity from the perspective of its boundaries and those who crossed them.
Trade Review"Annabel S. Brett has amassed a great deal of information and delivers it and, as importantly, original insights of great value, with elegance, impressively, memorably... Highly recommended. What the Renaissance coped with in terms of balance between tradition and modernity, between mankind and nature, between freedom and order ... and a new relationship between God and His creation, proves a worthy topic for an exceptionally talented scholar and a good read for the rest of us."--Bibliothe'que d'Humanisme et Renaissance "The book's achievements are at several levels: as an impressively detailed intellectual history of some of the wide-ranging controversies preoccupying natural law theorists in sixteenth- to mid-seventeenth-century Europe; as a cogent analysis of what is at stake in Grotius's and above all Hobbes's significant developments of natural law theory; and as an innovative approach to the study of political thought."--Simon Kow, Canadian Journal of History
Table of ContentsA Note on the Text ix Acknowledgements xi INTRODUCTION: On the threshold of the state 1 CHAPTER ONE: Travelling the borderline 11 CHAPTER TWO: Constructing human agency 37 CHAPTER THREE: Natural law 62 CHAPTER FOUR: Natural liberty 90 CHAPTER FIVE: Kingdoms founded 115 CHAPTER SIX: The lives of subjects 142 CHAPTER SEVEN: Locality 169 CHAPTER EIGHT: Re-placing the state 195 Bibliography of works cited 225 Index 237
