This article examines three contributions offered by John of Paris, Giles of Rome and James of Viterbo in the wake of a famous contest between Boniface VIII and Philip IV. Each takes up the Aristotelian principle that what is posterior in time is more perfect than what is prior , which leads to a consideration of the nature, origin and scope of the ‘two powers’, the potestas spiritualis and the potestas temporalis . Their reflections demonstrate medieval efforts to harmonize historical contentions regarding the efficient or agential causes of power, with more abstract or formal considerations of dignity, legitimacy and hierarchy.
This article examines Johannes Althusius’ engagement in his Politica with the theories of public power prevailing in his time, particularly the theories put forward by Jean Bodin and other supporters of absolute sovereignty. Althusius has often been interpreted as responding primarily to the claims of these writers about the location of sovereign power. The principal thesis of the present article, however, is that Althusius is engaging no less critically with a number of associated arguments about the nature of lawful power, especially the views on the basis of which Bodin and his followers had erected their defence of absolute sovereignty.
This article proposes a synchronic-diachronic reading of a specific antidemocratic language that shaped the intellectual history of England. It suggests that, from the early seventeenth to the late nineteenth century, an ideologically diverse body of thinkers similarly and consistently criticized democracy not just as a government but as a plebeian way of life dominated by the licentious and cruel multitude-mob-mass — not by the people and not by liberty. It thus presents a significant series of texts that — in reaction to calls for manhood suffrage and for increased political participation expressed around the times of the 1640s Civil Wars, the internationally revolutionary 1780s–90s and the reform acts concerning the extension of the franchise (1832, 1867, 1884) — attacked democracy for its devastating consequences on politics, morality and civilization. These texts aimed to prove that vicious individuals wanted ‘extreme’ democracy so as to give their vices free rein, while, in turn, encouraging a morally wicked disposition among the lower orders (‘doing as one likes’).
While recent studies have revisited Giovanni Botero’s notion of monarchy, his ideas on democracies and aristocracies remain largely unexplored. Rather than presenting his preference for monarchy as a fixed teleological commitment, this article explores Botero’s comparative reflections on republics — popular and aristocratic — to reveal a more nuanced conception of political order than is typically attributed to him. Botero’s ideas are situated within his intellectual milieu and juxtaposed with those of his contemporaries and intellectual adversaries, including, but not limited to, Jean Bodin and Niccolò Machiavelli.
Rousseau’s concept amour-propre has become the subject of renewed debates. Inspired by Nicholas Dent’s reinterpretation of the term, it is now a widespread view that amour-propre is a positive phenomenon in Rousseau’s moral philosophy, a longing for equal recognition rather than an urge to dominate everybody else. The present article challenges this reading. It does so by going back to Dent’s 1988 work on Rousseau to question the textual evidence for his interpretation. It also challenges the compatibility of Dent’s views with Rousseau’s moral psychology in general. Finally, the article offers an alternative solution to the problem of social life in Rousseau’s philosophy.
