Occupying the Ocean: Hugo Grotius and Serafim de Freitas on the Rights of Discovery and Occupation

2015 ◽  
pp. 153-173
Author(s):  
Anthony Pagden
Keyword(s):  
Hugo Grotius

Philosophic Pride

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Brooke
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
Marcus Aurelius ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
History Of ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Modern Era

This is the first full-scale look at the essential place of Stoicism in the foundations of modern political thought. Spanning the period from Justus Lipsius's Politics in 1589 to Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Emile in 1762, and concentrating on arguments originating from England, France, and the Netherlands, the book considers how political writers of the period engaged with the ideas of the Roman and Greek Stoics that they found in works by Cicero, Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. The book examines key texts in their historical context, paying special attention to the history of classical scholarship and the historiography of philosophy. The book delves into the persisting tension between Stoicism and the tradition of Augustinian anti-Stoic criticism, which held Stoicism to be a philosophy for the proud who denied their fallen condition. Concentrating on arguments in moral psychology surrounding the foundations of human sociability and self-love, the book details how the engagement with Roman Stoicism shaped early modern political philosophy and offers significant new interpretations of Lipsius and Rousseau together with fresh perspectives on the political thought of Hugo Grotius and Thomas Hobbes. The book shows how the legacy of the Stoics played a vital role in European intellectual life in the early modern era.

The Doctrine of the Providential Function of Commerce in International Law

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ileana M. Porras
Keyword(s):  
International Trade ◽  
International Exchange ◽  
Religious Doctrine ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
Religious Sensibility ◽  
Commercial Exchange ◽  
Two Factors ◽  
Francisco De Vitoria ◽  
Internal Effect

This chapter explores the doctrine of the providential function of commerce in the work of Francisco de Vitoria (c. 1492–1546), Alberico Gentili (1552–1608), and Hugo Grotius (1583–1645). In this chapter, I argue that the doctrine’s persuasive power lies in the interplay between two factors. First is the fact that while the doctrine is not in origin a religious doctrine, its elements and its narrative logic carried an unmistakable religious sensibility that became indissolubly associated with international trade. But the doctrine’s true efficacy lies in a more subtle internal effect. In essence, the doctrine, which holds at its core an act of exchange among distant peoples, allowed its adherents to idealize international trade by blurring the distinction between the act of commercial exchange and that of gift-exchange. In this manner, international exchange came to be portrayed as an act of friendship and community recognition, rather than a commercial act between strangers.

Natural Law Republicanism

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael C. Hawley
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
John Adams ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
The People ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Individual

By any metric, Cicero’s works are some of the most widely read in the history of Western thought. This book suggests that perhaps Cicero’s most lasting and significant contribution to philosophy lies in helping to inspire the development of liberalism. Individual rights, the protection of private property, and political legitimacy based on the consent of the governed are often taken to be among early modern liberalism’s unique innovations and part of its rebellion against classical thought. However, this book demonstrates that Cicero’s thought played a central role in shaping and inspiring the liberal republican project. Cicero argued that liberty for individuals could arise only in a res publica in which the claims of the people to be sovereign were somehow united with a commitment to universal moral law, which limits what the people can rightfully do. Figures such as Hugo Grotius, John Locke, and John Adams sought to work through the tensions in Cicero’s vision, laying the groundwork for a theory of politics in which the freedom of the individual and the people’s collective right to rule were mediated by natural law. This book traces the development of this intellectual tradition from Cicero’s original articulation through the American founding. It concludes by exploring how modern political ideas remain dependent on the conception of just politics first elaborated by Rome’s great philosopher-statesman.

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