New Work In Intellectual History episodes:

• April 14, 2023Women Philosophers in Nineteenth Century Britain

  In Women Philosophers in Nineteenth Century Britain (OUP, 2023), Alison

  Stone explores the contributions of twelve women to philosophy in the

  nineteenth century. Focusing on five areas - naturalism, philosophy of

  mind, evolution, morality and religion, and progress in history - she shows

  how these women philosophers were responding to each other as part of

  bigger intellectual networks in order to develop their own original

  contributions. Women Philosophers encourages the reader to reassess the

  position women held in nineteenth century intellectual life and what it

  means to do philosophy.

  Alison Stone is professor of philosophy at Lancaster University.

  ...more

  

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• March 01, 2023Adam Smith’s America

  In Adam Smith’s America (Princeton, 2022), Glory Liu explores how an 18th

  century Scottish philosopher became an icon of American capitalism. She

  shows how Smith became known as the father of political economy in the

  nineteenth century, and how the Chicago School of Economics, in the

  aftermath of the Great Depression, transformed Smith into the preeminent

  theorist of free markets and self-interest. Liu also explores how a new

  generation of political theorists and public intellectuals has sought to

  recover Smith’s original intentions and restore his reputation as a moral

  philosopher.

  Glory M. Liu is a college fellow in social studies at Harvard University.

  ...more

  

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• February 17, 2023America's Philosopher: John Locke in American Intellectual Life

  A commonly held position in post-WWII American intellectual life was that

  John Locke's Second Treatise of Government underpinned not only the

  Declaration of Independence, but also the American Political Tradition more

  generally. This might be wrong. Claire Rydell Arcenas's often surprising

  new history of American engagement with Locke from the early eighteenth

  century to the late twentieth suggests that successive generations of

  American readers found different aspects of Locke thought to be

  significant.

  Claire Rydell Arcenas is associate professor of history at the University

  of Montana.

  ...more

  

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• February 04, 2023Free Market – The History of an Idea

  The Nobel-prize winning economist Milton Friedman famously argued in

  Capitalism and Freedom (1962) that free markets were a necessary condition

  for political freedom, as well as being the only true motor of economic

  growth. In his provocative and ambitious new book Free Market – The History

  of an Idea (Basic Books, 2022), Professor Jacob Soll suggests that studying

  the history of economic thought back to Cicero suggests praise for free

  markets was usually bound up with Ciceronian moral philosophy and a greater

  degree of state intervention than mid-twentieth century free marketeers

  countenanced.

  Jacob Soll is Professor of History and Accounting at the University of

  Southern California

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• August 11, 2022The Material Side of Enlightened Reformism

  In this episode, Dr Lavinia Maddaluno discusses the role of scientific

  practices in the production of political economic ideas in Enlightenment

  Milan. Discussing her upcoming monograph Science and political economy in

  enlightened Milan (1760s-1815), Lavinia explores the role played by lesser

  known naturalists in answering political economic questions of how to

  preserve and increase state wealth.

  Dr Lavinia Maddaluno is an early modern historian and historian of science.

  Her research so far has focussed on the role of scientific knowledge

  production in the realization of ideas of wealth, state and society in

  Enlightenment Europe. She currently works as non-tenured Assistant

  Professor on an ERC project at Ca’ Foscari University in Vernice, Italy.

  ...more

  

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• July 28, 2022Uncivil Mirth: Ridicule in Enlightenment Britain

  In this episode, Robin Mills talks to Dr Ross Carroll about his recently

  published book Uncivil Mirth – Ridicule in Enlightenment Britain

  (Princeton, 2021). Ross Carroll examines how leading Enlightenment thinkers

  thought about the purpose, possibilities and limits of public discourse in

  their search for an acceptable form of ridicule, one that supported

  religious toleration, the abolition of the slave trade, and the dismantling

  of patriarchal power. Focussing on Hobbes, Shaftesbury, Hume and

  Wollstonecraft among others, Ross Carroll’s book casts Enlightenment

  Britain in a new light, which speaks to our present-day debates about the

  lack of civility in public discourse.

  ...more

  

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• July 21, 2022History and Historiography in Classical Utilitarianism, 1800-1865

  One perspective on the classical utilitarians (Bentham, James and John

  Stuart Mill) is that they built their political philosophies on abstract

  reasoning and without regard for history. The charge has some weight, but

  it's also a charge they responded to, as Callum Barrell explains. Bentham

  et al – Barrell adds George Grote to the mix – were more interested in

  history than we give them credit for and this needs to be factored in when

  analysing their thought.

  Dr Callum Barrell is Associate Professor of Political Theory at

  Northeastern University London

  ...more

  

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• July 14, 2022The Historiographical Value of Historians’ Autobiographies

  In this episode, Dr Jaume Aurell talks about the value of twentieth-century

  historians’ autobiographies as intellectual artefacts of historiographical

  and academic intervention. He traces a trend in autobiographies throughout

  the twentieth century to move from a documentary to an interventional

  perspective and uncovers what he means by the term “interventional

  historians”.

  Dr Jaume Aurell is Professor at the Department of History at the University

  of Navarra in Spain. His research focusses on medieval and modern

  historiography. In 2019, he published his book Theoretical Perspectives on

  Historians’ Autobiographies: From Documentation to Intervention with

  Routledge.

  ...more

  

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• July 07, 2022Gibbon’s Christianity - Religion, Reason, and the Fall of Rome

  Who can refute a sneer? asked William Paley of Edward Gibbon’s bitingly

  satirical account of the emergence of Christianity in the Decline and Fall

  of the Roman Empire (1776–1789). The plausibility of Paley’s

  characterisation indicates that maybe, Dr Hugh Liebert suggests, Gibbon’s

  acumen as a historian of religion has been ignored. An ironic philosophical

  historian he certainly was but Gibbon was also an astute psychologist of

  religion able to empathetically understand, even admire, early

  Christianity’s appeal and power. Gibbon’s insights into religion derived,

  moreover, from his own complicated personal engagement with religion as

  much as his erudition as a historian.

  Dr. Hugh Liebert is an Associate Professor of American Politics in the

  Department of Social Sciences at the United States Military Academy in West

  Point, New York.

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• June 30, 2022Anti-democracy in England 1570-1642

  In this episode, Dr Cesare Cuttica re-examines the idea of democracy in

  early modern England in his latest book Anti-democracy in England 1570-1642

  (Oxford University Press). The main premise of his original interpretation

  is that democracy did not exist, and in fact, it was seen as a threat to

  the way of life. Contemporary democratic ideas were dangerous, immoral and

  were associated with the uneducated commonalty.

  ...more

  

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