New Work In Intellectual History

New Work In Intellectual History

By Institute of Intellectual HistorySociety & CultureEducationHistoryPhilosophy
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New Work In Intellectual History episodes

  • Free 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
    53 min
  • The 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.
    42 min
  • Uncivil 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.
    1 hr 20 min
  • History 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
    56 min
  • The 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.
    36 min
  • Gibbon’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.
    55 min
  • Anti-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.
    52 min
  • The Political Thought of Thomas Spence
    Our guest this episode is Dr Matilde Cazzola who introduces us to the
    ultra-radical English thinker and activist Thomas Spence (1750–1814),
    famous for his “Plan” for the abolition of private land ownership. Often
    dismissed as an eccentric anachronistic figure, Spence is shown by Cazzola
    to be a fascinating political agitator aiming for the overturning of the
    ancien regime in favour of the “swinish multitude”. He is also, Cazzola
    contends, a subtle thinker with something to contribute to radical thinking
    about communal property today.
    56 min
  • Adam Smith Reconsidered
    Is Adam Smith an apologist for capitalism who viewed it as the fourth and
    final stage of socio-economic development? Was Smith provoked into his
    moral and economic defence of capitalism by Rousseau’s Second Discourse?
    Much current Smith literature would suggest the answer to both questions is
    yes. But, perhaps, questions like these indicate that something has gone
    very wrong with our interpretations of Smith? Paul Sagar thinks so. We
    explore what needs to change and why in this conversation about his newly
    published and enjoyably iconoclastic Adam Smith Reconsidered: History,
    Liberty and the Foundations of Modern Politics (Princeton, 2022).
    1 hr 9 min
  • The Post-Medieval Reception of Medieval Manuscripts
    In this episode Prof Margaret Connolly talks about the post-medieval
    reception of medieval texts. Along a selection of eight manuscripts,
    Margaret traces how three generations of a sixteenth-century family from
    Middlesex read and used books from the fifteenth century. Examining their
    annotations of the fifteenth-century manuscripts, Margaret derives insights
    about the relevance of medieval contents for sixteenth-century readers and
    places the individual personae into the context of the English Reformation.
    58 min

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Listen to interviews with intellectual historians about recent research and new publications.