Recent scholarship in political thought has closely examined the relationship between European political ideas and colonialism, particularly the ways in which canonical thinkers supported or opposed colonial practices. But little attention has been given to the engagement of colonized political and intellectual actors with European ideas. The essays in this volume demonstrate that a full reckoning of colonialism's effects requires attention to the ways in which colonized intellectuals reacted to, adopted, and transformed these ideas, and to the political projects that their reactions helped to shape. Across nine chapters, a mix of political theorists and intellectual historians grapple with specific thinkers and contexts to show in detail the unpredictable, complex and sometimes paradoxical impact of European ideas in an array of colonial settings. -- .

These essays contest the truism that the social contract is a modern political idea. Just as Rawls came to acknowledge that his political theory built in the parochial horizon of his time, Hobbes s, Grotius s, and Locke s theories presuppose their ancien regime world. Despite their universalizing language, Hobbes s and Locke s theories addressed the age-old issue of resistance to tyrants and assumed the framework of hereditary monarchy. Essays in the volume also relate the logic of their contract claims back to Bodin s and Grotius s defenses of absolute sovereignty and direct attention to the affinity between an absolutism of fear and Hume s sensibility. For politically-inclined readers, these theories come to life by being read as treatises on politics in the early-modern state.

An exciting English-language edition which for the first time presents Thomas Hobbes's masterpiece Leviathan alongside two earlier works, The Elements of Law and De Cive. By arranging the three texts side by side, Baumgold offers readers an enhanced understanding of Hobbes's political theory and addresses an important need within Hobbes scholarship. The parallel presentation highlights substantive connections between the texts and makes it easy to trace the development of Hobbes's thinking. Readers can follow developments both at the 'micro' level of specific arguments and at the 'macro' level of the overall scope and organization of the theory. The volume also includes parallel presentations of Hobbes's chapter outlines, which serve as a key to the texts and are collected in a precis appendix.