Political Liberty A History of the Conception in the Middle Ages and Modern Times Routledge Revivals Series

Originally published in 1988, this book explores the history of political liberty. There is an opinion that the conception of Political Liberty, however important it may have been in Athens and Republican Rome, disappeared in the period of the Roman Empire and in the Middle Ages, and has only been recovered in the last two centuries. This work is primarily an attempt to set out the continuity of the development of the conception of Political Liberty during the Middle Ages and the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries - the development, but even more, the continuity of development, for this has been inadequately appreciated in the past.

Introduction. Part I: Individual and Political Liberty in the Middle Ages. 1. Individuality, Equality, and Personal Liberty. 2. The Conception of Political Liberty in the Middle Ages. Part II: The Conception of Political Liberty in the Seventeenth Century. 1. The Development of the Theory of Absolutism in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. 2. The Political Theory of Hooker and Althusius. 3. The Continuity of the Conception of Political Liberty in the Seventeenth Century: France. 4. The Continuity of the Conception of Political Liberty in the Seventeenth Century: Spain. 5. The Continuity of the Conception of Political Liberty in the Seventeenth Century: Holland. 6. The Continuity of the Conception of Political Liberty in the Seventeenth Century: Germany. 7. The Continuity of the Conception of Political Liberty in the Seventeenth Century: England. Part III: The Development of the Conception of Political Liberty in the Eighteenth Century. 1. The Constitutional Conception of Political Liberty as embodied in the Representative System. 2. The Influence of England in the Development of the Conception of Political Liberty in the Eighteenth Century: Voltaire and Montesquieu. 3. The American Revolution. 4. Burke. 5. The French Revolution and Condorcet. 6. Thomas Paine. 7. Rousseau. 8. Who are Members of the Political Community? 9. The Relations of Economic and Political Freedom.