Un article sur la République

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy just release an entry on Jean Bodin, the Godfather of Sovereignty. I'm working on him (and others) at the moment so I'm especially excited.

Jean Bodin (1529/30-1596) was a lawyer, economist, natural philosopher, historian, and one of the major political theorists of the sixteenth century. There are two reasons why Bodin remains both fascinating and enigmatic: on the one hand, aspects of his life remain shrouded in legend; on the other, misunderstandings about his thought and political positions have engendered contradictions and discrepancies amongst historians which have been attributed mistakenly to Bodin himself. His most significant work, The Six Books of the Commonwealth (Les Six livres de la République, 1576), represents the sum total of legal and political thought of the French Renaissance. His Method for the Easy Comprehension of History (Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem, 1566) is at the pinnacle of early-modern, European humanism's Ars historica. Finally, his work Colloquium of the Seven about Secrets of the Sublime (Colloquium Heptaplomeres de rerum sublimium arcanis abditis, 1683), which was published posthumously, provides clues about his own religious views. Bodin's spiritual beliefs did not coincide with any official religion of his day, but instead resembled a form of natural religion.

Not to mention the famous De la démonomanie des sorciers (On the Demon-Mania of Witches).

And for those who can't get enough of Rawlsian trivia, it was from Bodin that Rawls got the concept of a "well-ordered society." Look it up! It's in page 4, footnote 6, of Law of Peoples. C'est drôle, ça.