5:30pm (GMT)
Andreas Pecar (Halle)
Hobbes’ Leviathan and his theory of authorization are very prominent in the history of political ideas, whereas King James’ tract The True Law of Free Monarchies has been, on the whole, neglected. In this lecture I will compare both tracts and their concepts of contractualism, asking, furthermore, why both concepts cannot prevail within the debate on the legitimacy of monarchy in seventeenth-century Stuart England. And I would like to explain why the decisive difference between James’ and Hobbes’ contract theory is directly related to the respective political contexts in which they were written.