Sacred History and Political Thought

Neapolitan Responses to the Problem of Sociability After Hobbes

Datos Bibliográficos

ID8959375
AutoresJohn Robertson (0000-0001-6558-528X, University of Cambridge, autor de correspondencia)
Año2013
Volumen56
Número1
Páginas1-29
Fecha de publicación2013-02-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaThe Historical Journal (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0018-246X • E-ISSN: 1469-5103
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0018246x12000532
OpenAlexW1969028629
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas4
Referencias citadas52

From the mid-seventeenth century, the problem of human sociability, long a staple of natural jurisprudence, became even more central to political thought. Faced with Hobbes's insistence on man's natural unsociability, Protestant thinkers continued to treat the question from within natural law. For reasons we do not yet understand, however, Catholic thinkers did not. Instead, it is argued here, they turned to sacred history, and in particular to the Old Testament, as the earliest record of the formation of human societies, Hebrew and gentile. The materials for this enquiry were provided by new critical scholarship on the Bible and the peoples of the ancient Near East. Despite the hostility of the authorities in Rome to its findings, this scholarship was widely available in the Catholic world, notably so in contemporary Naples. Two of the most remarkable applications of sacred history to the problem of sociability were by the Neapolitans Pietro Giannone, in his ‘Triregno’ (1731–3), and Giambattista Vico, in the Scienza nuova (1725–44). These works explored the ways in which family relations, religious practices, and war enabled the ancient Hebrews and their gentile neighbours to form and maintain societies, notwithstanding the unsocial tendency of human passions

Archaeology · Hebrews · Natural (archaeology · Natural law · Passions · Political science · Politics · Protestantism · Scholarship · Sociology · Theology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · History · Law · Philosophy · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity · Religious studies · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought