The Rule of Moderation

Thomas Bilson wrote, in 1593, ‘where no man doeth moderate, what peace can be had?’ (p. 12). For Bilson, a leading Elizabethan bishop, moderation was about control and restraint in the name of peace and good government; as this quotation implies, moderation could mean coercion and even punishment where this was necessary. In his new and fascinating study, Ethan Shagan explores the concept of moderation, showing its coercive, even at times brutal, dimension and examining its significance in early modern England. He argues that historians (and among them he counts his former self) have been wrong to assume that moderation can be equated with reasonableness and they have often given a positive moral content to the term without proper reflection. Moreover, they have accepted uncritically their subjects’ claims to moderation, unconsciously reproducing the values of those they study without proper scholarly analysis. Shagan does acknowledge that some scholars, notably Peter Lake, have challenged this reading of moderation and have shown that, under certain circumstances, it could be used as a powerful ideological tool. The purpose of Shagan’s work is to look beneath these specific instances and examine the broader system of thought underpinning the English conception of moderation. What he has found is an authoritarian meaning of moderation, and parts of the book demonstrate just how significant this can be

Authoritarianism · Coercion (linguistics · Epistemology · Ideology · Meaning (existential · Moderation · Political science · Politics · Punishment (psychology · Sociology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · History · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity · Social Psychology