What is it about?
The sixteenth-century Elizabethan theologian Richard Hooker's political thought may seem irrelevant to contemporary politics. A close analysis, however, of his account of the role that religion plays in cultivating civic virtue and promoting civil society shows how it allows us to navigate critically modern accounts of the same concepts.
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Why is it important?
Contemporary liberalism and republicanism both neglect or under-develop the role that religion might play in creating the kind civic virtue that promotes a flourishing civil society. This article explores how the past still speaks and offers a resource to enliven contemporary thought.
Perspectives
I hope that this article can show how a creative retrieval of a now largely neglected theologian from the sixteenth century might help us move beyond the limits of both contemporary liberalism and republicanism to explore more positively and robustly how religion can play a constructive role in promoting civic virtue and civil society.
Paul Dominiak
University of Cambridge
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: ‘The Law of a Commonweale’, July 2024, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/9789004700888_015.
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