Rethinking liberty before liberalism

Opens up new histories of freedom and republicanism by building on Quentin Skinner's ground-breaking Liberty before Liberalism nearly twenty five years after its initial publication. Leading historians and philosophers reveal the neo-Roman conception of liberty that Skinner unearthed as a normative and historical hermeneutic tool of enormous, ongoing power. The volume thinks with neo-Romanism to offer reinterpretations of individual thinkers, such as Montaigne, Grotius and Locke. It probes the role of neo-Roman liberty within hierarchies and structures beyond that of citizen and state - namely, gender, slavery, and democracy. Finally, it reassesses the relationships between neo-Romanism and other languages in the history of political thought: liberalism, conservatism, socialism, and the human rights tradition. The volume concludes with a major reappraisal by Skinner himself.

Freedom without republicanism : the case of Montaigne / Felicity Green -- Hugo Grotius on freedom of will and self-government : Greek, Patristic and Roman legacies / Martin van Gelderen -- Liberty before licence in Locke / Hannah Dawson -- Liberty and hierarchy in Milton's revolutionary prose / Rachel Foxley -- Democratic republicanism in the early modern period / Annelien de Dijn -- Gender, liberty, participation and virtue : what the eighteenth century can teach us about republicanism / Sandrine Bergès -- Liberty, death, and slavery in the age of Atlantic revolutions, 1770s-1790s / René Koekkoek -- Beyond the 'wretched subterfuge' : liberalism, freedom, responsibility / Eric Nelson -- 'A just and true liberty' : the idea of (neo-Roman) freedom in francophone counter-revolutionary thought c. 1780-1800 / Matthijs Lok -- Chains and invisible threads : liberty and domination in Marx's account of wage-slavery / Bruno Leipold -- Republican liberty in the philosophy of human rights / Lena Halldenius -- Conclusion. On neo-Roman liberty : a response and reassessment / Quentin Skinner.