The Cambridge School
@thecambridgeschool.bsky.social
Political Thought and Intellectual History. Posting from the Cambridge Centre for Political Thought. https://www.polthought.cam.ac.uk
📢 Job vacancy - Chair in Intellectual History We welcome applications from scholars working across a broad range of fields, including: 💠 History of political theory, political economy 💠 Knowledge systems and IT 💠 Postcolonial and intersectional thought 💠 Humanist, post-human, and planetary history
Thomas Hopkins reviews 'A Republic of Sympathy: Sophie de Grouchy’s Politics and Philosophy, 1785–1815', by Kathleen McCrudden Illert academic.oup.com/ehr/advance-... @universitypress.cambridge.org
A Republic of Sympathy: Sophie de Grouchy’s Politics and Philosophy, 1785–1815, by Kathleen McCrudden Illert
As Kathleen McCrudden Illert notes in her introduction to this notable addition to the Ideas in Context series, the thought of Sophie de Grouchy (1763–1822
academic.oup.com
VAR has basically messed with the Leviathan authority of the referee, introducing a kind of Benthamite empirical calculus to matters. But having a political authority who can't cope with analogy is also a problem.
I had the privilege of being supervised by Istvan Hont as an undergrad. A session on Hobbes went roughly: "So, what is the correct analogy for Hobbes's theory of state authority today?" "ummm... I don't know" "THE REFEREE IN SPORT OF COURSE! EVEN WHEN HE'S WRONG, HE'S STILL RIGHT!!"
On the Utopianism and Federalism of Le Guin, More, and Plato's Republic open.substack.com/pub/digressi...
On the Utopianism and Federalism of Le Guin, More, and Plato's Republic
Regular readers know of my interest in Le Guin’s The Dispossessed and More’s Utopia. One non-trivial commonality of both receives very little attention in the secondary literature (or from students). ...
open.substack.com
The Cambridge Centre is now inviting applications for a number of Prize Research Grants for the 2026-2027 academic year. Please click below for eligibility, further details and deadlines.
THE CENTRE FOR HISTORY AND ECONOMICS
2026-2027 Prize Research Grants
histecon.magd.cam.ac.uk
On Istvan Hont on Smith as a follower of Locke. open.substack.com/pub/digressi...
On Istvan Hont on Smith as a follower of Locke.
Yesterday’s post got me interested in looking anew at Istvan Hont’s massive (2005) Jealousy of Trade: International Competition and the Nation State in Historical Perspective (Harvard).
open.substack.com
Not like there's anything else going on today, so a good time to announce: my first monograph will come out on 20 July with @degruyterbrill.bsky.social!
Reply by L. S. Andersen: "On the Publication of a Posthumous Book by István Hont" www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
On the Publication of a Posthumous Book by István Hont: A Guide to the Perplexed
Published in History of European Ideas (Ahead of Print, 2026)
tandfonline.com
'Francis Bacon and the crisis of the palatinate' Quentin Skinner Lecture, 19 June https://bit.ly/442lfre Dr Samuel Zeitlin (UCL) will discuss Bacon’s evolving responses to the crisis of the Palatinate through writing and civil histories, in response to the onset of the Thirty Years War
Interview with with Georgios Varouxakis. www.intellectualhistory.net/new-work/cul...
The West: The History of an Idea — Institute of Intellectual History
In this episode, Yifan Wang and Seungeun Lee speak with Professor Georgios Varouxakis (Queen Mary) about his new book The West: The History of an Idea (PUP, 2025).
intellectualhistory.net
The latest by @sylvana-tomaselli.bsky.social - at a minimum do read this elegant and introspective prefatory paragraph (and let it hook you)
Global Intellectual History@global-ih.bsky.social · 2mo agoNow online! @sylvana-tomaselli.bsky.social (@camhistory.bsky.social) reviews "Tocqueville" by Françoise Mélonio www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
OUT NOW! The Oxford Handbook of H. G. Wells is now available online academic.oup.com/edited-volum... 47 chapters on Wells and his worlds Hardcopy to follow in June
The Oxford Handbook of H. G. Wells
Abstract. The Oxford Handbook of H. G. Wells offers a wide-ranging overview of the life and work of one of the most influential writers of the twentieth ce
academic.oup.com
From our FirstView: Scrutiny and Recall: Rousseau on Controlling the Executive by @arthurghins.bsky.social doi.org/10.1017/S000...
On Nozick and the Active Political Life. open.substack.com/pub/digressi... Shout outs to @drnickcowen.bsky.social
On Nozick and the Active Political Life.
Yesterday’s blog post elicited a message from the always erudite David Gordon.
open.substack.com
On Bacon on Cassandra and Cicero and Cato (the Younger) and the futility of Social Science. open.substack.com/pub/digressi...
On Bacon on Cassandra and Cicero and Cato (the Younger) and the futility of Social Science.
The first ‘fable’ from Bacon’s (1609) Wisdom of the Ancients is rather short.
open.substack.com
This is quite cool for researchers and historians: much of the Hayek Papers at Hoover now online. www.hoover.org/news/papers-...
The Papers of Friedrich August von Hayek Now Accessible Online
hoover.org
📢 Join us for 2026 Seeley Lectures from Prof Caroline Humfress (Uni. of St Andrews) “Constitutional Imaginaries, Ancient and Modern” 📅 19, 21, 26, 28 May ⏲️ All 4 lectures start @ 5pm 🏢 McCrum Lecture Theatre, Cambridge 🔎 Free, no booking needed Please share🙏 @thecambridgeschool.bsky.social
Now online and open access! An autobiographical essay by John Dunn (Cambridge) entitled "The History of Political Thought as Window on the World" @global-ih.bsky.social www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Congratulations to Dr Samuel Garrett Zeitlin (Modern Intellectual History, UCL) who has been selected as Quentin Skinner Fellow 2026 The Quentin Skinner lecture 'Francis Bacon and the Crisis of the Palatinate' will take place on 19 June, details to follow soon With @cam-english-fac.bsky.social
The 250th anniversary of the Wealth of Nations symposium continues: week 5, Book V. '“Very difficult, perhaps altogether impossible”: Smith’s political science,' by me. oll.libertyfund.org/publications...
Compounding Interest: Revisiting The Wealth of Nations at 250 | Online Library of Liberty
Arriving in 1776, as the Declaration of Independence gave birth to a new nation and Gibbon’s Decline and Fall gave birth to a new approach to history, Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Cause...
oll.libertyfund.org
On Shklar and Viner on Enlightenment anarchy (thank you @Glory Liu); with passing references to @samuelmoyn.bsky.social and Talmon; digressionsimpressions.substack.com/p/on-shklar-...
On Shklar and Viner on Enlightenment anarchy (thank you Glory Liu); with passing references to Moyn and Talmon.
My friends, Martin Lenz and Catarina Dutilh Novaes, always remind me that research (even by my own lights) is a collaborative activity.
digressionsimpressions.substack.com
Audio recordings of Foucault's lectures in Buffalo - the 1972 course and part of the 1970 course - are now available online from the University at Buffalo digital.lib.buffalo.edu/items/browse... I describe them and how they relate to publications, here progressivegeographies.com/2026/04/02/f...
My book is Online! 🥳🥳🥳 Race, Culture, and Politics in German Historical Thought, 1785–1815 represents the culmination of ten years' work. In it, I try to peel back our assumptions about how historiography worked in the German Enlightenment, situating it between the... academic.oup.com/book/62547
Now out in OA: "Can Democracy be Rehabilitated?" by John Dunn (@thecambridgeschool.bsky.social): "[It] will be a heroic challenge... The stakes in meeting it are the possibility of democracy itself, a citizenry that has recovered the capacity to keep itself free" www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10....
On the spirit of Quakerism and Confucianism in Candide open.substack.com/pub/digressi...?
On the spirit of Quakerism and Confucianism in Candide
Voltaire (1694-1778) was nearly forty when he published Letters Concerning the English in Nation in London.
open.substack.com
