Not by Reason Alone: Religion, History, and Identity in Early Modern Political Thought - Softcover

Mitchell, Joshua

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226532224 ISBN 13: 9780226532226

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 1996

Synopsis

Masterfully interweaving political, religious, and historical themes, Not by Reason Alone creates a new interpretation of early modern political thought. Where most accounts assume that modern thought followed a decisive break with Christianity, Joshua Mitchell reveals that the line between the age of faith and that of reason is not quite so clear. Instead, he shows that the ideas of Luther, Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau draw on history, rather than reason alone, for a sense of political authority.

This erudite and ambitious work crosses disciplinary boundaries to expose unsuspected connections between political theory, religion, and history. In doing so, it offers a view of modern political thought undistorted by conventional distinctions between the ancient and the modern, and between the religious and the political.

"Original. . . . A delight to read a political philosopher who takes the theologies of Hobbes and Locke seriously." —J. M. Porter, Canadian Journal of History

"Mitchell's argument both illuminates and fascinates. . . . An arresting, even stunning, contribution to our study of modern political thought."—William R. Stevenson, Jr., Christian Scholar's Review

About this title

About the Author

Joshua Mitchell is professor of political theory in the Department of Government at Georgetown University. From 2005 to 2008, he taught at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in Doha, Qatar. From 2008 to 2010, he was the acting chancellor of the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani. He is the author of several books, including The Fragility of Freedom: Tocqueville on Religion, Democracy, and the American Future, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

From Library Journal

Mitchell (political science, Georgetown) believes that scholars like John Rawls ( A Theory of Justice , LJ 4/1/72) and Robert Nozick ( Anarchy, State, and Utopia , LJ 1/15/75) have neglected the use of religious texts by Hobbes and Locke, thus distorting our ideas about community and overstressing the role of individualism. Hobbes and Locke searched the Bible for ideas of equality, community, and social change, he argues; Hobbes reveled in the authority of the Old Testament, Locke in the adult liberty of the New, and to this extent they did not work "from reason alone." Mitchell agrees that Locke begins with the reason God gave us and that Rousseau did without religious commitments. But he ignores the Cambridge Platonists, among others, and does not come to grips with the ways in which reason was embedded in religious understanding or accept the extent to which philosophers used scriptural interpretations to make their own ideas respectable. For academic and large public collections.
- Leslie Armour, Univ. of Ottawa
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0226532224
• ISBN 13: 9780226532226
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 259