Benjamin Constant’s ‘The Liberty of the Ancients Compared to the Liberty of the Moderns’ (1819) examines what it means to be free in the modern world. Are we at liberty to follow our hearts? Do we have an obligation to take an interest in politics? What happens if we don’t? David explores the lessons Constant drew from the failures of the French Revolution and his timeless message about the perils of political indifference.

Free online version of the text:

• https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/constant-the-liberty-of-ancients-compared-with-that-of-moderns-1819

Recommended version to purchase: 

• https://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/texts-political-thought/constant-political-writings?format=PB

Going Deeper:

• Benjamin Constant, Adolphe 
• William Doyle, The French Revolution: a very short introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)
• In Our Time on Germaine de Stael
• Isaiah Berlin, ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’

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Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) is one of the most remarkable books in the history of ideas. A classic of early feminism, it uses what’s wrong with the relationship between men and women to illustrate what’s gone wrong with politics. It’s a story of lust and power, education and revolution. David explores how Wollstonecraft’s radical challenge to the basic ideas of modern politics continues to resonate today.

Free online version of the text:

•  http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3420

Recommended version to purchase: 

• https://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/texts-political-thought/wollstonecraft-vindication-rights-men-and-vindication-rights-woman-and-hints?format=PB 

Going Deeper:

• In Our Time on Mary Wollstonecraft 
• Wollstonecraft in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Sylvana Tomaselli, Wollstonecraft: Philosophy, Passion, and Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020)
• Virginia Woolf on Mary Wollstonecraft
• Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France
• Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

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Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan (1651) reimagined how we could do politics. It redefined many of the ideas that continue to shape modern politics: representation, sovereignty, the state. But in Leviathan these ideas have a strange and puzzling power. David explores what Hobbes was trying to achieve and how a vision of politics that came out of the English civil war, can still illuminate the world we live in.

Free online version of the text:

•  https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3207/3207-h/3207-h.htm

Recommended version to purchase: 

• https://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/texts-political-thought/hobbes-leviathan-revised-student-edition?format=PB

Going Deeper:

• David Runciman, ‘The sovereign’ in The Oxford handbook of Hobbes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013)
• Richard Tuck, Hobbes a Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002)
• (Video) Quentin Skinner, ‘What is the state? The question that will not go away’
• (Video) Sophie Smith, ‘The nature of politics’, the 2017 Quentin Skinner lecture. 
• Noel Malcolm, Aspects of Hobbes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)
• David for The Guardian on Hobbes and the coronavirus

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A short trailer to introduce a new series of talks by David Runciman. In a series of twelve podcasts, he explores some of the most important thinkers and prominent ideas lying behind modern politics – from Hobbes to Gandhi, from democracy to patriarchy, from revolution to lock down. Plus he talks about the crises – revolutions, wars, depressions, pandemics – that generated these new ways of political thinking. From the team that brought you Talking Politics: a history of ideas to help make sense of what’s happening today.

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