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.