Who will rule the rulers? Who will chaperone the chaperones? Who will guard the guardians? These questions are rarely associated with Plato. Usually seen as the arch-defender of the rule of the enlightened few over the ignorant many, he has not been perceived as a friend of accountable government. But is this traditional picture of Plato true? Melissa Lane, the world’s foremost interpreter of Plato’s political thought, thinks not. Far from being blind to the need to hold political leaders to acc...
Mar 30, 2026•1 hr 15 min
Theophrastus was an ancient Greek philosopher. He wrote widely on topics including metaphysics, plant-life, dizziness, odours, and juice. Most notably, though, he was the author of a colourful text detailing the vices of thirty typical characters from Athenian city life. The impact of this short book of sketches, known simply as Characters , was prodigious. In early modern Europe, it spawned an entire tradition of character sketching and character classifying which, for a period of some two hund...
Feb 10, 2026•1 hr 1 min
Martin Crusius (1526-1607) spent most of his life in the Lutheran town of Tübingen. While there, he became Europe's foremost expert on Ottoman Greece. Drawing on hundreds of conversations he held with the Greek Orthodox alms-seekers who visited his home, he painted a picture of a people unparalleled in its richness and scope. Yet he also constructed a narrative of the religious and cultural decline of Greece which shows his self-proclaimed philhellenism to have been entangled with a disdain for ...
Dec 08, 2025•40 min
By her death in 1797 at the age of 38, Mary Wollstonecraft had produced a body of work unmatched for its honesty and critical acumen. In a society where marriage often amounted to legal prostitution, Wollstonecraft confronted the ways in which property and power distorted lives and corrupted our most essential relationships: as human beings, men and women, mothers and children. Following a revolution in France that failed to deliver, Wollstonecraft came to see education as the only viable route ...
Oct 22, 2025•57 min
After the founding of the American Republic, African-American Intellectuals never accepted passively the narratives of racial difference maintained by the defenders of slavery and segregation. At a time when the belief in human equality was under attack from religious reactionaries and scientific innovators alike, Black thinkers succeeded in vindicating the unity of the human community as a divinely created whole, in constructing their own science of the races in opposition to white theories of ...
Sep 17, 2025•1 hr
Sometime in the eighteenth century, a great transformation took place in the language of liberty. Since the days of the Roman Republic, to be free had meant to be independent of the arbitrary will of another. You enjoyed freedom if nobody could impose their will on you without your prior consent. You were free if you were your own master, and you were unfree to the extent that you answered to anyone else. This was the concept of liberty which dominated political discourse in England until the ou...
Jul 21, 2025•1 hr 1 min
If you visited Britain around 1700, you’d find hardly a single advocate of the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade. You’d hear the institution of slavery described as a moral evil, but no one would tell you that it could be done away with if only people put their minds to it. Slavery was supported by monarchy, government, church, and public opinion in general. Yet in 1807, the trade in enslaved Africans was abolished throughout the British Empire. How and why this momentous shift in publi...
Jun 09, 2025•1 hr 11 min
Why is Carl Schmitt one of the most widely read political theorists of the twentieth century? A lifelong antisemite, a petty careerist, a Nazi ideologue who only avoided being tried at Nuremberg because he wasn’t considered important enough, Schmitt was an unlikely candidate for canonical fame. And yet from today’s perspective, few other authors present as many opportunities to think through the struggles of the twentieth century. From the besieged cities of the First World War to the global del...
Apr 27, 2025•1 hr 54 min
In 1686, a French witness spoke openly of a Native American declaration of independence. ‘We have to assume’, he said, ‘that the Iroquois do not accept any master’. Claims such as this were made frequently throughout the history of European colonialism, forming a rich tapestry of indigenous ideas. Although often dismissed by historians as badly documented and politically irrelevant fictions, these ideas helped shape the destiny of peoples and polities across the globe, from New Zealand and New C...
Mar 04, 2025•1 hr
John Locke continues to excite controversy. For American liberals, he is an honorary Founding Father, one of the architects of modern democracy. In their view, as Allan Bloom put it, ‘the whole world is divided into two parts, one of which traces its intellectual lineage back to Locke and the other to Marx’. For his critics on the left, by contrast, he is an apologist for slavery and European imperialism, his thought a reminder that liberalism and empire were born twins. But is either of these v...
Feb 04, 2025•1 hr 6 min
According to some, Francis Bacon accomplished nothing less than a scientific revolution. Some even say he was the founder of modern science itself. Born into a world where natural magic, astrology, alchemy, and the wisdom of the Ancients were all accepted as authentic sciences, he left behind a body of work expressing a new and strange idea. In this radical vision, humanity was destined to free itself from its mundane misery by investigating nature and discovering its laws. It was a vision of co...
Dec 17, 2024•1 hr 28 min
What lessons can we draw from eighteenth-century thought about the relationship of big and small states? What are the limits of intellectual history? How and why did the Enlightenment end? Richard Whatmore, Professor of Modern History at the University of St Andrews, joins us to discuss these questions and more.
Sep 24, 2024•39 min
What can the seventeenth century teach us about equality? Why do philosophers construct intellectual traditions and how do we use them? In what ways is political theory an educative endeavour? These are some of the questions we asked Teresa Bejan, Professor of Political Theory at the University of Oxford. Publications mentioned in this episode include: First Among Equals: The Practice and Theory of Early Modern Equality . Under contract with Harvard University Press. Mere Civility: Disagreement ...
Apr 26, 2024•40 min
How can we understand thinkers in their own terms? Why is such an approach particularly fruitful to understanding Hume? What can philosophy and the history of political thought learn from one another? What can Hobbes's conception of the people teach us about populism? James Harris, professor of the history of philosophy at the University of St Andrews, joins us to discuss these questions and more in this episode. This episode's hosts: Zack Rauwald & Elena Yi-Jia Zeng....
Feb 13, 2024•36 min
What is the relationship between war and representation? Why can't we understand the French Revolution without thinking about the political management of public debt? And what does the future have to do with how we write history? These are some of the questions answered by Michael Sonenscher, Fellow of King's College, University of Cambridge. This episode's hosts: Michael Kretowicz & Charlotte Johann.
Nov 07, 2023•36 min
How does skepticism serve history? What lessons does Hegel hold for the modern historian? Why is an understanding of historical consciousness so important across the humanities? These are some of the questions we asked Richard Bourke, Professor of the History of Political Thought at the University of Cambridge. Publications mentioned in this episode include: István Hont and Michael Ignatieff, Wealth and Virtue: The Shaping of Political Economy in the Scottish Enlightenment (CUP: 1983) Richard Bo...
Jun 30, 2023•31 min
What makes the seventeenth century such a fascinating period in the history of philosophy? In what ways does Spinoza speak to contemporary philosophical problems? And in what sense is philosophy an inherently historical discipline? These are some of the questions that we asked Susan James, Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College London. Some books and papers mentioned in this episode are: - Augustine of Hippo: A Biography by Peter Brown - The Blazing World by Siri Hustvedt - Spinoza on philo...
Feb 11, 2020•28 min
What can decolonisation in twentieth century Africa tell us about the history of political thought? How might African intellectual history shed light on new methods and modes of inquiry? And what does it mean to ‘decolonise’ intellectual history? Emma Hunter, professor of global and African history at the University of Edinburgh and the 2018/19 Quentin Skinner Fellow, joins us to discuss these questions and more in this episode.
Oct 09, 2019•36 min
What can history contribute to the pursuits of contemporary political theory? What does the notion of the Anthropocene have to do with the history of political thought? And what exactly is the legacy of the political thought produced during the First World War? These are some of the questions discussed in this episode with Duncan Kelly, professor of political thought and intellectual history at the University of Cambridge, and the author of Politics and the Anthropocene (2019)....
Aug 23, 2019•31 min
What is the place of history in the study of law? How do historians of international law conceive of emergent actors on the global stage? To what extent do legal histories shape the expectations and commitments of today’s international institutions? Dr Megan Donaldson, recently appointed to a lectureship in Public International Law at University College London, addresses these questions and shares her experience of a complex intersection between law, legal history and the history of political th...
Aug 12, 2019•36 min
How does an attention to gender change our understanding of Renaissance political texts and the history of ideas more broadly? How can we challenge the traditional divide between the political public and the apolitical private spheres? And in what ways is re-evaluating the conceptual relationship between disadvantaged groups in the early modern period fruitful for our own times? We spoke to Anna Becker, from the Centre of Privacy Studies at the University of Copenhagen, to discuss these question...
Apr 10, 2019•34 min
Which ideas and values shaped the relationship between humans and their environment in early modern Europe? Why did authors become interested in translating their own work, and what ramifications could this have? How can the ways in which authors were read, copied, and censored in the past enrich our understanding of their work? These are some of the questions we discuss with Dr Sara Miglietti, Senior Lecturer in Cultural and Intellectual History at the Warburg Institute in London....
Feb 09, 2019•26 min
How do we write the history of both the theory and the practice of socialism and welfarism? How do historians negotiate the relationship between their politics and their scholarship? And in what way is Karl Marx's political thinking relevant for us today? Gareth Stedman Jones, Professor of the History of Ideas at Queen Mary, University of London, talked to us about the history of poverty in nineteenth century Europe, his recent biography of Karl Marx, and what Dickens can teach us about writing ...
Dec 23, 2018•38 min
How does the world of ideas impact our understanding of political practice? What notions of freedom shaped the Roman republic? And how can Roman understandings of rhetoric empower our thinking in the twenty first century? These are some of the questions we discussed with Dr Valentina Arena, Reader in Roman History at University College London.
Oct 27, 2018•28 min
What's the relationship between ideas and life experiences, politics and scholarship? How does our methodological self-consciousness evolve? What is the interaction between different schools of intellectual history? Martin Jay reflects on his life and career as an intellectual historian.
Oct 27, 2018•24 min
Where did Enlightenment take place in the eighteenth century? Why were Enlightenment thinkers interested in the origins of language and the workings of the human mind? And can political rulers also be philosophers? Avi Lifschitz talked to us about science, aesthetics, politics and philosophy in eighteenth century Europe, about scholarship then and now, and about the legacies of Enlightenment thinking for our own time.
Oct 27, 2018•24 min
What makes early modern political thought fruitful for our thinking today? How do language and translation inform the writing of history? And why should animals be our starting point for thinking about the political? These are questions we discussed with Dr Annabel Brett, who is a Reader in the History of Political Thought at the University of Cambridge.
Oct 27, 2018•29 min
In what ways has the question of Anglo-Scottish Union been - and become - urgent? What can historians learn from the philosophers' Enlightenment? These are some of the questions we discuss in this episode with John Robertson, Professor of the History of Political Thought at Cambridge, whose books include 'The Case for Enlightenment: Scotland and Naples, 1680-1760', and 'The Enlightenment. A Very Short Introduction'.
Oct 27, 2018•30 min
What is the relationship between neoliberalism and human rights? Does the exclusive focus on rights bias the discourse against other staples of ethical relations between humans, like duties? These are some of the questions we discuss in this episode with Samuel Moyn, professor of Law and History at Yale, a major voice on the history of human rights and author of the forthcoming 'Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World.'
Oct 27, 2018•35 min
What is the history of republicanism in Turkey? How did ideas travel between Turkey and Western Europe? And how can we write a transnational or even global intellectual history? These are some of the questions we discussed with Dr Banu Turnaoğlu, a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow and a Research Associate of St John's College Cambridge, who is a specialist in the history of Ottoman political thought.
Oct 27, 2018•28 min
