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.