Jean Bodin’s «Six Books of the Commonwealth» in English Political Works of The 17th Century

The paper is devoted to the perception of the political ideas of the French philosopher Jean Bodin in the English intellectual space of the 17th century. English political thought during the 17th century more than once changed its direction responding to political crises in the country. The authors of the pre-revolutionary period, the Civil War and the Stuart Restoration evaluated the theory of sovereignty in different ways and saw different ways to implement it. In this context the quoting of Jean Bodin, already then recognized as an author of the theory of state sovereignty, often appeared in the writings of English authors. The number of references to Bodin makes it difficult to study the reception of Bodin’s political ideas in seventeenth-century England through a frontal review of these writings. The author of the paper has compiled a selection of English works from the period 1576 to 1700, which cited Bodin’s treatise «Six books of the Commonwealth». The resulted base consists of 298 works of numerous authors. Throughout the 17th century the public interest in Bodin varied depending on the political situation. The peaks of his citations coincided with political crises in England; they became the foundation for research work with the collected corpus of sources. The study This attempts to trace how, in the process of reading, different evaluation and interpretation of Bodin’s treatise, English readers influenced the subsequent perception of the text and its author.

, , , , , , , Jean Bodin, Les Six livres de la République, The English Civil War, The Stuart Restoration, theory of sovereignty, reception, intellectual history, history of reading