Faculty of History
Carlyle Lectures in the History of Political Thought
Dedicated to the History of Political thought, these annual lectures over a range of periods and geographical locations. This Lectureship was established in 1972 following a bequest to honour the Revd. A.J. Carlyle.
Past Lecture Topics
The Shape of Democracy
(President White Professor of History & Political Science, Cornell University)
Analyzing uses of order, agreement, power, equality, beauty, and form in the dialogs of Plato, these lectures seek to alter prevailing understandings of these keywords in Plato and to offer resources for contemporary democratic theory and practice.
- 27 January 2026 - Crafting Order
- 3 February - Coming to Terms
- 10 February 2026 - The Capacity of Power
- 17 February 2026 - Making Equality
- 24 February 2026 - The Sense of Beauty
- 3 March 2026 - Democratic Form
For the Way Things Are: In Search of a Defensible Conservatism
- 4 February 2025 - The Conservative Dilemma
- 11 February 2025 - Conservatism and Theodicy
- 18 February 2025 - Relational Conservatism
- 25 February 2025 - “The Paradox of Conservative Justice”
- 4 March 2025 - Conservatism and The Way Things Are
- 11 March 2025 - The Legitimacy of Expectations
Clarendon and the Practice of Politics
- 23 January 2024 - Providence and Posterity
- 30 January 2024 - Conscience and Honour
- 06 February 2024 - Skill and Uningenuity
- 13 February 2024 - Ancient Landmarks
- 20 February 2024 - Religion and Policy
- 27 February 2024 - Wildness and Illimitedness
Custom, Common Law and Civil Law
Professor of Legal History, University of St. Andrews; L. Bates Lea Global Professor of Law, Michigan Law
- 17 January 2024 - Maitland, Common Law and Civil Law
- 24 January 2024 - Legal development in Europe: a view from the 1190s
- 31 January 2024 - Legal learning and learning law in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries
- 07 February 2024 - Genius or juristic accident? Policy, legal change and the early Common Law
- 14 February 2024 - 'Secreted in the interstices of procedure': actions, ideas, and legal change
- 21 February 2024 - 'Nolumus mutare...': further reflections
The Cold War and the Canon of Liberalism
Henry R. Luce Professor of Jurisprudence, Yale University
- 25 January—Against the Enlightenment (Judith Shklar)
- 1 February—The Romantic Revolution (Isaiah Berlin)
- 8 February—The Terrors of Historical Progress (Karl Popper)
- 15 February—Jewish Christianity (Gertrude Himmelfarb)
- 22 February—White Freedom (Hannah Arendt)
- 1 March—The Garrisoned Self (Lionel Trilling)
John Locke and Empire
Professor Emeritus of Intellectual History, University of Cambridge; Honorary Professor, University of Sussex
- 19 January 2021 - Empire, Property, and the New York Land Question
- 26 January 2021 - Darien, the Scottish Empire, and Colonial Anthropology
- 2 February 2021 - The Grievances of Virginia: Land, People, and Arbitrary Government
- 9 February 2021 - Captain Kidd, Piracy, and the Sovereignty of the Seas
- 16 February 2021 - William Molyneux, Improvement, and the Case of Ireland
- 23 February 2021 - Africans, Native Americans, Slavery, and Christian Evangelism
Don’t Think for Yourself: Authority and Belief in Medieval Philosophy
Professor of Late Ancient and Arabic Philosophy at LMU Munich
- 4 February 2020 - Taqlīd: Authority and the Intellectual Elite in the Islamic World
- 11 February 2020 - Too High a Standard: Knowledge and Skepticism in Medieval Philosophy
- 18 February 2020 - Testing the Prophets: Reason and the Choice of Faiths
- 25 February 2020 - Using the Pagans: Reason in Interreligious Debate
- 3 March 2020 - Some Pagans are Better than Others: the Merits of Plato and Aristotle
- 10 March 2020 - Finding Their Voice: Women in Byzantine and Latin Christian Philosophy
| Academic Year | Speaker | Title of lecture |
|---|---|---|
| 2019 | Richard Whatmore | The End of Enlightenment
|
| 2018 | Melissa Lane | Constitutions before Constitutionalism: Classical Greek Ideas of Office and Rule
|
| 2017 | Kinch Hoekstra | The Thucydidean Renaissance
|
| 2016 | John Robertson | The Sacred and the Social: History and Political Thought 1650-1800 |
| 2015 | Stuart Airlie | ‘The grim regalia of destruction’: points of tension between sacred and secular authority in Christian Europe c.400-c.1100 |
| 2014 | David Wootton | Power and Pleasure, 1513-1776 |
| 2013 | Caroline Humfress | Laws’ Empire: Rethinking Law and Life under Rome, 212 – 565 AD |
| 2012 | Malcolm Schofield | A Republican Political Philosophy: Cicero and Rome |
| 2011 | Jan-Werner Mueller | Christian Democracy: An Intellectual History |
| 2010 | James Hankins | The Transformation of the Republican Idea in the Italian Renaissance |
| Academic Year | Speaker | Title of lecture |
|---|---|---|
| 2009 | Istvan Hont | Visions of Politics in Commercial Society: Comparing Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith |
| 2008 | Annabel Brett | Changes of State: Nature and the City in Natural Law, c. 1545-1651 |
| 2007 | David Runciman | Sincerity, Hypocrisy and Lies in Modern Political Thought from Hobbes to Orwell |
| 2006 | Colin Kidd | The Varieties of Unionism in Scottish Political Thought 1707-1974 |
| 2005 | Peter Garnsey | Ideas of Property: Antiquity and After |
| 2004 | Magnus Ryan | The Legal Framework of Political Thought, 1100-1600 |
| 2003 | Mark Lilla | Modern political theology: Its nature and significance |
| 2002 | Blair Worden | Literature and Political Thought in Early Modern England |
| 2001 | Noel Malcolm | Islam, the Ottomans, and ‘Oriental Despotism’ in Western Thought, c1400-c1800 |
| 1999 (MT) | Jeremy Waldron | Christian Equality in John Locke’s Political Theory |
| Academic Year | Speaker | Title of lecture |
|---|---|---|
| 1999 (HT) | Janet L Nelson | Political Thinking in the Early Middle Ages |
| 1997 | Gareth Stedman Jones | Before God Died: Enlightenment, Revolution and the Genesis of the Socialist Utopia |
| 1996 | Jeannine Quillet | Some Aspects of Political Philosophy in the Fourteenth Century |
| 1995 | Donald Winch | Secret Concatenations: Riches and Poverty, Mandeville to Malthus |
| 1994 | Alan Ryan | American Radical Thought since 1880 |
| 1993 | Anthony Pagden | Lords of all the Worlds: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, France, and Britain: c. 1400-c.1800 |
| 1992 | Charles Taylor | The Political Culture of Modernity |
| 1991 | Richard Tuck | ‘Sorry Comforters’: Political Thought and the International Order from Grotius to Kant |
| 1989 (MT) | Robert Benson | Frederick Barbarossa and the Empire in Twelfth-Century Political Thought |
| Academic Year | Speaker | Title of lecture |
|---|---|---|
| 1989 (TT) | Schlomo Avineri | Marxism and Nationalism |
| 1988 | J.H. Burns | Lordship, Kingship and Empire. The Idea of Monarchy, 1410-1525 |
| 1986 | Judith Shklar | Montesquieu and the Enlightenment |
| 1985 | John Burrow | Whigs and Liberals: Continuity and Change in English Political Thought 1790-1914 |
| 1984 | Maurice Cranston | Political Theorists of the Enlightenment |
| 1983 | Gordon Leff | The Progress of Political Man |
| 1982 | Alasdair MacIntyre | Some Transformations of Justice |
| 1980 | Quentin Skinner | The Political Thought of Machiavelli |
| 1975 | Christopher Morris | Survivals and Revivals in Medieval Political Thought |