Susan James

Liberal political theorists commend a comparatively orderly form of life. It is one in which individuals and groups who care about different things, and live in different ways, nevertheless share an overriding commitment to liberty and toleration, together with an ability to resolve conflicts and disagreements in ways that do not violate these values. Both citizens and states are taken to be capable of negotiating points of contention without resorting to forms of coercion such as abuse, blackmail, brainwashing, intimidation, torture or other types of violence. In explaining what makes such a state of affairs possible, such theorists have tended to present the citizens of liberal polities as more or less rational individuals who are aware of the advantages of a pluralist, yet co-operative way of life, and understand what it takes to maintain them. Liberalism works best, they have suggested, when, and because, individuals understand its benefits, and therefore act broadly in accordance with the norms it prescribes.

Cavendish is critical of two of the experimental sciences of her day: chemistry and microscopy. Rather than creating new things, as their practitioners claim, they produce 'hermaphroditical mixtures'. I trace this startling metaphor to the alchemical tradition and suggest how its origins can help us to understand Cavendish's position. In her view, the chemists and microscopists exaggerate their own power and creativity, and fail to recognise that human creativity belongs primarily to imagination. I show how this theme is worked out in Cavendish's paired texts, Observations on Experimental Philosophy and the fictional Blazing World.

This chapter examines the link between Descartes’ scientific method and his conception of moral virtue. James argues that the qualities a Cartesian philosopher-scientist needs to cultivate are precisely those that Descartes puts at the centre of his account of virtue. As one becomes a skilled investigator, one simultaneously becomes a virtuous person. To elucidate this claim, James focuses on the passionate aspect of scientific enquiry. She explores the roles of indecision and wonder in scientific investigation, and shows how philosopher-scientists can use these passions to monitor and improve their own practice. As they learn to modify their passions, they exercise the central virtue of générosité. Descartes’ conception of morality therefore implicitly represents science as a self-sufficient undertaking that is morally valuable in itself.

Can we deal with existing environmental threats without giving up a significant degree of freedom? The answer is often thought to be no, but in this lecture I sketch a Spinozist invitation to view the matter in a different light. Spinoza's conception of liberty is fundamentally a republican one, but, unlike other defenders of this tradition, he argues that we can be made made unfree by non-human things such as viruses or weather patterns. Insofar as we are subject to their arbitrary power, we are already in a condition of servitude. If we adopt this Spinozist diagnosis of our condition, the problem we confront is not so much whether we are willing to give up existing freedoms as whether we can find the means to overcome existing forms of servitude.

Mary Wollstonecraft is celebrated for her Vindication of the Rights of Woman. However, while her title suggests that rights must play an important part in improving women’s situation, it is less clear how she envisages them. What does she think rights are and how are they to transform women’s lives? I argue that Wollstonecraft blends two traditions, a republican conception of rights as powers to act, and a distinct conception of natural rights. She offers a radical development of republican rights theory, but, in order to resolve one of the problems it poses, resorts to divinely-ordained rights of nature. Is she alone in combining these two stances? In the final part of the chapter I show that she is not. Her position belongs to a historical trend in which republicanism gives way to a liberal outlook grounded on individual natural rights.

Book synopsis: The thoroughly contemporary question of the relationship between emotion and reason was debated with such complexity by the philosophers of the 17th century that their concepts remain a source of inspiration for today’s research about the emotionality of the mind. The analyses of the works of Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and many other thinkers collected in this volume offer new insights into the diversity and significance of philosophical reflections about emotions during the early modern era. A focus is placed on affective components in learning processes and the boundaries between emotions and reason

Unless rights are claimable, it is sometimes argued, they are no more than rhetorical gestures which mock the poor and needy. But what makes a right claimable? If rights are to avoid the charge of emptiness, I argue, they must be effectively enforceable. But what does this involve? I identify three conditions of enforceability, and four sets of broader circumstances in which these conditions can be met. I discuss the implications of this analysis of rights for multicultural societies, and conclude that the conditions in which appeals to rights are useful are more limited than many contemporary theorists allow

One of the aims of Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus is to vindicate the view that philosophy and theology are separate forms of enquiry, neither of which has any authority over the other. However, many commentators have objected that this aspect of his project fails. Despite his protestations to the contrary, Spinoza implicitly gives epistemological precedence to philosophy. I argue that this objection misunderstands the nature of Spinoza's position and wrongly charges him with inconsistency. To show how he can coherently allow both that theology and philosophy employ independent epistemological standards, and that philosophy is epistemologically superior to theology, we need to step back from the immediate disputes to which the Tractatus is a response and examine a Ciceronian distinction on which Spinoza indirectly draws. As well as enabling us to vindicate Spinoza's position, it places his alleged naturalism in a new light and portrays philosophizing as a form of piety

In the TTP Spinoza addresses in its full complexity the question of whether a republican theorist, committed to the view that the primary goal of political life is freedom conceived as the absence of slavery or dependence on arbitrary will, has any need for the notion of a right. His answer is designed to draw us away from many of the assumptions that run through the natural law tradition. Rather than accepting that our rights are stable, located in individuals, and absolute, we should be prepared to accept that the only natural right we possess, our power to do what we can to maintain ourselves, is manifested in claims that are fluctuating, collective and come in degrees. The overriding advantage of this outlook is that it directs our attention to the practical business of politics – to the project of creating rights that will secure our freedom.

Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, published a wide variety of works including poems, plays, letters and treatises of natural philosophy, but her significance as a political writer has only recently been recognised. This major contribution to the series of Cambridge Texts includes the first ever modern edition of her Divers Orations on English social and political life, together with a new student-friendly rendition of her imaginary voyage, A New World called the Blazing World. Susan James explains the allusions made in this classic text, and directs readers to the many intellectual debates with which Cavendish engages. Together these two works reveal the character and scope of Margaret Cavendish's political thought. She emerges as a singular and probing writer, who simultaneously upholds a conservative social and political order and destabilises it through her critical and unresolved observations about natural philosophy, scientific institutions, religion, and the relations between men and women.