Books in the The Seeley Lectures series

This is a book about the complex relationship between fear, danger, and the law, examining the many problems in what is known as 'the precautionary principle'. Laws of Fear represents a major statement from one of the most influential political and legal theorists writing today.

What did democracy mean before liberalism? By combining history with political theory, this book restores the core meaning of democracy - collective and limited self-government by citizens. Grounded in political participation and civic education, it is the essential basis of stable, non-tyrannical government - before and after liberalism.

The human figures today as a central reference point for human rights, humanitarianism, and global justice. But who or what is that human? This book rejects accounts in terms of core characteristics, and argues for an understanding of the human as a claim and commitment to equality.

The Rights of Others explores the tension between universal principles of human rights and the self-determination claims of sovereign states as they affect the claims of refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants. Few issues in world politics today are more important, or more troubling, but morally acceptable solutions do nonetheless exist.

Joseph Raz is one of the world's leading philosophers of law, and in his Seeley Lectures he reflects critically on one of the central tenets of ethical thought, the view that values are universal. This is a concise, pithy and attractively humane account of some fundamental questions of social existence.

Drawing on the work of historians like Quentin Skinner, neo-republican theory offers a new perspective on the theory of justice and democracy. This is the first extended statement of a republican theory of democracy. It gives a fresh account of the rationale of democracy and the institutions that democracy requires.

In a lucid, concise volume, Jeremy Waldron defends the role of legislation, and highlights the views of Aristotle, Locke and Kant. This book is original in conception, trenchantly argued and very clearly presented, and will be of interest to a wide range of scholars and thinkers.

In this major book Martha Nussbaum, one of the most innovative and influential philosophical voices of our time, proposes a kind of feminism that is genuinely international, argues for an ethical underpinning to all thought about development planning and public policy, and dramatically moves beyond the abstractions of economists and philosophers to embed thought about justice in the concrete reality of the struggles of poor women. Nussbaum argues that international political and economic thought must be sensitive to gender difference as a problem of justice, and that feminist thought must begin to focus on the problems of women in the third world. Taking as her point of departure the predicament of poor women in India, she shows how philosophy should undergird basic constitutional principles that should be respected and implemented by all governments, and used as a comparative measure of quality of life across nations.

Democracy has been established as an uncontested ideal while regimes inspired by this form of government now fall under constant criticism. Hence, the steady erosion of confidence in representatives has become a major political phenomenon. Counter-Democracy offers a unique perspective on the unsettled and confusing state of world politics today.

James Tully examines demands for cultural recognition, involving nationalism, Aboriginal rights, feminism, and ethnic minorities. Modern constitutionalism cannot adjudicate such claims justly. Using a historical and critical approach, Tully instead develops a post-imperial philosophy which, he argues, can bring peace to the twenty-first century.

Richard Tuck traces the history of the distinction between sovereignty and government and its relevance to the development of democratic thought. Tuck shows that this was a central issue in the political debates of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and provides a new interpretation of the political thought of Bodin, Hobbes and Rousseau. Integrating legal theory and the history of political thought, he also provides one of the first modern histories of the constitutional referendum, and shows the importance of the United States in the history of the referendum. The book derives from the John Robert Seeley Lectures delivered by Richard Tuck at the University of Cambridge in 2012, and will appeal to students and scholars of the history of ideas, political theory and political philosophy.

The idea that we are mutually dependent on the recognition of our peers is perceived in different ways throughout the world, according to different cultural and political conditions. This study explores the complex history of 'Recognition' in Britain, France and Germany and its place in modern political and social self-understanding.