Introduction
1: The Greeks: property and the common good
2: The Romans: private property and personhood
3: The Early Christian Church: property and sinfulness
4: The Medieval World: Roman laws, natural laws, and God's law
5: The Late Medieval World: princes, popes and supreme poverty
6: The Early Sixteenth Century: renaissance and reformation
7: The Later Sixteenth Century: absolutism and resistance
8: Natural Law and Natural Right in the Seventeenth Century:
Grotius, Hobbes, and Pufendorf
9: Seventeenth-Century Radicals: republicans, levellers and
diggers
10: Locke
Conclusion
Chris Pierson has been professor of politics at the University of
Nottingham since 1996. He has also held visiting positions at the
Johns Hopkins University and the University of California, at the
Australian National University in Canberra and at the
Hansewissenschaftskolleg in Lower Saxony. He is best-known for his
work on welfare states (including the three editions of Beyond the
Welfare State? and The Oxford Handbook of the Welfare State, edited
with Castles,
Leibfried, Lewis and Obinger) but always as part of a much broader
interest in the dynamics of social change, which included Socialism
After Communism: The New Market Socialism (1995) and Hard
Choices: Social Democracy in the 21st Century (2001). He has spent
most of this millennium working on the history of ideas of property
in the Latin West, convinced that this is the under-considered
terrain in which the roots of many of our modern discontents are to
be found. The two volumes of Just Property are the first fruits of
this project.
Pierson takes the reader through the Greeks, the Romans, the early
Christian church, the Medieval World, the early sixteenth-century,
the later sixteenth century, natural law and natural right in the
seventeenth century, and seventeenth-century radicals. While this
list of topics indicates Piersons ambition, it does little to
convey the impressive scholarship that he demonstrates throughout
this magnificent book.
*Colin Tyler, Political Studies Review*
In sum, the book is an excellent resource in the history of ideas.
Not only does Pierson engage directly with the texts -- from which
he has drawn ample excerpts -- he is also engaged with later and
present-day work interpreting those texts. In this sense the volume
is a useful (though not comprehensive) exposition of the "state of
the art" in present-day interpretation of a number of figures, not
all of whom are household names ... a great service to political
philosophers and others working in this field
*William A. Edmundson, Georgia State University, Notre Dame
Philosophical Reviews*
Just Property amply illustrates, by historical example, why
property should be at the core of political theory. The strength of
Just Property is in how it combines rigorous scholarship with witty
commentary that quietly celebrates Rousseau's 'heroic failure' and
sighs at the German Idealists' knack for starting in all the wrong
places.
*Patrick J.L. Cockburn, Aarhus University*
Ask a Question About this Product More... |