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This enormously erudite and original book is the culmination of many years of thinking deeply about difficult texts. Rosen's book explores themes of deep interest and importance to me—about religion, about politics, and about historical approaches to philosophy. My comments and questions will focus on these, and more on Kant than on Hegel.

There is no more analyzed image in the history of political thought than the frontispiece of Hobbes's Leviathan (1651), yet the tiny figures making up the giant have largely escaped scholarly attention. So, too, have their hats. This article recovers what men's failure to "doff and don" their hats in the frontispiece might have conveyed to readers about their relationship to the Sovereign and each other. Sometimes big ideas—about the nature of representation, for example, or how to "acknowledge" equality—are conveyed by small gestures. When situated textually and contextually, Hobbes's hats shed important light on the micropolitics of everyday interaction for those who, like Hobbes himself, hope to securely constitute a society of equals.

AbstractPolitical theorists often turn to seventeenth‐century England and the Levellers as sources of egalitarian insight. Yet by the time the Levellers were active, the claim that human beings were "equal" by nature was commonplace. Why, in Leveller hands, did a long‐standing piety consistent with social hierarchy became suddenly effectual? Inspired by Elizabeth Anderson, this article explores what equality—and the related concept of parity—meant for the Levellers, and what "the point," as they saw it, was. I argue that the Levellers' key achievement was subsuming a highly controversial premise of natural parity within the existing language of natural equality. This suggests that modern basic equality is the product of two, potentially contradictory, principles. This, in turn, has important normative, as well as historical and conceptual, implications for how theorists understand "the point" of equality for egalitarian movements today.

AbstractThe classical liberal doctrine of free expression asserts the priority of speech as an extension of the freedom of thought. Yet its critics argue that freedom of expression, itself, demands the suppression of the so-called "silencing speech" of racists, sexists, and so on, as a threat to the equal expressive rights of others. This essay argues that the claim to free expression must be distinguished from claims to equal speech. The former asserts an equal right to express one's thoughts without interference; the latter the right to address others, and to receive a hearing and consideration from them, in turn. I explore the theory of equal speech in light of the ancient Athenian practice of isegoria and argue that the equality demanded is not distributive but relational: an equal speaker's voice should be counted as "on a par" with others. This ideal better captures critics' concerns about silencing speech than do their appeals to free expression. Insofar as epistemic and status-harms provide grounds for the suppression and exclusion of some speech and speakers, the ideal of equal speech is more closely connected with the freedom of association than of thought. Noticing this draws attention to the continuing—and potentially problematic—importance of exclusion in constituting effective sites of equal speech today.

Ever since Mary Astell was introduced as the "First English Feminist" in 1986, scholars have been perplexed by her dual commitments to natural equality and social, political, and ecclesiastical hierarchy. But any supposed "paradox" in her thought is the product of a modernist conceit that treats equality and hierarchy as antonyms, assuming the former must be prior, normative, and hostile to the latter. Seeing this, two other crucial features of Astell's thought emerge: her ethics of ascent and her psychology of superiority. These, in turn, illuminate her lifelong fascination with ambition as a feminine virtue, as well as her curious embrace of Machiavelli. Astell's politics and ethics are thus doubly worthy of recovery, both as the product of a singularly brilliant early modern mind and as a fascinating but forgotten vision of "equality before egalitarianism" that sheds light on the persistent complexities of equality and hierarchy to this day.

Not so long ago, a unified chorus of scholars, politicians, and activists declared that the time had come to move "beyond" toleration. Such an offensive orientation of de haut en bas indulgence towards difference may have been appropriate to warring Christian sects after the Reformation. But in this brave, new, and emphatically global world of unprecedented cultural, racial, and gender diversity, "mere" and musty toleration must give way to something more—to respect, recognition, even acceptance, or perhaps a positive conception of tolerance comprising the better features of all three.

Introduction: Wars of words -- "Persecution of the tongue" -- "Silver alarums": Roger Williams's "meer" civility -- "If it be without contention": Hobbes and civil silence -- "A bond of mutual charity": Locke and the quest for concord -- Conclusion: The virtue of mere civility -- Epilogue: Free speech fundamentalism

Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Citations and Abbreviations -- Introduction: Wars of Words -- Chapter 1. "Persecution of the Tongue": Toleration and the Rise of Religious Insult -- Chapter 2. "Silver Alarums": Roger Williams's Mere Civility -- Chapter 3. "If It Be without Contention": Hobbes and Civil Silence -- Chapter 4. "A Bond of Mutual Charity": Locke and the Quest for Concord -- Conclusion: The Virtue of Mere Civility -- Epilogue: Free Speech Fundamentalism -- Notes -- References -- Acknowledgments -- Index