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Intro -- Contents -- I. How to Think about Rights in Early Modern Europe -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Tectonic Shifts and Tectonic Plates: Two Models for the Transformation of Culture -- 3. A Revolution in Natural Law? From Objective to Subjective Right (and Back Again) -- 4. Rights and Sovereignty: Beyond the State -- 5. Inalienability vs. the Alienation of Rights -- 6. Roman Law, the Lex Regia, and the Genealogy of Rights Regimes -- 7. Writing Intellectual History in a Digital Age -- Part I. Early Modern Rights Regimes -- II. When Did Rights Become "Rights"? From the Wars of Religion to the Dawn of Enlightenment -- 1. Monarchomachs and Tyrannicides: Natural Rights in the French Wars of Religion -- 2. English Liberties and Natural Rights: Leveller Arguments in the English Civil War -- 3. Abridging Natural Rights: Hobbes and the High Church Divines -- 4. Entrust, but Verify? The Transfer Regime from Spinoza to Locke -- 5. Into the Enlightenment: "Cato" and Hutcheson -- III. From Liberalism to Liberty: Natural Rights in the French Enlightenment -- 1. Sources for Natural Law Theory in France, 1700- 1750 -- 2. Physiocracy and the Dangerous Ignorance of Natural Rights -- 3. Natural Rights Talk in the Late Enlightenment: The Philosophes Carry the Torch -- 4. The (Meek) Conservative Reaction -- 5. Resisting Despotism: National Rights and Constitutionalism -- Part II. Social Naturalism in Early Modern France -- IV. The Laws of Nature in Neo-Stoicism and Science -- 1. The Many Receptions of Stoicism -- 2. Laws of the Natural World: The New Science -- V. Roman Law and Order: From Free-Market Ideology to Abolitionism -- 1. The Jansenist Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism: Jean Domat, the Natural Order, and the Origins of Free-Market Ideology -- 2. "All Men Are Originally Born Free": Slavery, Empathy, and the Extension of Human Rights -- 3. Conclusion

This essay reconsiders Jean-Jacques Rousseau's debt to Jean Bodin, on the basis of Daniel Lee's recent revision of Bodin as a theorist of popular sovereignty. It argues that Rousseau took a key feature of his own theory of democratic sovereignty from Bodin—namely, the dual identity of political members as both citizens and subjects of the state. It further makes the case that this dual identity originates in medieval corporatist law, which Bodin was summarizing. Finally, it demonstrates the lasting impact of corporatist law in eighteenth-century France, highlighting Rousseau's direct borrowings from the corporatist language and logic of contemporary commercial societies. In this regard, the article revisits and updates Otto von Gierke's classic argument about the origins of the state in corporatist thought.

The digital age has been a boon for intellectual historians, particularly those of us who work on early modern Europe and America. The mass digitization of old books has made research more efficient than ever: first editions are there for the downloading on Google Books, Gallica, Liberty Fund, Project Gutenberg, and elsewhere. The creation of such large-scale databases as Early English Books Online (EEBO), Eighteenth-Century Collection Online (ECCO), the Making of the Modern World (formerly Goldsmiths'–Kress), or, on a more modest level, the ARTFL project's FRANTEXT, has also breathed new life into old texts. Books that lay forgotten for generations can now be rediscovered thanks to the magic of search engines. To be sure, this power has not always been wielded for good: students today can "cite anything, but construe nothing," stringing together KWICs (keywords in context), and reading only a surrounding sentence or two (if that). But however they are used, these tools and platforms have transformed our daily work habits.

Antiquity is back. In some respects, it is surprising it ever went away: for the last forty years, Peter Gay's magisterial survey, which connected the "little flock" ofphilosopheswith "pagan" authors, has loomed large over the field of Enlightenment studies. But shortly after its publication, a methodological sea change pulled the field in an opposite direction. Robert Darnton hailed this rising tide of social and cultural history in a 1971 largely critical review of Gay's two volumes. The hyper-longue duréeof Gay's historical panorama, which extended from the age of Virgil to that of Voltaire, was soon to be displaced by more focused inquiries into the history of the book, forms of enlightened sociability, and national difference. Intellectual history, particularly of Gay's epic brand, soon became scarce, despite the lasting presence of Gay's two volumes on bibliographies and course syllabi.

Describes the French Law of 22 Prairial that was adopted by the National Convention on 10 June 1794. Maximilien Robespierre, president of the National Convention & dominant figure of the Committee of Public Safety (CPS), encouraged French citizens to "purify the earth that (the tyrants) have soiled." The law of 22 prairial radically reformed the revolutionary tribunal by denying the accused right to legal counsel; allowing the prosecution to present "moral" proofs of guilt in the absence of (or in addition to) material evidence; & accelerating the judicial process. It is noted that the new law initiated the period known as the "Great Terror" in which 1,400 people were sentenced to death within the space of seven weeks. Possible motives for the CPS to turn the tribunal into a killing machine & to depart so radically from more enlightened norms of judicial processes are considered. Particular attention is given to the natural right theory upon which the legal process of the 22 prairial law is based. J. Lindroth

Argues that there are uncanny similarities between 18th-century debates in France & contemporary debates in the US over enemies of the people & enemy combatants. The focus is on the identification of nature & terror as dual enemies in legal & political discourses of the French Revolution. Ways in which Enlightenment principles of natural right contributed to formation of the Terror are explored to contend that legislation authorizing most of the executions carried out during the Terror were based on a legal concept fashioned in the liberal natural right tradition. A philological analysis of this hostis humani generic (enemy of the human race) concept highlights its Christian genealogy & the way it was reappropriated by 18th-century liberal natural right authors. The combination of theological & juridico-philosophical traditions turned the enemy into a monster & allowed natural right to encourage state violence rather than preserve the rights & lives of the many. Parallels are pointed out between the French Revolution discourse & President George W. Bush's revolutionary discourse to advance his "democratic globalism" agenda. J. Lindroth

Voltaire'sLetters Concerning the English Nation(Lettres philosophiques) have left the indelible impression that the Frenchphilosophewas fundamentally marked by his exposure to English thought in the late 1720s. On the map of his epistolary correspondence, however, England is hardly to be found. What are we to make of this discrepancy? In this article, we demonstrate that the missing letters to England are unlikely to be the result of a data glitch, but rather reflect a lack of interest in contemporary English matters. The only England that Voltaire seems to have cared about lay in the past, during the reign of Charles II. Moreover, this period of English history was (in his view) intrinsically French, given the English monarch's close ties to Versailles. Voltaire's limited admiration of English thought, accordingly, formed part of his broader philosophy of history, which was centered at the court of Louis XIV.

Intro -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Part One. Lux -- Via Lucis in tenebras: Comenius as Prophet of the Age of Light -- Whose Light Is It Anyway? The Struggle for Light in the French Enlightenment -- The "Lights" before the Enlightenment: The Tribunal of Reason and Public Opinion -- Writing the History of Illumination in the Siècle des Lumières: Enlightenment Narratives of Light -- Part Two. Veritas -- Another Dialogue in the Tractatus: Spinoza on "Christ's Disciples" and the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) -- A Backward Glance: Light and Darkness in the Medieval Theology of Power -- Lumen unitivum: The Light of Reason and the Aristotelian Sect in Early Modern Scholasticism -- The Aristotelian Enlightenment -- Part Three. Tenebrae -- Secular Sacerdotalism in the Anglican Enlightenment, 1660-1740 -- Refracting the Century of Lights: Alternate Genealogies of Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century Culture -- Enlightenment in the Shadows: Mysticism, Materialism, and the Dream State in Eighteenth-Century France -- Light, Truth, and the Counter-Enlightenment's Enlightenment -- Contributors -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Z

Intro -- Contents -- Chronocenosis: An Introduction to Power and Time-Dan Edelstein, Stefanos Geroulanos, and Natasha Wheatley -- Part I. Temporal Pluralities in Conflict -- 1. Legal Pluralism as Temporal Pluralism: Historical Rights, Legal Vitalism, and Non-Synchronous Sovereignty-Natasha Wheatley -- 2. The Invention of the Muslim Golden Age: Universal History, the Arabs, Science, and Islam-Marwa Elshakry -- 3. Rise and Fall of the Sattelzeit: The Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe and the Temporality of Totalitarianism and Genocide-Anson Rabinbach -- 4. A Technofossil of the Anthropocene: Sliding Up and Down Temporal Scales with Plastic-Andrea Westermann -- Part II. Loops, Layers, Assemblages -- 5. Long Divided Must Unite, Long United Must Divide: Dynasty, Histories, and the Orders of Time in China-Zvi Ben-Dor Benite -- 6. The Temporal Assemblage of the Nazi New Man: The "Empty" Present, the Incipient Ruin, and the Apocalyptic Time of Lebensraum-Stefanos Geroulanos -- 7. Prehistory and Posthistory: Apes, Caves, Bombs, and Time in Georges Bataille-Maria Stavrinaki -- Part III. The Splintered Present -- 8. Brain-Time Experiments: Acute Acceleration, Intensified Synchronization, and the Belatedness of the Modern Subject-Henning Schmidgen -- 9. Cryopower and the Temporality of Frozen Indigenous Blood Samples-Emma Kowal and Joanna Radin -- 10. "Now Is the Time for Helter Skelter": Terror, Temporality, and the Manson Family-Claudia Verhoeven -- Part IV. Speed(s) -- 11. Legal Panics, Fast and Slow: Slavery and the Constitution of Empire-Lauren Benton and Lisa Ford -- 12. Time and the Economics of the Business Cycle in Modern Capitalism-Jamie Martin -- 13. History and Temporal Sovereignty in the Thought of Jawaharlal Nehru-Sunil Purushotham -- Part V. "Already Here Just Not Evenly Distributed": Heterochronies of the Future.