Banning ideas, burning books: the dynamics of censorship in classical antiquity. How to balance the right to free speech and dissent against other legitimate concerns is an issue that is always with us. This project explores neglected literary evidence from antiquity to study responses to controversial ideas in order to enhance the modern debate on the limits of freedom of speech.
The First 'Liberals': Stoicism in the Enlightenment. This project will provide the first systematic study of the profound yet hitherto under-appreciated influence of classical Stoicism on the political thought of the European Enlightenment, particularly liberal thought. It will show that the Stoics provided the first properly developed theory of personal rights and were the first to successfully promulgate the values of universalism, impartiality, egalitarianism, tolerance and cosmopolitanism. I ....The First 'Liberals': Stoicism in the Enlightenment. This project will provide the first systematic study of the profound yet hitherto under-appreciated influence of classical Stoicism on the political thought of the European Enlightenment, particularly liberal thought. It will show that the Stoics provided the first properly developed theory of personal rights and were the first to successfully promulgate the values of universalism, impartiality, egalitarianism, tolerance and cosmopolitanism. It will then trace the transmission and interpretation of such values in early modern thought and demonstrate the manner in which Enlightenment figures like Locke, Smith, Wollstonecraft, Kant and Jefferson were directly influenced by the emancipatory political thought of the Stoics. Read moreRead less