The christian polity of John Calvin

J.A. Hobson is known for his views on economy and imperialism. He was also concerned with social psychology and especially with the phenomenon of crowds, which was much discussed at the beginning of the twentieth century. As crowd behaviour was both collective and apparently irrational, it could undermine liberalism. However, Hobson uses crowd phenomena to bolster his own brand of social-democratic liberalism. He perceives mass behaviour as a constituent of the social dialogue favoured by liberals since J. S. Mill, and argues that alterity and festivity are themselves human traits that merit political and legal recognition. This expanded view of human nature grounds a perception of rights which includes entitlements to leisure and structureless sociability: the welfare measures which guarantee such entitlements are thus made constituents of a revised liberalism. His interpretation of the crowd also serves Hobson as a warning to social theory itself, which, he argues, should acknowledge its distance from the world it attempts to analyse. This perception of theory further acts to strengthen liberalism, as it points to the contingent, open-ended character of any view of society and hence favours dialogue and open expression of varying opinions.     

Calvin and Natural Rights

Abstract

This article applauds the recent rise of scholarly attention to studying the relation of religion to natural rights in general and Calvinism in particular. Against the strong belief in some quarters that appeals to nature, including the idea of rights, do not play a significant role in Calvin's thought, the article concurs with recent (and some not so recent) work to the contrary, arguing that such appeals do occupy an important, if ambiguous, place for Calvin. However, the article resists explaining the variations in his thought as the result of changing interpretations over time. Rather, it is contended that these matters were a source of tension throughout Calvin's career. He struggled not so much with the question of the natural knowledge of rights, but of the ability to choose to act on that knowledge. In conclusion, the article hints that Calvin's ambivalence on this issue sowed the seeds for significant divergence among his descendants.     

The Enigma of the Great Thapsus Harbour Mole

On the East coast of Tunisia, between Sousse and Sfax, lie the scant remains of the ancient city of Thapsus, notable mainly for a battle fought in the civil war in 46 BC. Visits by the authors resulted in the discovery of one of the longest‐known harbour moles in the entire Roman Empire. No ancient sources make reference to any work of such magnitude and the paper suggests that the harbour was never completed, but might have been started by the local emperors Gordianus, none of whom survived long enough to have executed such a project.     

The Trial of Socrates Revisited

Different sorts of people have been revisiting the trial of Socrates for almost 2,500 years: philosophers, political theorists, politicians, jurists, historians, journalists and artists. Each has his or her own agenda for reconstructing the motives of the prosecution, the thinking of the jurors, and the apparently perverse behaviour of Socrates himself. This paper examines some of the more influential approaches to Socrates (including those of his contemporaries, Plato, Xenophon and Aristophanes), and attempts to set them in appropriate contexts. By way of a conclusion, there is an exploration of the background and context to the trial itself, taking into account recent work on Athenian law, religion and punishment, closing with an attempt to explain the significance of the likely location of the law-court, within the Agora or city square of Athens.