2022: Second Place, Zipporah B. Wiseman Prize for Scholarship on Law, Literature, and Justice
Ordinary Subjects of Tyranny: Practical Constitutionalism and Public Judgement in the Political Thought of George Buchanan
by Timothy Lundy
Second Place, Zipporah B. Wiseman Prize for Scholarship on Law, Literature, and Justice (2022)
Abstract:
The influence of democratic ideas on the political thought of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe is often considered in relationship to history, theology, and law, but less often in relationship to poetry. For this reason, poetry offers unexplored resources for thinking through the value of public deliberation and judgment, even under decidedly non-democratic constitutions. In this paper, I examine the political thought of the Scottish humanist George Buchanan (1506–82) in the context of his philosophical dialogue De iure regni and his Biblical tragedy Baptistes. Buchanan’s political thought was recognized as radical in its own day for the strong limits it placed on monarchical power and prerogative and the authority it vested in the people to restrain kings and depose tyrants. I argue, however, that what is most interesting for the history of democracy—as well as for political thought today—is Buchanan’s development of arguments for the judgment of the common people as a privileged site of political insight and, by extension, for the practical value of public deliberation and transparent government.
About the author:
Timothy Lundy is an editor, teacher, and researcher whose interests include literary theory, early modern history, and political thought, especially in relation to gender and education. He received his PhD in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University in 2021. This paper draws on research from his PhD dissertation, which studies sixteenth- and seventeenth-century fiction writers who wanted their books to transform readers into better participants in intellectual community and political life.