Nick Barden
@NBarden
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Ph.D. Candidate. Political theory. @GUGovt. Early modern HPT: Calvin to Bodin.
Washington, DC
Joined March 2009
My article on Jean Calvin's 1532 Seneca Commentary is now published at @HEIjournal. If you're interested in #Calvin's political thought or the problem of counsel, take a look. Link below, and DM me if you don't have access but would like to read it.
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RT @esclh: JOURNAL: Journal of the History of International Law/Revue d'histoire du droit international XXVII (2025), nr. 2 (Jun) https://t….
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RT @kajokubala: my latest piece is now out (it’s not on hobbes).
journals.sagepub.com
Recent literature has increasingly recognized the historical significance of corporations as not only vehicles for, but also drivers of, political thought. Our ...
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RT @tomaashby: After months of back-and-forth drafting, & over 10,000 words of dialogue, I am delighted that this discussion article co-aut….
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RT @nick_kapur: It's hard to avoid recalling this passage from the English historian Tony Judt:
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Incredible panel topic. The answer is Guillaume Budé.
Check out this Call for Proposals for an @RSAorg roundtable on a pretty thought-provoking question: "Who is the most significantly underappreciated Renaissance philosopher?" Deadline: July 15.
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RT @arenda: Read about Government Professor Stefan Eich Wins 2024 Spitz Book Prize at
college.georgetown.edu
The prize is awarded annually for the best book or books in liberal and/or democratic theory published two years earlier.
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RT @AntigoneJournal: Now for our latest books give-away: 38 Classics books to be raffled off for free. Just RT this message, follow us, and….
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RT @matthenryyoung: In Sophocles' Antigone, Haemon says "good as it is to have infallible wisdom, since this is rarely found, the next best….
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RT @mads_lang: Very interesting article on Calvin's criticism of humanist ideas of counsel! Calvin seems to share with Melanchthon the impo….
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This, I suggest, should lead us to read the concluding passage of the Institutes as chiefly concerned with regime form, with Calvin more interested in regulating the ordinary exercise of power than extraordinary conditions of resistance. But more on that in future work. /fin.
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I conclude by revisiting the final chapter of the Institutes, showing how Calvin’s appeal to popular magistrates, such as the ephors, tribunes, and demarchs, employed language drawn from the commentary and seemed to indicate a role similar to the SC’s ephors. 10/.
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Finally, I examine Calvin’s turn to the ephors for an alternate model of restraint. Here, Calvin was concerned more with stability than resistance, as the ephors imposed external limits on the libido that enabled the prince to cultivate an inner regimen suitable for rule. 9/.
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Many key themes of Calvin’s later work, on the nature of *cupiditas* or the *libido*, law as a bridle on the passions, and the origins of evil, are all present in the Seneca Commentary, explored first in an argument about political office. 8/.
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Next, I show how Calvin’s approach to counsel drew from a psychology of power developed throughout his textual notes, one characterized by the inner fragmentation and passionate excess that results from the unbridled license of power. 7/.
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Calvin took an ambivalent view of these projects. In §4, I reconstruct Calvin's view of counsel, which took aim at Erasmus’ admonitory model in favor of a milder Senecan approach that saw parenetic oration, “under the guise of praise,” as best suited for an arrogant ruler. 6/.
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In §3, I show how Calvin’s contemporaries drew on Plutarch’s essays to develop models of humanist counsel that could cultivate a stable rule, either via praise and historical examples (Budé), moral pedagogy (Erasmus), or an “indirect guidance” based on right-timing (More). 5/.
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