Jean Bodin
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"Like Grotius, Althusius objected to the mixture of jurisprudence and politics in Bodin, and therefore made a point of separating them."--A History of Political Theory (1937) by George Holland Sabine |
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Jean Bodin (1530–1596), born in Angers, was a French jurist and political philosopher, member of the Parlement of Paris and professor of law in Toulouse. He is best known for his theory of sovereignty (see Divine Right of Kings).
Bodin lived during the Reformation, writing against the background of religious and civil conflict - particularly that, in his native France, between the (Calvinist) Huguenots and the state-supported Catholic Church. He remained a Catholic throughout his life but was critical of papal authority and was sometimes accused of crypto-Calvinism. Towards the end of his life he wrote a dialogue between different religions, including representatives of Judaism, Islam and natural theology, in which all agreed to coexist in concord.
His books divided opinion: some French writers were full of praise, while the later Scottish philosopher, Francis Hutchinson was his detractor, criticising his methodology.
He died in Laon during an epidemic of bubonic plague.
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De la République
Jean Bodin's most famous work was written in 1576. The ideas in the The Six books of the commonwealth (Les Six livres de la République) on the importance of climate in the shaping of a people's character were also influential, finding a prominent place in the work of contemporary Italian thinker Giovanni Botero (1544–1617) and later in the French philosopher Baron de Montesquieu's (1689–1755) climatic determinism.
Bodin's classical definition of sovereignty is: “Template:Lang” (the absolute and perpetual power of a Republic). His main ideas about sovereignty are found in chapter VIII and X of Book I, including his statement "The sovereign Prince is only accountable to God".
Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem
In France, Bodin was most noted as a historian for his Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem(1566) (Method for the easy knowledge of history). He wrote, "Of history, that is, the true narration of things, there are three kinds: human, natural and divine". As a politician himself, Bodin contributed to the establishment of France as a strong nation-state.
Finally, Bodin was among the first to recognize the interrelationship between the amount of goods and the amount of money in circulation. The boatloads of silver arriving via Spain from the Bolivian (then Peruvian) mine of Potosí, together with silver from other new sources, were wreaking inflationary havoc in Europe at the time; gold also played a part. Bodin laid the foundation for the "quantity theory of money".
De la demonomanie des sorciers (On the Demon Worship of Sorcerers)
Bodin's history of witchcraft persecutions was first issued in 1580, ten editions being published by 1604. Perhaps Bodin's most controversial statement was his recommendation of torture, even in cases of the disabled and children, to try to confirm guilt of witchcraft. He asserted that not even one witch could be erroneously condemned if the correct procedures were followed, suspicion being enough to torment the accused because rumours concerning witches were almost always true. Some scholars have attributed Bodin's attitude towards so-called witches as part of a populationist strategy typical of mercantilism.
Colloquium of the Seven
In 1588 Bodin wrote the Latin work Colloquium heptaplomeres de rerum sublimium arcanis abditis. It is a conversation about the nature of truth between seven educated men, each with a distinct religious or philosophical orientation - a natural philosopher, a Calvinist, a Muslim, a Roman Catholic, a Lutheran, a Jew, and a skeptic. The 1910 Encyclopædia Britannica states "It is curious that Leibnitz, who originally regarded the Colloquium as the work of a professed enemy of Christianity, subsequently described it as a most valuable production". Because of this work, Bodin is often praised as one of the first proponents of religious tolerance in the western world.
Economic thought
Jean Bodin was "one of the first Europeans" to recognize that the rise in prices was due in large part to the influx of gold and silver from the New World.
