Political Theory

Grotius on Natural Law, Commerce, Property, Political Authority, and War

ABSTRACT

Hugo Grotius is now most commonly known as the founding theorist of international law, but he is also universally regarded as one of the founders of modern moral and political philosophy who greatly influenced the thinking of men such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and David Hume. This colloquium focused on key themes within Grotius's moral and political theorizing.

READING LIST

From Liberty Fund

The Free Sea

by By Hugo Grotius
Translated by Richard Hakluyt
Edited and with an Introduction by David Armitage

Liberty Fund’s edition of The Free Sea is the only translation of Grotius’s masterpiece undertaken in his own lifetime, left in manuscript by the English historian, Richard Hakluyt (1552–1616). It also contains William Welwod’s critique of Grotius (reprinted for the first time since the seventeenth century) and Grotius’s reply to…

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Additional Readings

Grotius, Hugo. The Rights of War and Peace, Book I. Edited by Richard Tuck. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, Inc., 2005.

Grotius, Hugo. The Rights of War and Peace, Book II. Edited by Richard Tuck. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, Inc., 2005.

Grotius, Hugo. The Rights of War and Peace, Book III. Edited by Richard Tuck. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, Inc., 2005.