Alan Coffee

• King's College London

This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note...

Republicans are divided on the question of whether domination is best understood in terms of capacities to act intentionally or of certain structural aspects of society. I offer a model combining each aspect derived from Frederick Douglass’s philosophy. Douglass referred to slavery in both interpersonal terms (to individuals) and structural (to the...

This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note...

Adam Smith (1723–1790) was a Scottish moral philosopher and political economist. He is best known today for his later influence on the field of economics although in his own time it was his moral theory that received most attention. He published two books in his lifetime, both of which were highly acclaimed on publication, leading Smith to become a...

This chapter discusses the contrasting philosophies of Catharine Macaulay and Edmund Burke regarding the fundamental nature of political society and the approaches to take on reform. Macaulay’s philosophy revolves around the core ideal of freedom as independence from arbitrary control. Additionally, Macaulay’s work recognized that people’s beliefs...

While many historians and philosophers have sought to understand the ‘failure’ of the French Revolution to thrive and to avoid senseless violence, very few have referred to the works of two women philosophers who diagnosed the problems as they were happening. This essay looks at how Mary Wollstonecraft and Olympe de Gouges theorised the new tyranny...

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–97) was a significant and wide-ranging moral and political philosopher of the late Enlightenment period whose work remains relevant today. She is most well-known as an early feminist and author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), and her analysis of the social condition of women, and the structural nature of th...

While the image of the slave as the antithesis of the freeman is central to republican freedom, it is striking to note that slaves themselves have not contributed to how this condition is understood. The result is a one-sided conception of both freedom and slavery, which leaves republicanism unable to provide an equal and robust protection for hist...

Republicanism and the Future of Democracy. Edited by Yiftah Elazar and Geneviève Rousselière. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. 306p. $99.99 cloth. - Volume 17 Issue 4 - Alan M. S. J. Coffee

Although they were never to meet and corresponded only briefly, Catharine Macaulay and Mary Wollstonecraft shared a mutual admiration and a strong intellectual bond. Macaulay’s work had a profound and lasting effect on Wollstonecraft, and she developed and expanded on many of Macaulay’s ideas. While she often took these in a different direction, th...

Despite its everyday connotations, the republican idea of independence is not a celebration of individualism or self-reliance but embodies an acknowledgement of the importance of personal and social relationships. It reflects connectedness rather than separateness. Properly understood, independence helps address a fundamental problem that preoccupi...

Catharine Macaulay was one of the most significant republican writers of her generation. Although there has been a revival of interest in Macaulay amongst feminists and intellectual historians, neo-republican writers have yet to examine the theoretical content of her work in any depth. Since she anticipates and addresses a number of themes that sti...

Republicans understand freedom as the guaranteed protection against any arbitrary use of coercive power. This freedom is exercised within a political community, and the concept of arbitrariness is defined with reference to the actual ideas of its citizens about what is in their shared interests. According to many current defenders of the republican...

Independence is a central and recurring theme in Mary Wollstonecraft's work. Independence should not be understood as an individualistic ideal that is in tension with the value of community but as an essential ingredient in successful and flourishing social relationships. I examine three aspects of this rich and complex concept that Wollstonecraft...

Even long after their formal exclusion has come to an end, members of previously oppressed social groups often continue to face disproportionate restrictions on their freedom, as the experience of many women over the last century has shown. Working within in a framework in which freedom is understood as independence from arbitrary power, Mary Wolls...

Balancing citizens’ freedom thought, conscience and religion with the authority of the law which applies to all citizens alike presents an especial challenge for the governments of European nations with socially diverse and pluralistic populations. I address this problem from within the republican tradition represented by Machiavelli, Harrington an...