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Ross Harrison. Hobbes, Locke, and Confusion's Masterpiece: An Examination of Seventeenth-Century Political Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 281 pp.
It is commonplace to assume that the language of subjective natural rights is a key innovation of the seventeenth-century theorists Hugo Grotius, Thomas Hobbes, Samuel Pufendorf, and John Locke. Another feature of the familiar picture of their theorizing is that there is something distinctly modern about their natural jurisprudence. Allegedly, our modern languages of human rights and individualist politics are grounded in a tradition which stretches back to their "masterpieces." Their major works are important and should be studied, it is often assumed, because they provided the foundations of modern political theory and because their ideas can still be conscripted into our own contemporary debates about rights, freedom, toleration, and the relation between individuals and political communities.
It is best to suspend any doubt about the historical validity of this commonly accepted picture if one wishes to enjoy Ross Harrisoris examination of "the great works of Hobbes and Locke" (1). Hobbes and Locke are Harrison's main players, but Grotius and Pufendorf also enter the stage. The preamble to his analysis of these pioneers' thought is a rapid and impressionistic sketch (chapter 1) of the sixteenth-century strains and political problems posed by religion and religious warfare. There follow three chapters which focus on Hobbes, one chapter on Grotius and Pufendorf, and three chapters on Locke. Finally, in the concluding chapter Harrison takes stands on issues which are continuous with our contemporary political philosophy, and reflects on how modern political philosophers should read the texts of their early-modern forerunners. The whole study follows an admirably dear plan and is written with real ingenuity. Typically, Harrison begins with the basic building blocks of...