Periodic Reporting for period 2 - HARMONI. (John Selden's Harmonic Jurisprudence. A European Interpretation of English Legal History.)
Période du rapport: 2023-09-01 au 2024-08-31
The world is fracturing. Nationalisms are resurgent, and sectarian policies dominate with growing cynicism. In this climate, history can seem powerless—an idle discipline removed from urgent realities. Yet power has often feared history’s illuminations. Consider the seventeenth century: a time of revolution in England, of mourning and cosmological collapse across Europe. An old order wavered; a new physics arose. Jurists, caught in the upheaval, grappled with the consequences.
At the crossroads of historical interpretation and jurisprudence, this project re-evaluates the intellectual force of a burning age in legal speculation. Through the work of John Selden—jurist, historian, and Hebraist—it examines how seventeenth-century legal thought harmonized individual and national narratives within the broader European legal landscape and the inclusive order of nations envisioned by Selden’s jurisprudence.
Selden’s legal thought revolved around uncovering deep analogies—patterns that revealed affinities between legal systems and made them comparable. Yet he wrote in a time when the world, as his contemporary John Donne lamented, seemed "all in pieces," its coherence shattered. Today, we face a similar crisis. We, too, struggle to see analogies. And when we do, our disenchanted gaze distrusts them. Selden’s writings, and the intellectual world he inhabited, invite reflection on what happens to law, legal comparison, and historical understanding when the ability to think analogically is lost.
This project seeks to reassert Selden’s relevance and reshape modern legal discourse. At its core is a reappraisal of his effort to preserve and harmonize English legal history within a European order of nations, drawing on medieval and early modern jurisprudence. By restoring the constitutional force of comparative legal history, the project directly engages with contemporary struggles against nationalism and sectarianism.
Its inquiry unfolds along three lines. First, it underscores the significance of medieval and early modern European legal literature for seventeenth-century English jurisprudence and Selden’s intellectual trajectory. Second, it uncovers the theoretical depth of his legal thought, tracing how he 'Platonized' ius commune scholarship to develop a general theory of legal systems. Third, it demonstrates how Selden’s European perspective on English law led him to craft a distinctive harmonic jurisprudence—one that fused philological precision with an analogical vision of law’s interconnections.
At the crossroads of historical interpretation and jurisprudence, this project re-evaluates the intellectual force of a burning age in legal speculation. Through the work of John Selden—jurist, historian, and Hebraist—it examines how seventeenth-century legal thought harmonized individual and national narratives within the broader European legal landscape and the inclusive order of nations envisioned by Selden’s jurisprudence.
Selden’s legal thought revolved around uncovering deep analogies—patterns that revealed affinities between legal systems and made them comparable. Yet he wrote in a time when the world, as his contemporary John Donne lamented, seemed "all in pieces," its coherence shattered. Today, we face a similar crisis. We, too, struggle to see analogies. And when we do, our disenchanted gaze distrusts them. Selden’s writings, and the intellectual world he inhabited, invite reflection on what happens to law, legal comparison, and historical understanding when the ability to think analogically is lost.
This project seeks to reassert Selden’s relevance and reshape modern legal discourse. At its core is a reappraisal of his effort to preserve and harmonize English legal history within a European order of nations, drawing on medieval and early modern jurisprudence. By restoring the constitutional force of comparative legal history, the project directly engages with contemporary struggles against nationalism and sectarianism.
Its inquiry unfolds along three lines. First, it underscores the significance of medieval and early modern European legal literature for seventeenth-century English jurisprudence and Selden’s intellectual trajectory. Second, it uncovers the theoretical depth of his legal thought, tracing how he 'Platonized' ius commune scholarship to develop a general theory of legal systems. Third, it demonstrates how Selden’s European perspective on English law led him to craft a distinctive harmonic jurisprudence—one that fused philological precision with an analogical vision of law’s interconnections.
The project conducted a comprehensive study of John Selden’s interpretation of English legal history, focusing on the doctrinal strands and sources shaping his legal theory. It examined his engagement with the ius commune, the Platonic tradition, and his implicit theory of judgment in Table Talk. This research led to three major outputs: a published open-access article, a book chapter, and a monograph chapter, the latter two currently at the typescript stage and set for publication in the current year.
A key discovery reoriented the project’s course: Selden’s sustained engagement with ancient and modern Platonism. This revelation necessitated a fundamental reassessment of his jurisprudence, shedding new light on his intellectual biography and, more strikingly, unravelling a long-standing puzzle in seventeenth-century literature. The period’s portrayal of speculation and bookishness as constitutionally charged—seen in figures like Hamlet and Don Quixote—gains new significance in this context. Selden’s engagement with Platonism was not merely an intellectual pursuit but a response to a time when power sought to hijack law and institutional resistance was systematically eroded.
A key discovery reoriented the project’s course: Selden’s sustained engagement with ancient and modern Platonism. This revelation necessitated a fundamental reassessment of his jurisprudence, shedding new light on his intellectual biography and, more strikingly, unravelling a long-standing puzzle in seventeenth-century literature. The period’s portrayal of speculation and bookishness as constitutionally charged—seen in figures like Hamlet and Don Quixote—gains new significance in this context. Selden’s engagement with Platonism was not merely an intellectual pursuit but a response to a time when power sought to hijack law and institutional resistance was systematically eroded.
Selden’s engagement with Platonism has long been overlooked, yet it proves central to his jurisprudence, endowing the study of law with constitutional significance and framing legal inquiry as an act of resistance to power. His approach is both speculatively daring and historically dynamic, allowing Platonic motifs to evolve, and ultimately merge into his reading of rabbinic sources, where they are sharpened and repurposed. In late Selden, Platonic epistemology and rabbinic legal thought converge, reinforcing his vision of law as both an order of knowledge and a practice of intellectual devotion. The constitutional force he once found in Plato reaches its fullest expression in rabbinic tradition, where study itself becomes an assertion of freedom. As he writes in 'De iure naturali et gentium' (VI.19) quoting Pirkei Avot (VI.2): “No one is free but they who devote themselves to the study of the law.”
Selden’s theory of legal systems has long been examined only in fragments. The sources that shaped it have remained in the shadows, and his daunting erudition has often led interpreters to overlook the speculative force of his thought. Yet his outlook reveals a fundamental preoccupation: the need to transform the vastness of historical erudition into an analogical reading of legal orders. Looking back to Plato's notion of 'desmos' (bond) and the Roman law concept of 'corpora ex cohaerentibus' (bodies held together by internal ties), Selden conceives legal systems as discrete yet inextricably linked entities. His model of legal order rests on a diverse set of sources: Scholasticism (St. Thomas Aquinas), Renaissance humanism (Marsilio Ficino), Reformation jurists (Melanchthon), and ius commune scholarship, all refracted through his reading of Plato’s normative dialogues, especially 'Laws.'
This conceptualization extends beyond legal theory to illuminate a broader intellectual and cultural moment. In the first half of the Seventeenth century, an age marked by mourning and cosmological disarray, contemplation, study, and melancholia (as it was then understood) assumed constitutional significance. Selden’s jurisprudence resonates with this atmosphere, demonstrating that legal speculation was not an abstract exercise but a means of grappling with the existential and political crises of his time.
If our era is to sharpen its historical consciousness, it must confront this legacy with particular urgency. The dominance of hyper-specialization and relentless deconstruction threatens to fragment legal thought into insular details. Selden’s study offers an alternative. His work teaches that philological precision need not lead to the disintegration of legal meaning. On the contrary, to read historical detail in its fullest specificity is to uncover its web of relations to the world. A central lesson of Selden’s jurisprudence is that no law, however discrete, can be rightly understood in isolation from the continuum of legal experience.
Selden’s theory of legal systems has long been examined only in fragments. The sources that shaped it have remained in the shadows, and his daunting erudition has often led interpreters to overlook the speculative force of his thought. Yet his outlook reveals a fundamental preoccupation: the need to transform the vastness of historical erudition into an analogical reading of legal orders. Looking back to Plato's notion of 'desmos' (bond) and the Roman law concept of 'corpora ex cohaerentibus' (bodies held together by internal ties), Selden conceives legal systems as discrete yet inextricably linked entities. His model of legal order rests on a diverse set of sources: Scholasticism (St. Thomas Aquinas), Renaissance humanism (Marsilio Ficino), Reformation jurists (Melanchthon), and ius commune scholarship, all refracted through his reading of Plato’s normative dialogues, especially 'Laws.'
This conceptualization extends beyond legal theory to illuminate a broader intellectual and cultural moment. In the first half of the Seventeenth century, an age marked by mourning and cosmological disarray, contemplation, study, and melancholia (as it was then understood) assumed constitutional significance. Selden’s jurisprudence resonates with this atmosphere, demonstrating that legal speculation was not an abstract exercise but a means of grappling with the existential and political crises of his time.
If our era is to sharpen its historical consciousness, it must confront this legacy with particular urgency. The dominance of hyper-specialization and relentless deconstruction threatens to fragment legal thought into insular details. Selden’s study offers an alternative. His work teaches that philological precision need not lead to the disintegration of legal meaning. On the contrary, to read historical detail in its fullest specificity is to uncover its web of relations to the world. A central lesson of Selden’s jurisprudence is that no law, however discrete, can be rightly understood in isolation from the continuum of legal experience.