The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law

Professor Pocock's subject is how the seventeenth century looked at its own past. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, one of the most important modes of studying the past was the study of the law - the historical outlook which arose in each nation was in part the product of its law, and therefore, in turn of its history. In clarifying the relation of the historical outl...

Professor Pocock's subject is how the seventeenth century looked at its own past. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, one of the most important modes of studying the past was the study of the law - the historical outlook which arose in each nation was in part the product of its law, and therefore, in turn of its history. In clarifying the relation of the historical outlook of seventeenth-century Englishmen to the study of law, and pointing out its political implication, Pocock shows how history's ground was laid for a more philosophical approach in the eighteenth century.

J. G. A. 波考克，生于1924年，英国政治思想史学家，美国约翰•霍普金斯大学终身教授，以对现代早期的共和主义（尤其是欧洲大陆、英国与美国的共和主义）之研究、对英国普通法历史的著述、对爱德华•吉本与其他启蒙主义历史学家的态度以及对政治话语史的贡献而著称。其他著作有：《政治、语言与时间》、《马基雅维利时刻》、《德行、商业和历史》等。