Book contents
- Time, History, and Political Thought
- Time, History, and Political Thought
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Note on References and the Bibliography
- Introduction: Time, History, and Political Thought
- 1 Out of Time? Eternity, Christology, and Justinianic Law
- 2 Historicity and Universality in Roman Law before 1600
- 3 ‘The Logic of Authority, and the Logic of Evidence’
- 4 Christian Time and the Commonwealth in Early Modern Political Thought
- 5 Politic History
- 6 Hobbes on the Theology and Politics of Time
- 7 The Recourse to Sacred History before the Enlightenment: Spinoza’s Theological–Political Treatise
- 8 Law, Chronology, and Scottish Conjectural History
- 9 Civilization and Perfectibility: Conflicting Views of the History of Humankind?
- 10 Kant on History, or Theodicy for Mortal Gods
- 11 Law’s Histories in Post-Napoleonic Germany
- 12 After Historicism: The Politics of Time and History in Twentieth-Century Germany
- 13 The Right to Rebel: History and Universality in the Political Thought of the Algerian Revolution
- Bibliography
- Index
1 - Out of Time? Eternity, Christology, and Justinianic Law
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 June 2023
- Time, History, and Political Thought
- Time, History, and Political Thought
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Note on References and the Bibliography
- Introduction: Time, History, and Political Thought
- 1 Out of Time? Eternity, Christology, and Justinianic Law
- 2 Historicity and Universality in Roman Law before 1600
- 3 ‘The Logic of Authority, and the Logic of Evidence’
- 4 Christian Time and the Commonwealth in Early Modern Political Thought
- 5 Politic History
- 6 Hobbes on the Theology and Politics of Time
- 7 The Recourse to Sacred History before the Enlightenment: Spinoza’s Theological–Political Treatise
- 8 Law, Chronology, and Scottish Conjectural History
- 9 Civilization and Perfectibility: Conflicting Views of the History of Humankind?
- 10 Kant on History, or Theodicy for Mortal Gods
- 11 Law’s Histories in Post-Napoleonic Germany
- 12 After Historicism: The Politics of Time and History in Twentieth-Century Germany
- 13 The Right to Rebel: History and Universality in the Political Thought of the Algerian Revolution
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Caroline Humfress explores the distinctive relationship between sacred (Christian) temporality and (Western) ‘hermeneutics of the state’, through a focus upon the founding texts of the Civilian legal tradition: the sixth-century CE Digest, Code and Institutes. Part 1 analyses the Emperor Justinian’s claim that these law-books were to be ‘valid for all eternity’ through a series of close textual readings of the same law-books’ prefatory constitutions. Part 2 contextualises Justinian’s lawyerly invocation of ‘eternity’ within contemporary Eastern Christological disputes, including a set of theological debates, orchestrated by Justinian himself, that took place at the same time (and location) as his law-books were being compiled. Part 3 concludes by arguing that the ‘timeless’, rational, universal, authority of the Civilian Legal tradition – as explored in the chapter by Ryan – was in fact underpinned by a specific Eastern (‘Byzantine’) sacred temporality.
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- Time, History, and Political Thought , pp. 36 - 53Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023