Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies
Finland
fellow
Tim Stuart-Buttle
Home institution
University of York
Country of origin (home institution)
United Kingdom
Discipline(s)
Modern history
Political Sciences
Theme(s)
Cities & States
Democracy, Citizenship, Governance
Fellowship dates
›
Biography
Tim Stuart-Buttle is Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of York. He completed his D.Phil. in Intellectual History at the University of Oxford in 2013, before securing multiyear postdoctoral positions on two collaborative, interdisciplinary research projects in Cambridge (2014–17) and York (2018–21). His research focuses on early modern political, moral and religious thought – broadly, from Hobbes to Hegel – and on twentieth-century interpretations of its most significant aspects. He has published articles in journals including Political Theory, History of European Ideas, and History of Political Thought, along with a monograph, From Moral Theology to Moral Philosophy: Cicero and Visions of Humanity from Locke to Hume (Oxford UP, 2019).
Research Project
Gratitude and Grace in Early Modern Political Thought
We have inherited a story about the distinctive nature of modern Western moral and political philosophy. One casualty in this story is gratitude, which was relegated by the most influential seventeenth- and eighteenth-century philosophers from the pre-eminent position it had previously occupied in classical and Christian thought. It was displaced by an emaciated conception of justice which, enforced by the sovereign state, bids us to honour our contractual commitments. This story has exercised a powerful role in defining and sustaining our common life. The moral importance of historical study lies in engaging critically with such stories; yet in the case of this story, scholars of early modern moral and political thought have largely taken their bearings from it. Tim Stuart-Buttle’s project critically interrogates the story by showing that the historical texts frequently invoked to justify it – notably by Hobbes, Locke, and Adam Smith – teach us something quite different about the relationship between justice and gratitude.
Research Interests:
History of political thought; history of moral philosophy; political theory; early modern history; Enlightenment