Jonathan Swift and the Emergence of an Enlightenment Constitutionalism

This event is organised by Edinburgh Centre for Constitutional Law.
Jonathan Swift and the Emergence of an Enlightenment Constitutionalism" is conceived as the opening chapter in a new book on Enlightenment constitutionalism. Part one of the book will reconstruct the making of the Enlightenment constitution, with chapters on Swift, Hume, Blackstone and Burke, supported by shorter sections on Voltaire and Montesquieu. Part two of the book will then explain how the Enlightenment constitution failed. Democracy and, latterly, populism have picked away at and undermined it. The book will argue that democracy needs to be put in its constitutional place, and that this is a task for a newly revived Enlightenment constitution. Swift, unlike Hume, Blackstone and Burke, was not a figure of the Enlightenment. The argument in the paper—presented here as a stand-alone piece—is that, in a variety of constitutionally significant ways, Swift pre-figured the Enlightenment and that, through his writings, we can approach the question of what an Enlightened constitutionalism looks like. The paper examines Gulliver's Travels (1726) in some detail, placing what it suggests about constitutional law and politics in the context of a number of Swift's earlier works and political pamphlets, including the Battle of the Books (published 1704 but written in the 1690s), a Discourse of Contests and Dissensions (1701), and the Conduct of the Allies (1711). It concludes by drawing links between Swift and Bolingbroke, and looks forward to Hume.
Speakers of the event are Adam Tomkins, John Millar Chair of Public Law at the University of Glasgow.

Image credit: Image by freepik" title="https://Image by freepik">Freepik

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher Edinburgh Law School, University of Edinburgh