Bodin, Jean (zhäN bôdăN`), 1530?–1596, French social and political philosopher. He studied and taught at Toulouse and enjoyed a successful legal career. His most notable book, Six livres de la republique (1576, tr. Six Bookes of the Commonweale, 1606), ranks as a major work of political theory. During the last half of the 16th cent., France was experiencing severe disorders caused by religious disagreements between Roman Catholics and Huguenots (see Religion, Wars of Religion, Wars of, 1562–98, series of civil wars in France, also known as the Huguenot Wars.

The immediate issue was the French Protestants' struggle for freedom of worship and the right of establishment (see Huguenots ).
..... Click the link for more information. ). Dismayed by this chaos, Bodin believed that a restoration of order could only be accomplished by religious toleration and the establishment of a fully sovereign monarch. These suggestions aroused a great deal of opposition in his time, but they now establish Bodin as a major theoretical contributor toward the development of the modern nation-state. His assertion that an absolutely sovereign monarch was necessary for a well-ordered state prefigured Hobbes and was an attack on remnants of feudal society. His economic policies concerning taxation and government involvement in trade were also influential.

Bibliography

See studies by J. H. Franklin (1963 and 1973), B. Reynolds (1931, repr. 1969), and J. P. Mayer, ed. (1979).

Bodin, Jean

(born 1530, Angers, Fr.—died June 1596, Laon) French political philosopher. He studied at the University of Toulouse and later taught law there (1551–61). In 1571 he entered the household of the king's brother, François, duke d'Alençon. He favoured negotiation with the Huguenots, with whom the government was engaged in a civil war, and opposed the sale of royal domains. His The Six Bookes of a Commonweale (1576) won him immediate fame. In it he suggested that the key to securing order and authority lay in recognition of the state's sovereignty, which he believed derived from divine right and not from the consent of the subject. He distinguished three types of government: monarchy (which he favoured), aristocracy, and democracy.