Bodin, Jean

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). 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).

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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.

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Bodin, Jean 

Born 1530, in Angers; died 1596, in Laon. French political thinker, theoretician of natural law, and jurist.

Bodin studied law in Toulouse and then moved to Paris. In 1576 he was a deputy from the Third Estate to the Estates General, meeting in Blois. In his book A Method for the Easy Study of History (1566) he asserted that society is formed by the social environment and represents the sum total of blood-relationships and economic alliances. Progress is achieved in society, whereas in nature there is merely a cyclical rotation. In his major work, Six Books Concerning a Republic (1576), he introduced the concept of constitutional monarchy and the principle of the indivisibility of state sovereignty by denying the divine origin of a monarch’s authority. He also defended religious tolerance. He acknowledged the people’s right to kill a tyrant. Bodin saw the cause of political revolutions in the inequality of property. In his work An Answer to the Paradoxes of M. Malestroict . . . (1568) he set forth his economic views, defending the necessity for freedom of trade. Bodin had an influence on the formulation of the quantitative theory of money. In his work A Dialogue Between Seven Men (1593, published posthumously) he defended the idea of natural religion.

REFERENCES

Marx, K., and F. Engels. Soch., 2nd ed., vol. 3. Page 314.
Istoriia filosofii, vol. 2. Moscow, 1941. Pages 75–77.
Kogan-Bernshtein, F. A. “Ekonomicheskie vzgliady Bodena.” In the collection Srednie veka, issue 2. Moscow-Leningrad, 1946.
Chauviré, R. Jean Bodin, auteur de la “République.” Paris, 1916.
Kamp, M. E. Die Staatswirtschaftslehre J. Boden. Bonn, 1949.

G. L. ZEL’MANOVA