Peter Thomas

Biography

I study mainly European political thought and intellectual history in those centuries we have learned to call “early modern.”

I tend to affirm, with the so-called “‘so-called ‘Cambridge School,’” that ideas consist in their linguistic articulations and that those articulations are best understood historically in the discursive, intellectual, ideological, and social contexts that they constitute and inform. In this respect, I am most fascinated by political thought that evinces an awareness of language itself as an instrument—if not the essence—of knowledge and power.

At the moment, my primary interests fall under the rubric “Rhetoric and the Renaissance City,” which is also the title of my dissertation. I am exploring how humanists of the period ca. 1350 to 1550 configured their moral and political philosophy around competing ideas about the role of eloquence in founding and maintaining civil associations. I am also interested in Hobbes, early American political thought, the career of J. G. A. Pocock, and the methods and métier of the intellectual historian.