Sophie Bisset
Associate Tutor (Centre for Intellectual History)

Research

I have a general interest in early modern intellectual history, especially the history of political thought and religious ideas. 

My PhD thesis focused on the natural law theory of Jean Barbeyrac (1674-1744). Barbeyrac's role in the early modern natural law tradition was principally one of translator, interpreter and systematiser. Some of his most important contributions to the tradition were his translations of the seminal natural law treatises of Hugo Grotius, Samuel Pufendorf and Richard Cumberland.

My thesis offers an exposition of Barbeyrac's theory of natural law based on a close reading of his scholarly writings taken as a whole, an analysis illuminated by his various intellectual contexts. (1) It argues that Barbeyrac’s concept of conscience, as the source of both moral judgment and religious belief, provides the foundation for his wider theory of natural law, within which he develops his innovative but inchoate theory of permissive natural law, itself essential to understanding the grounds for his defence of the inalienability of individual conscience within the civil sphere. (2) It shows how these themes run through his major works on the Church Fathers and on adiaphora in his analysis of gambling.

The thesis was completed under the supervision of Professor Knud Haakonssen at the Sussex Centre for Intellectual History.