Restoring Catharine Macaulay's Enlightenment Republicanism?

Abstract

Can Catharine Macaulay’s enlightenment, democratic, republicanism be justified from the point of view of contemporary naturalism? Naturalist accounts of the grounds of political authority tend to be realist and pessimistic, foreclosing the possibility of the promise of enlightenment. Macaulay’s utopian political philosophy, in contrast, relies heavily on belief in a good God, whose existence underpins the existence of universal moral truths and the possibility of moral and political progress. This paper attempts a restoration of her optimistic utopianism, in a reconciliation, grounded in a revision of natural law, of naturalist and utopian attitudes to political theory, thus hopefully making..