About the Department

Richard Tuck is Professor of Government Department. Professor Tuck is a premier scholar of the history of political thought. His works include Natural Rights Theories (1979), Hobbes (1989), and Philosophy and Government, 1572-1651 (1993). They address a variety of topics including political authority, human rights, natural law, and toleration, and focus on a number of thinkers including Hobbes, Grotius, Selden, and Descartes. His current work deals with political thought and international law, and traces the history of thought about international politics from Grotius, Hobbes, Pufendorf, Locke, and Vattel, to Kant. He is also engaged in a work on the origins of twentieth century economic thought; in it he argues that the 'free rider' problem was only invented, as a problem, in recent decades. Thus his interests to a remarkable degree span concerns in all subfields of the discipline.