Herbert of Cherbury saw himself as a peacemaker. In De Veritate (1624) Herbert posits that religious conflict will disappear once people realize that they share core beliefs, monotheistic essentials he dubs the Common Notions in a nod to Stoicism. He proposes to refute skepticism by isolating criteria for truthful cognition: chiefly, conformity and consent. Why did Herbert, a champion of truth and enemy of skepticism, end up embracing skeptical impartiality and neutrality? The chapter argues that Herbert changes owing to his experiences during the Civil War and as a diplomat, but also following his work of the 1630s, composing his histories:Expedition to the Isle of Rhé and The Life and Reign of Henry VIII. Yet the seeds for this change are already present in his philosophy of mind, growing out of the appreciation for beauty implicit in his ideals of conformity and consent. The chapter shows that the corollaries of Herbert’s philosophy extend beyond political accommodation to neutrality and aesthetic detachment. Herbert’s work constitutes a valuable case-study of the connections forged between epistemology and politics in the turbulent second quarter of the seventeenth century.

The Introduction sets out the questions at stake in the book. It argues that while practical political life is always guided by a pretheoretical understanding of politics, among theorists today there is no common agreement on the question of what politics actually is. The most illuminating response to this question has come from Hannah Arendt, but to fully grasp her response we have to do two things: to make explicit the understanding of politics implicit in her work; and to follow the way of thought by which she reached this understanding.