At this author-meets-critics workshop, three critics will offer reflections on Christopher Watkin's new book, The State of Nature and the Shaping of Modernity: Tracing the Roots of Colonialism, Secularity, and Ecology (Cambridge University Press, 2025), followed by a response by the author. 

Book description: The state of nature is a powerful idea at the heart of the fragmented and sometimes conflicting stories the modern West tells about itself. It also makes sense of foundational Western commitments to equality and accumulation, freedom and property, universality and the individual. By exploring the social and cultural imaginaries that emerge from the distinct and often contradictory accounts of the state of nature in the writing of Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau, The State of Nature and the Shaping of Modernity offers a fresh perspective on some of the most pressing debates of our time, showing how the state of nature idea provides a powerful lens through which to focus the complex forces shaping today's political and cultural landscape. It also explores how ideas about human nature and origins drive today's debates about colonialism, secularism, and the environment, and how they can shed new light on some of society's most heated debates.

"The State of Nature and the Shaping of Modernity is an exceptional work of high scholarship. Watkin has taken on a behemoth of a literature spanning hundreds of years and managed to shape it into a coherent and illuminating vision of Euro-Western modernity. He demonstrates with crystal clarity how the concept of the state of nature serves as a fundamental axis upon which many of modernity’s most cherished and influential beliefs turn. The work is wonderfully organized, beautifully written, and meticulously researched—a shimmering gemstone of a book.”  –  Professor Thomas Nail, University of Denver.