This volume contains English translations of two important early French and German defences of freedom of the press. Almost unknown in the English-speaking world, these texts demonstrate that freedom of the press was an important issue in other parts of Europe in the early modern period, giving rise to articulate theories. Elie Luzac's Essay on Freedom of Expression (1749) defended freedom of the press for atheists on natural law and other grounds. Carl Friedrich Bahrdt's On Freedom of the Press and its Limits (1787) drew on natural law, religious rhetoric, and political...

This book contains eleven essays on Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini (1405-1464), humanist, author, courtier, inveterate traveller, conciliarist and then papalist, priest, bishop and finally pope under the name Pius II (1458-1464), urban architect of Pienza, grand patron of the arts, and would-be Crusader. Contributors include: Giuseppe Chironi, Thomas M. Izbicki, Zweder von Martels, Claudia Martl, Margaret Meserve, Rolando Montecalvo, Keith Sidwell, Marcello Simonetta, and Benedikt Konrad Vollmann.

This volume discusses humanist aspects of medieval and Renaissance intellectual life and thought and of their appropriation by modern history and literature. It charts the humanist representations of the scholarly enterprise, the self-representation of the intellectual, the representation of individuality in humanist literature, as well as the problem field of Renaissance humanism as an ideological programme of educational, moral, and political reform. The volume is particularly useful for medievalists and Renaissance scholars, as well as for historians specialised in the history of medieval...

Many kinds of Cartesian views are treated by these papers: the views that Descartes held, views from our perspective on those views, views on Descartes held by his early critics and followers, and views that are Cartesian in outlook (not for nothing is Descartes still regarded as the father of modern philosophy.) These overlapping views provide the unity of this volume, and reflect the unity of Richard A.Watson's philosophical work. Not least among Watson's contributions has been his depiction of Cartesianism as a response to a set of problems within Descartes's philosophy. The later...

This book contains thirteen essays on European princes and princely culture between 1450 and 1650. Many products of medieval and renaissance culture - literature, music, political ideology, social and governmental structures, the fine arts, and even forms of devotional practice - found their best expression in the context of the courts of greater and lesser princes. This volume, the first of two concentrating on the late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Era, has essays on selected courts north of the Alps and the Pyrenees: the court of Burgundy under the Valois dukes, that of France under...

This is the first modern study of Agrippa s occult philosophy as a coherent part of his intellectual work. By demonstrating his sophistication, it challenges traditional interpretations of Agrippa as an intellectual dilettante, and uses modern theory and philosophy to elucidate the intricacies of his thought. It also argues for a new, interdisciplinary approach to magic and its place within early modern culture, using a transhistorical conversational model to understand and interpret the texts. The analysis walks the reader through the text of De occulta philosophia, Agrippa s 1533...

This book contains twelve essays by prominent historians from the Netherlands, Belgium and the United States on the early Enlightenment in the Dutch Republic. In the wake of the increased awareness of the importance of this particular period for the European Enlightenment as a whole, they focus on Cartesianism, Spinozism and Empiricism, the three main schools of thought that made up its philosophical profile. The first part of the book highlights the academic infrastructure of the Dutch Republic and the theological response to the Radical Enlightenment. The second and third parts concentrate...

This volume contains a series of articles - both reviews and case studies - dealing with a range of topics related to the history of education and learning in the Netherlands during a crucial period of transition. Schooling saw enormous progress, both in terms of numbers of people participating in it on various levels and of increasing diversity of institutions providing education. In the same period, learning and education penetrated deeply into society; they fulfilled a steadily growing number of functions, enhancing the competence of officials and contributing to the accumulation of...

This volume is an analysis of the development of cultural politics in Lancastrian England. It focusses on Duke Humphrey of Gloucester, brother of Henry V and Protector of England during Henry VI's minority. Humphrey's intellectual activity conformed itself to the Duke's own position in the kingdom: the book explores Humphrey's commission of biographies, translations of Latin texts, political pamphlets and poems, as well as his collection of manuscripts acquired both in England and from Italian humanists. Particular attention is dedicated to Humphrey's donations to the University of Oxford and...

The seventeenth century was a period of dramatic change in the field of philosophy. In logic, traditional Aristotelian textbooks were transformed by the emergence of an alternative 'logic of ideas'. This new logic was developed by Descartes and Locke, its main representatives, and by Arnauld and Malebranche. The present study starts with a fresh and detailed analysis of the logic of ideas. The author then puts the fruitfulness of his characterization of the new logic to the test, by studying its reception in the eclectic intellectual environment of the Dutch Republic between 1690 and 1750....