This collection of eighteenth-century British utopias shows how the image of the ideal society was used as a form of social criticism, particularly as a means of focusing on ideas of progress and commercial development. The texts chosen reveal important trends in the development of liberal rights theories, of proto-socialist concepts of property distribution, and of conservative notions of the ideal hierarchical community. The introduction examines their relationship to the key issues and developments in the political thought of the period.

This book provides an overview of two hundred years of German economic thought from the Steetswissenschaften of the eighteenth century to National Socialism and the Social Market. Whereas Classical Economics emphasized value, distribution and production, German economic thought had a long-running tradition of human need and the varying conditions for order. By taking this latter perspective, the usual contrast of market and planning approaches to economic organization is subsumed by an approach that focuses on the construction of order in economic processes.

This book examines the genesis of Lutheran interest in natural philosophical issues by focusing on the reform of natural philosophy initiated by Philip Melanchthon. It suggests that Melanchthon transformed traditional natural philosophy into a specifically Lutheran one in an effort to refute civil disobedience and promote Luther's cause. It argues that an approach to natural philosophy by a dichotomy of "science" vs. "religion" is hazardous: natural philosophy should be understood as a study of nature, understood as God's creation, undertaken for Christian purposes.

This examination of a fundamental but often neglected aspect of the intellectual history of early modern Europe brings together philosophers, historians and political theorists from Great Britain, Canada, the United States, Australia, France and Germany. Despite the diversity of disciplines and national traditions represented, the individual contributions show a remarkable convergence around three themes: changes in the modes of moral education in early modern Europe, the emergence of new relations between conscience and law (particularly the law of the state), and the shared continuities and...

Scholars in the early seventeenth century who studied ancient Greek scientific theories often drew upon philology and history to reconstruct a more general picture of the Greek past. Gassendi's training as a humanist historiographer enabled him to formulate a conception of the history of philosophy in which the rationality of scientific and philosophical inquiry depended on the historical justifications which he developed for his beliefs. Professor Joy examines this conception and analyzes the nature of Gassendi's historical training, especially its relationship to his career as a physicist...

A comprehensive account of English legal thought in the age of Blackstone and Bentham for nearly a century, The Province of Legislation Determined advances an ambitious reinterpretation of eighteenth-century attitudes to social change and law reform. Professor Lieberman's bold synthesis rests on a wide survey of legal materials and on a detailed discussion of Blackstone's Commentaries, the jurisprudence of Lord Kames and the Scottish Enlightenment, the chief justiceship of Lord Mansfield, the penal theories of Eden and Romilly, and the legislative science of Jeremy Bentham. The study relates...

Coverage of the Western European experience is wide-ranging in this survey of perceptions of the state, its history, and prospects in the contemporary world. The greatest post-colonial democratic state, India, is also discussed as an important comparative example. Contributions by a distinguished pan-European team of authors ensure this study's value to students and teachers of the history of ideas, political theory and European studies.

Defining Science deals with the major role of the historian and philosopher of science, William Whewell, in early Victorian debates about the nature of science and its moral and cultural value. Richard Yeo also examines the different forms or genres in which science was discussed in the public sphere--most crucially in the Victorian review journals, but also in biographical, historical and educational works. Analysis of the whole corpus of Whewell's work suggests that it be seen not only as an attempt to define science, but to clarify his own vocation as its leading critic.

This book provides a way to understand a momentous development in human intellectual history: the phenomenon of deductive argument in classical Greek mathematics. The argument rests on a close description of the practices of Greek mathematics, principally the use of lettered diagrams and the regulated, formulaic use of language.

With the notion of individual rights as important in moral and political theory now as it has ever been, there is renewed speculation over the origins and development of this concept. Liberty, Right and Nature is a work of unusual scope and power that takes a fresh look at this intellectual tradition, and deploys an enormous range of further sources in order to reassess our understanding of its development, beginning with the texts of the thirteenth century poverty controversy and ending with a discussion of Thomas Hobbes' theory of natural rights.