Between the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries, the language of politics underwent a radical transformation. The author argues that this transformation amounted to a "revolution of politics," global in scope, and wide-ranging in its intellectual and moral implications. Not only did the meaning and the range of application of the concept of politics change, but also the status of political science, the role of political education, and the value of political liberty. For three centuries politics had enjoyed the status of the noblest human science, but emerged...

This is a major work by Ian Maclean exploring the foundations of learning in the Renaissance. Logic, Signs and Nature offers a profoundly learned, compelling and original account of the range of what was thinkable and knowable by learned medics of the period c.1530-1630. This is a study of great significance to the history of medicine, as well as the history of European ideas in general.

In this important contribution to the cultural and educational history of Elizabethan England, Peter Mack examines the impact of humanist training in the use of language on English prose writing. Study of the rhetorical codes and conventions in terms of which the debates of the period were conducted is currently a major area of historical and literary inquiry. Peter Mack provides a wealth of new information, showing how this humanist training was deployed in literary genres and in more practical legal and political settings.

Tracing the influence of ancient Greek sources on the development of republican theory in Europe and America, this book argues that an important tradition of republican thought, derived from the central texts of Greek moral and political philosophy, emerged in sixteenth century England. It contributed significantly to the ideological framework of the English Civil Wars and the American Revolution. Eric Nelson offers significant reinterpretations of several central texts of European political theory, as well as a radical reappraisal of ancient Roman historiography.

How did the Society of Jesus develop and maintain a distinctive position on key questions of political thought such as ruler authority, the character and scope of positive law, the limits of obedience and the right to resist? Harro Hopfl presents a full-length study of the secular world--analyzed in its proper historical context--from a Jesuit perspective. Despite the significance of the Society of Jesus in Counter-Reformation Europe and beyond, important issues relating to the society's collective history remain misunderstood.

Exploring both the political and intellectual contexts within which Machiavelli's political vision was formed, Mikael Hornqvist stresses the classical and rhetorical character of Machiavelli's thought. He analyzes his preoccupation with glory and liberality in relation to the revival of Roman ideas of triumphalism. The result is a revealing account of the formation of Machiavelli's characteristic preoccupations.

Quentin Skinner's classic study The Foundations of Modern Political Thought was first published by Cambridge in 1978. This was the first of a series of outstanding publications that have changed forever the way the history of political thought is taught and practised. Rethinking the Foundations of Modern Political Thought looks afresh at the impact of the original work, asks why it still matters, and considers a number of significant agendas that it still inspires. A very distinguished international team of contributors has been assembled, including John Pocock, Richard Tuck and David...

This book is a comprehensive study of the history of the political thought of the Dutch Revolt (1555 90). It explores the development of the political ideas which motivated and legitimized the Dutch resistance against the government of Philip II in the Low Countries, and which became the ideological foundations of the Dutch Republic as it emerged as one of the main powers of Europe. It shows how notions of liberty, constitutionalism, representation and popular sovereignty were of central importance to the political thought and revolutionary events of the Dutch Revolt, giving rise to a...

Traditional views of puritan social thought have done a great injustice to the intellectual history of the sixteenth century. They have presented puritans as creators of a disciplined, progressive, ultimately revolutionary theory of social order. The origins of modern society and politics are laid at the feet of zealous English protestants whose only intellectual debts are owed to Calvinist theology and the Bible. Professor Todd demonstrates that this view is fundamentally ahistorical. She places puritanism back in its own historical milieu, showing puritans as the heirs of a complex...

In The Ambitions of Curiosity, G.E.R. Lloyd explores the origins and growth of systematic inquiry in Greece, China, and Mesopotamia. It asks such questions as what factors stimulated or inhibited this development? Whose interests were served? Who set the agenda? What was the role of the state in sponsoring, supporting or blocking research, in such areas as historiography, natural philosophy, medical research, astronomy, technology in all those fields. How were each of those fields defined and developed in different ancient societies? How did truly innovative thinkers persuade their own...