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A reading of the Anglo-Dutch physician and thinker’s philosophical project from the hitherto neglected perspective of his lifelong interest in the theme of honour.
Why we should take Bernard Mandeville seriously as a philosopher Bernard Mandeville’s The Fable of the Bees outraged its eighteenth-century audience by proclaiming that private vices lead to public prosperity. Today the work is best known as an early iteration of laissez-faire capitalism. In this book, Robin Douglass looks beyond the notoriety of Mandeville’s great work to reclaim its status as one of the most incisive philosophical studies of human nature and the origin of society in the Enlightenment era. Focusing on Mandeville’s moral, social, and political ideas, Douglass offers a revelatory account of why we should take Mandeville seriously as a philosopher. Douglass expertly reco...
It is widely held that Hume's Treatise has little or nothing to do with problems of religion. Contrary to this view, Paul Russell argues that it is irreligious aims and objectives that are fundamental to the Treatise and account for its underlying unity and coherence
Arguments about the place and practice of the duel in early modern England were widespread. The distinguished intellectual historian Markku Peltonen examines this debate, and show how the moral and ideological status of duelling was discussed within a much larger cultural context of courtesy, civility and politeness. The advocates of the duel, following Italian and French examples, contended that it maintained and enhanced politeness; its critics by contrast increasingly severed duelling from civility, and this separation became part of a vigorous attempt in the late seventeenth century and beyond to redefine civility, politeness and indeed the nature and evolution of Englishness. To understand the duel is to understand much more fully some crucial issues in the cultural and ideological history of Stuart England, and Markku Peltonen's study will thus engage the attention of a very wide audience of historians and cultural and literary scholars.
This Companion evaluates Hume's philosophical arguments in A Treatise of Human Nature and considers their historical context, particularly within British empiricism.
This collection offers a timely opportunity to re-examine both the coherence of the concept of an ‘early Enlightenment’, and the specific contribution of natural law theories to its formation. It reassesses the work of major thinkers such as Grotius, Hobbes, Locke, Malebranche, Pufendorf and Thomasius, and evaluates the appeal and importance of the discourse of natural jurisprudence both to those working inside conventional educational and political structures and to those outside.
Philosophy and Religion in Enlightenment Britain explores some of the themes and issues that exercised thinkers concerned with religion and philosophy, and their interrelatedness, in the period known as the long eighteenth century, while illustrating the techniques and style of intellectual history as practised in the early twenty-first century. The volume will encourage further understanding of the influences that were current at the time that some of the most significant works in western philosophy were written, and use primary materials to achieve this. The essays presented here have been specially commissioned from both established, distinguished collaborators and young, up-and-coming sc...
The philosopher Paul Russell is well known for his scholarship on Hume and free will. This volume collects Russell's most important essays on Hume, with some articles addressing early modern philosophy more generally. The volume is organized thematically into five sections: metaphysics, free will, ethics, religion, and general interpretations of Hume's philosophy. In a substantive introduction, Russell outlines how his insights overlap and connect to various topicsin contemporary philosophy. Recasting Hume and Early Modern Philosophy presents the reader with Russell's substantial and interconnected observations and insights on the matters and figures of the greatest importance in early modern philosophy.
The first comprehensive study of Renaissance diplomacy for sixty years, focusing on Europe's most important political centre, Rome, between 1450 and 1530.