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Philosophers of the Renaissance introduces readers to philosophical thinking from the end of the Middle Ages through the sixteenth century.
Noble conceptions of politics in eighteenth-century Sweden (ca 1740–1790) is a study of how the Swedish nobility articulated its political ideals, self-images and loyalties during the Age of Liberty and under the rule of Gustav III. This book takes a close look at the aristocracy’s understanding of a free constitution and at the nobility’s complex relationship with the monarchy. Central themes are the old notion of mixed government, classical republican conceptions of liberty and patriotism, as well as noble thoughts on the rights and duties of the citizen, including the right to rebellion against an unrighteous ruler. The study is a conceptual analysis of public and private political statements made by members of the nobility, such as Diet speeches and personal correspondence. The book contributes to the large body of research on estate-based identities and the transformation of political language in the second half of the eighteenth century by connecting Swedish political ideals and concepts to their European context.
The Renaissance was a period of great intellectual change and innovation as philosophers rediscovered the philosophy of classical antiquity and passed it on to the modern age. Renaissance philosophy is distinct both from the medieval scholasticism, based on revelation and authority, and from philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries who transformed it into new philosophical systems. Despite the importance of the Renaissance to the development of philosophy over time, it has remained largely understudied by historians of philosophy and professional philosophers. This anthology aims to correct this by providing scholars and students of philosophy with representative translations...
Islamic thought is the most beautiful result of a multicultural dialogue. Islamic culture became a bridge between antiquity, Iranian scholars, Syriac and Arabic Christians and the Latin Middle Ages. Its richness of ideas, its plurality of values can contribute to the requirements of modern plurality. The monograph aims at a historical and bibliographical survey of the qurʾānic and rational world-view of early Islam, of the period of translations from Greek into Syriac and Arabic, and of the impact of Islamic thought on the Latin Middle Ages. Critical reflexions of Muslim scholars stimulated new scientific ideas and make us aware of the contribution of Islam to humanity.
This monograph is the first to analyze Julius Caesar Scaliger’s Exotericae Exercitationes (1557). Though hardly read today, the Exercitationes was one of the most successful philosophical treatises of the time, attracting considerable attention from many intellectuals with multifaceted religious and philosophical orientations. In order to make this massive late-Renaissance work accessible to modern readers, Kuni Sakamoto conducted a detailed textual analysis and revealed the basic tenets of Scaliger’s philosophy. His analysis also enabled him to clarify the historical provenance of Scaliger’s Aristotelianism and the way it subsequently influenced some of the protagonists of the “New Philosophy.” The author thus bridges the historiographical gap between studies of Renaissance philosophy and those of the seventeenth-century.
First Published in 2004. Modernizing Muscovy is a comprehensive account of seventeenth-century Russian history. It rejects the traditional interpretation of this era as the twilight of the Russian Middle Ages. By revealing important instances of dynamic change in the late Muscovite state, economy, and society, the book demonstrates the crucial importance of pre-Petrine reform in Russia’s transition to one of the great powers of the world. The book’s broad scope makes it a veritable encyclopaedia of late Muscovite history. It both synthesizes previous scholarship and breaks new ground in many important areas.
If Justus Lipsius’s Politica of 1589 and its importance to the history of political thought needs no introduction, Lipsius's Monita et exempla politica (1605), conceived as a sequel to the Politica, has been overlooked time and again despite the fact that it is a unique key to understand the precise character of Lipsius's political thought. For, is his widely read political dialogue a Neostoic discourse or is it Tacitean, Machiavellian, or even anti-Machiavellian in nature? Did the work play such a pivotal role in the genesis of the modern, centrally governed nation state, as some scholars tend to believe? This book collects essays by scholars from different disciplines and backgrounds. All of them endeavour to solve this apparent deadlock in scholarly research on Lipsius’s political thought. All of them offer new and fascinating insights in the genesis and developments of the nature and impact of political discourses in Early Modern Europe.
This is the first complete English translation of Ulrich von Hutten's Latin dialogue Arminius and Eobanus Hessus's Latin preface to its posthumous publication (1529). The translations are enhanced by extensive literary analysis in the context of social and political change in sixteenth-century Germany and German literary history. Hutten's literary role is illustrated further by discussion of his dialogue, Inspicientes, or Die Anschauenden, and by comparative analysis of Hutten-related works by Heinrich von Kleist, Die Hermannschlacht (1808), Gottfried Keller, Ufenau (1858), and Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, Huttens letzte Tage (1871). The study draws attention to Hutten's ethnic chauvinism, construed by later generations as German patriotism and used to endorse attitudes and prejudices alien to Hutten's original ideas. The English translations and analyses provide broader access to Hutten's writings and ideas and give insights into the links between late Roman history, society and politics in the Reformation period, and German patriotism of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Since 1971, the International Congress for Neo-Latin Studies has been organised every three years in various cities in Europe and North America. In August 2009, Uppsala in Sweden was the venue of the fourteenth Neo-Latin conference, held by the International Association for Neo-Latin Studies. The proceedings of the Uppsala conference have been collected in this volume under the motto Litteras et artes nobis traditas excolere Reception and Innovation. Ninety-nine individual and five plenary papers spanning the period from the Renaissance to the present offer a variety of themes covering a range of genres such as history, literature, philology, art history, and religion. The contributions will be of relevance not only for scholarly readers, but also for an interested non-professional audience.
This collection of essays honours Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499) as a Platonic philosopher. Ficino was not the first translator of Plato in the Renaissance, but he was the first to translate the entire corpus of Platonic works, and to emphasise their relevance for contemporary readers. The present work is divided into two sections: the first explores aspects of Ficino’s own thought and the sources which he used. The second section follows aspects of his influence in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The papers presented here deepen and enrich our understanding of Ficino, and of the philosophical tradition in which he was working, and they offer a new platform for future studies on Ficino and his legacy in Renaissance philosophy. Contributors include: Unn Irene Aasdalen, Constance Blackwell, Paul Richard Blum, Stephen Clucas, Ruth Clydesdale, Brian Copenhaver, John Dillon, Peter J. Forshaw, James Hankins, Hiro Hirai, Sarah Klitenic Wear, David Leech, Letizia Panizza, Valery Rees, and Stéphane Toussaint.