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This book offers a comprehensive and unitary study of the philosophy of Francis Bacon, with special emphasis on the medical, ethical and political aspects of his thought. It presents an original interpretation focused on the material conditions of nature and human life. In particular, coverage in the book is organized around the unifying theme of Bacon's notion of appetite, which is considered in its natural, ethical, medical and political meanings. The book redefines the notions of experience and experiment in Bacon's philosophy of nature, shows the important presence of Stoic themes in his work as well as provides an original discussion of the relationships between natural magic, prudence and political realism in his philosophy. Bringing together scholarly expertise from the history of philosophy, the history of science and the history of literature, this book presents readers with a rich and diverse contextualization of Bacon's philosophy.

The Oxford Handbook of Hobbes collects twenty-six newly commissioned, original chapters on the philosophy of the English thinker Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679). Best known today for his important influence on political philosophy, Hobbes was in fact a wide and deep thinker on a diverse range of issues. The chapters included in this Oxford Handbook cover the full range of Hobbes's thought--his philosophy of logic and language; his view of physics and scientific method; his ethics, political philosophy, and philosophy of law; and his views of religion, history, and literature. Several of the chapters overlap in fruitful ways, so that the reader can see the richness and depth of Hobbes's thought from a variety of perspectives. The contributors are experts on Hobbes from many countries, whose home disciplines include philosophy, political science, history, and literature. A substantial introduction places Hobbes's work, and contemporary scholarship on Hobbes, in a broad context.

Italian Academies have typically been studied individually or in the context of specific cities, leaving an important lacuna in the scholarship on Italian culture and early modernity. Cutting across various disciplines, this volume traces the relationships of these Academies and explains how they prefigured networks like the République des letters.

Scritto nel 1513, testo cardine del pensiero politico occidentale, il “Principe” è concepito nell'orizzonte della crisi italiana da un intellettuale che aveva lucida consapevolezza della decadenza cui ogni ordinamento statale è destinato. Il principe nuovo qui delineato avrebbe dovuto valersi non più soltanto della lezione degli antichi, ma anche della lunga esperienza delle cose moderne. Ecco manifestarsi in questo quadro l'inefficacia dell'analogia storica: la sola conoscenza delle azioni “delli uomini grandi” non era più una bussola sufficiente a orientarsi nel presente. Il libro guarda al grande edificio conoscitivo machiavelliano come strumento di analisi politica utile ad arginare l'impeto della fortuna, come una teoria della virtù nel suo rapporto con la storia.

Seit Niccolò Machiavellis Principe (postum) im Jahre 1532 veröffentlicht worden ist, haben sich Generationen von Philosophen, Theologen und Historikern, aber auch von Politikern mit den Thesen des Florentiners auseinandergesetzt. Die Bücher zur Rezeption Machiavellis füllen inzwischen ganze Bibliotheken. Kann man heute – fast fünfhundert Jahre später – noch etwas Neues dazu beitragen? Vielleicht gelingt dies, indem der machiavellische Machtstaat aus interdisziplinärer Perspektive im Spiegel der Zeit beleuchtet wird.Die negative Sicht der Ratschläge Machiavellis an einen neuen Fürsten ist mit dem Begriff „Machiavellismus“ gebrandmarkt worden. Die Frage, ob der Florentiner selbst ein Machiavellist war, ist heute freilich eher zu verneinen. Die mit dem Schlagwort verbundenen Vorurteile erweisen sich jedoch als resistent gegenüber jedem Gegenargument. Den unterschiedlichen, meist zeitbedingten Interpretationen der Lehre Machiavellis, mit denen der Interpret oft genug nur seine eigenen Anschauungen begründet, soll in diesem Band nachgespürt werden.

All students of Western political thought encounter Niccolò Machiavelli's work. Nevertheless, his writing continues to puzzle scholars and readers who are uncertain how to deal with the seeming paradoxes they encounter.'The Political Philosophy of Niccolò Machiavelli'is a clear account of Machiavelli's thought, major theories and central ideas. It critically engages with his work in a new way, one not based on the problematic Cambridge-school approach. Geared towards the specific requirements of students who need to reach a sound understanding of Machiavelli's ideas, it is the ideal companion to the study of this influential and challenging philosopher.

Many studies relate modern science to modern political and economic thought. Using one shift in order to explain the other, however, has begged the question of modernity's origins. New scientific and political reasoning emerged simultaneously as controversial forms of probabilistic reasoning. Neither could ground the other. They both rejected logical systems in favor of shifting, incomplete, and human-oriented forms of knowledge which did not meet accepted standards of speculative science. This study follows their shared development by tracing one key political stratagem for linking human desires to the advancement of knowledge: the collaborative wish list. Highly controversial at the beginning of the seventeenth century, charismatic desiderata lists spread across Europe, often deployed against traditional sciences. They did not enter the academy for a century but eventually so shaped the deep structures of research that today this once controversial genre appears to be a musty and even pedantic term of art.

The Society of Jesus was founded by Ignatius Loyola on a principal of strict obedience to papal and superiors'authorities, yet the nature of the Jesuits's work and the turbulent political circumstances in which they operated, inevitably brought them into conflict with the Catholic hierarchy. In order to better understand and contextualise the debates concerning obedience, this book examines the Jesuits of south-western Europe during the generalate of Claudio Acquaviva. Acquaviva's thirty year generalate (1581-1615) marked a challenging time for the Jesuits, during which their very system of government was called into doubt. The need for obedience and the limits of that obedience posed a question of fundamental importance both to debates taking place within the Society, and to the definition of a collective Jesuit identity. At the same time, struggles for jurisdiction between political states and the papacy, as well as the difficulties raised by the Protestant Reformation, all called for matters to be rethought. Divided into four chapters, the book begins with an analysis of the texts and contexts in which Jesuits reflected on obedience at the turn of the seventeenth century. The three following chapters then explore the various Ignatian sources that discussed obedience, placing them within their specific contexts. In so doing the book provides fascinating insights into how the Jesuits under Acquaviva approached the concept of obedience from theological and practical standpoints.

Improvement was a new concept in seventeenth-century England; only then did it become usual for people to think that the most effective way to change things for the better was not a revolution or a return to the past, but the persistent application of human ingenuity to the challenge of increasing the country's wealth and general wellbeing. Improvements in agriculture and industry, commerce and social welfare, would bring infinite prosperity and happiness. The word improvement was itself a recent coinage. It was useful as a slogan summarising all these goals, and since it had no equivalent in other languages, it gave the English a distinctive culture of improvement that they took with them to Ireland and Scotland, and to their possessions overseas. It made them different from everyone else. The Invention of Improvement explains how this culture of improvement came about. Paul Slack explores the political and economic circumstances which allowed notions of improvement to take root, and the changes in habits of mind which improvement accelerated. It encouraged innovation, industriousness, and the acquisition of consumer goods which delivered comfort and pleasure. There was a new appreciation of material progress as a process that could be measured, and its impact was publicised by the circulation of information about it. It had made the country richer and many of its citizens more prosperous, if not always happier. Drawing on a rich variety of contemporary literature, The Invention of Improvement situates improvement at the centre of momentous changes in how people thought and behaved, how they conceived of their environment and their collective prospects, and how they cooperated in order to change them.

In sixteenth-century Marrakesh, a Flemish merchant converts to Judaism and takes his Catholic brother on a subversive reading of the Gospels and an exploration of the Jewish faith. Their vivid Spanish dialogue, composed by an anonym in 1583, has until now escaped scholarly attention in spite of its success in anti-Christian clandestine literature until the Enlightenment. Based on all nine available manuscripts, this critical edition rediscovers a pioneering work of Jewish self-expression in European languages. The introductory study identifies the author, Estêvão Dias, locates him in insurgent Antwerp at the beginning of the Western Sephardi diaspora, and describes his hybrid culture shaped by the Iberian Renaissance, Portuguese crypto-Judaism, Mediterranean Jewish learning, Protestant theology, and European diplomacy in Africa.'The Marrakesh Dialogues has been mentioned only rarely in the scholarly literature, and Wilke's edition and extended discussion constitute the first attempt at editing the text based upon all the textual evidence, placing it into its historical context, identifying the author and the dramatis personae of the text, analysing the treatise's contents, and presenting it to a wide audience. He is successful because of his broad knowledge of the political and religious trends in early modern Europe, coupled with close familiarity with converso life and literature.'- Daniel L. Lasker, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, in: Journal of Jewish Studies Vol. LXVII No. 2, pp. 428-35

Die International Bibliographiy of Historical Sciences verzeichnet jährlich die bedeutendsten Neuerscheinungen geschichtswissenschaftlicher Monographien und Zeitschriftenartikel weltweit, die inhaltlich von der Vor- und Frühgeschichte bis zur jüngsten Vergangenheit reichen. Sie ist damit die derzeit einzige laufende Bibliographie dieser Art, die thematisch, zeitlich und geographisch ein derart breites Spektrum abdeckt. Innerhalb der systematischen Gliederung nach Zeitalter, Region oder historischer Disziplin sind die Werke nach Autorennamen oder charakteristischem Titelhauptwort aufgelistet.

This collection of interdisciplinary essays introduce the history and culture of the lands ruled by the sovereign house of Savoy during the late medieval and early modern periods, territories now part of France, Italy, and Switzerland. Because the Sabaudian realms were geographically, linguistically, and culturally diverse and did not evolve into a single modern nation-state, their early history has been overlooked by historians whose perspectives were often informed by a narrow, national framework.An international team of scholars offers new research that de-provincializes many of the existing rich scholarly assessments of the historical significance of these lands, which were important for rulers and subjects throughout early modern Europe. The volume explores the concept of “Sabaudian studies” and identifies historiographic developments and current trends in the field. Beginning with the geography and the history of the area, the essays examine Sabaudian political culture (diplomatic practice, judicial institutions, and political thought), dynastic representation (court festivals and celebrations, and the projection of dynastic prestige abroad, with attention to the sacred heritage of the house), and territorial domination (its fiscal, religious, feudal, and composite dimensions).Contributors include Eva Pibiri, Laurent Perrillat, Rebecca Boone, Alessandro Celi, Thalia Brero, Stéphane Gal and Preston Perluss, Michel Merle, Toby Osborne, Kristine Kolrud, Guido Alfani, Marco Battistoni, Matthew Vester, and Blythe Alice Raviola.

The first treatise ever written on the sociology of cities, On the Causes of the Greatness and Magnificence of Cities (1588) marked a radical departure from previous literature on urban centres. It provided a revolutionary analysis of how cities function, and of the political, economic, demographic and geographic factors that cause their growth and decline. Noteworthy too is Botero's strikingly original use of sources in his analysis: moving beyond familiar classical and biblical references, he drew groundbreaking insights from reports by travelers and missionaries about cities in the non-European world, especially in China.Though seminally important to the history of urban studies, On the Causes of the Greatness and Magnificence of Cities has not been available in a modern translation until now. This edition of the treatise – which includes an introduction by Geoffrey W. Symcox on the intellectual context within which it was conceived – is a must-read for anyone interested in the life of cities both historical and contemporary.

Das vorliegende Buch nimmt die Verbindung von Späthumanismus und Militärtheorie anhand der zentralen Kulturen der Niederlande und Frankreich in den Blick: Die Gelehrten konzeptualisierten an den Naht- und Schnittstellen militärpolitischer Kulturen und waren in die Konstitutionszusammenhänge antiquarischen Wissens eingebunden. Unter dem Gesichtspunkt interner Brüche und Synergien in der späthumanistischen Gelehrtenrepublik werden neben anderen die Werke von Justus Lipsius, Joseph Scaliger, Isaac Casaubon, Claude de Saumaise und Gabriel Naudé sowie die philologisch-antiquarische Praxis im'Kabinett'der Brüder Dupuy und bei Claude Fabri de Peiresc beleuchtet. Militärs und Politiker wie die Nassau-Oranier, Henri de Rohan, René Lenormant und Kardinal Richelieu sind in den Transfer und die Kommunikation taktischer und strategischer Lehren eingebunden. Damit sind Querverbindungen zwischen strategischen Konzeptionen, politischer Pragmatik und späthumanistischer Gelehrtenkultur zu konstatieren. In diesem Kontext wird die philologische und antiquarische Tradition stärker berücksichtigt als bisher geschehen, die Verengung auf den theoretisch-praktischen Reformkomplex der Heeresreform der Oranier aufgebrochen und dessen Schlüsselstellung in der Argumentation von Staatsbildung, Sozialdisziplinierung und Militärischer Revolution relativiert. Statt einer einfachen Antikerezeption und statt einer Rezeption der oranischen Heeresreform in Frankreich ist ein komplexer Kulturtransfer strategischer und taktischer Theorien zu veranschlagen, der im Kontext der frühneuzeitlichen Pluralität von Methoden, Wissensordnungen und Lehren zu sehen ist. Besonders in den Blick genommen wird eine Revision antiker militärtheoretischer Tradition und moderner Kommentare im Kontext eines zwischen Frankreich und den Generalstaaten abgeschlossenen Militärbündnisses und während der französisch-schwedischen Phase des Dreißigjährigen Kriegs.

Bis heute wird leidenschaftlich darüber gestritten, wie Niccolò Machiavelli verstanden werden muss. Dem Facettenreichtum seines politischen Denkens entspricht die Vielfalt der Perspektiven und Urteile seiner Interpreten. Die Autoren des interdisziplinär angelegten Bandes analysieren Machiavellis Werke im Zusammenhang mit den spiegelbildlichen Wandlungen des Denkens über Ordnung, Herrschaft und Moral zu Beginn der Neuzeit und in der Gegenwart. Außer der Interpretation Machiavellis aus dem Horizont seiner Zeit stehen auch seine Wirkungen in zeitgenössischen Diskursen im Mittelpunkt. Themen sind nicht bloß Machiavellis Verhältnis zum modernen Staatsbegriff und seine experimentelle Moral, sondern auch seine dämonologische Leseweise (Ritter, Freyer, Sternberger) und seine Präsenz bei zeitgenössischen Republikanern und Liberalisten, bei Denkern wie Max Horkheimer und Michel Foucault sowie in der Empire-Debatte (Hardt / Negri u.a.). Zudem berücksichtigt der Band bislang wenig erforschte Aspekte wie Machiavellis Denkstil und Methode sowie die literarisch-rhetorische Dimension seiner Schriften.

The Romance Studies Bibliography has been published since 1923 as a Supplement to the Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie (est. 1877). It lists the bibliographical data for monographs, collected volumes, articles and reviews for literary and linguistic studies with the exception of French literary studies.

Secondo un tracciato unitario e coerente, il volume analizza il contributo di una serie di autori che, in un lungo sedicesimo secolo che va dalle guerre d'Italia di fine Quattrocento ai primi del Seicento, testimoniano la crisi del rapporto fra diritto e potere. Il ruolo della tradizione giuridica costituisce infatti, secondo l'autore, un problema capitale nella storia della cultura e nella storia politica dell'età moderna. In quest'ottica Quaglioni indaga con letture approfondite un'ampia serie di autori, da Philippe de Commynes che scrive delle guerre d'Italia a Savonarola, Machiavelli e Guicciardini, da Etienne de La Boétie a Jean Bodin, proseguendo fino al processo di Giordano Bruno e alla sua autodifesa.