Bücher der Reihe Ideas in Context

Charts the evolution of 'theological utilitarianism', one of the most influential traditions in eighteenth-century Anglophone moral and political thought, and addresses the contested issue of whether there was an 'English Enlightenment', through the life and thought of moral philosopher and clergyman, William Paley (1743-1805).

How did the Victorian era - the epoch when the modern democratic state was made - understand democracy, parliamentary representation, and diversity? Here, Gregory Conti examines how the Victorians conceived the representative and deliberative functions of the House of Commons and what it meant for parliament to be the 'mirror of the nation'.

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.

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. Professor Todd demonstrates that this view is fundamentally ahistorical.

This major study of Hegel's intellectual development up to the writing of The Phenomonology of Spirit argues that his work is best understood in the context of the liberalisation of German Protestantism in the eighteenth century.

The author chronicles the rise of Sociology, a hybrid of science and literary traditions, by discussing the lives and works of the most prominent thinkers of the nineteenth-century. The book presents a penetrating study of idealists grappling with reality when industrial society was in its infancy.

In this book, David Summers provides an investigation of the philosophical and psychological notions invoked in this new theory and criticism.

This account of Gassendi's life and work offers a provocatively new perspective from which to view the influence of humanism on seventeenth-century thought. As Professor Joy makes clear, his reform of philosophy raised questions about the aims of science, which we ourselves are still asking.

The study relates legal developments to the broader fabric of eighteenth-century social and political theory, and offers a novel assessment of the character of the common law tradition and of Bentham's contribution to the ideology of reform.

This volume studies the concept of a political 'language', of a discourse composed of shared vocabularies, idioms and rhetorical strategies, which has been widely influential on recent work in the history of political thought.

This sympathetic study of Bertrand Russell's social and political thought is the first to explore thoroughly the intellectual and cultural context from which it emerged. The result is a highly original view of an important and enduring figure, and an accessible account of a fascinating age.

Peter Mack examines the impact of humanist training in rhetoric and argument on a range of Elizabethan prose texts, including political orations, histories, romances, conduct manuals, privy council debates and personal letters. Elizabethan Rhetoric reconstructs the knowledge, skills and approaches which an Elizabethan would have acquired in order to participate in the political and religious debates of the time: the approaches to an audience, analysis and replication of textual structures, organisation of arguments and tactics for disputation. Study of the rhetorical codes and conventions in terms of which debates were conducted is currently a major area of historical and literary enquiry, and Mack provides a wealth of new information about what was taught and how these conventions were exploited in personal memoranda, court depositions, sermons and political and religious pamphlets. This important book will be invaluable for all those interested in the culture, literature and political history of the period.

Richard A. Primus examines three crucial periods in American history (the late eighteenth century, the civil war and the 1950s and 1960s) in order to demonstrate how the conceptions of rights prevailing at each of these times grew out of reactions to contemporary social and political crises. His innovative approach sees rights language as grounded more in opposition to concrete social and political practices, than in the universalistic paradigms presented by many political philosophers. This study demonstrates the potency of the language of rights throughout American history, and looks for the first time at the impact of modern totalitarianism (in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union) on American conceptions of rights. The American Language of Rights is a major contribution to contemporary political theory, of interest to scholars and students in politics and government, constitutional law, and American history.

This important study takes a new approach to understanding Italian Renaissance humanism, based not on scholarly paradigms or philosophical concepts but on a neglected yet indispensable perspective: the humanists' understanding of themselves. Through a series of close textual studies, Patrick Baker excavates what humanists thought was important about humanism, how they viewed their own history, what goals they enunciated, what triumphs they celebrated - in short, he attempts to reconstruct humanist identity. What emerges is a small, coherent community dedicated primarily not to political ideology, a philosophy of man, an educational ethos, or moral improvement, but rather to the pursuit of classical Latin eloquence. Grasping the significance this stylistic ideal had for the humanists is essential to understanding both their sense of themselves and the importance they and others attached to their movement. For eloquence was no mere aesthetic affair but rather appeared to them as the guarantor of civilisation itself.

This book investigates theories of interpretation and meaning in Renaissance jurisprudence. How do they relate to the institutions of the law, especially pedagogical institutions? In what form were they published? An answer to these questions is sought through an investigation of Renaissance problems concerning the authority of interpreters.

This 2002 book explores the origins of systematic inquiry into science, historiography, and language in ancient Greece, Mesopotamia and China. It investigates how and why research developed differently in these societies and illustrates the tensions that existed between state control and individual innovation and the different ways those tensions were resolved.

This book brings together Professor Tully's most original and innovative statements on Locke in a systematic treatment of the latter's thought that is at once contextual and critical. The themes treated include government, toleration, discipline, property, individualism, power, labour, self-ownership, community, liberty, participation, and revolution.

Using eleven case studies drawn from the history of physics and economics, Models as Mediators fills a prominent gap in the philosophy of science literature by focussing on several aspects of modelling, including such topics as function and construction of different types of models in different fields.

The Enlightenment's 'Fable' examines the challenge offered to traditional morality and social understanding by Bernard Mandeville, whose infamous maxim 'private vices, public benefits' profoundly disturbed his contemporaries, and whose Fable of the Bees influenced Hume, Rousseau, Kant, and Adam Smith.

David Armitage makes an outstanding contribution with this history of British conceptions of empire from the 1540s to the 1740s. He sheds light on major British political thinkers, and the relationship between Protestantism and empire, theories of property, liberty and political economy, and the emergence of the British identity. Winner of the History Today Book of the Year prize for 2000.

This rich and provocative study is the first to examine Herbert Spencer's critical role in the development of liberal utilitarian moral and political philosophy in the nineteenth century. While several scholars correctly see Mill as a founder of liberal utilitarianism, none have appreciated Spencer's equally important formative role.

This book examines how American social science came to model itself on natural science and liberal politics. Professor Ross shows how each of the social science disciplines, while developing their inherited intellectual traditions, responded to change in historical consciousness, political needs, professional structures, and the conceptions of science available to them.

This book examines the genesis of Lutheran interest in natural philosophical issues, focusing on a reform attributed to Luther's ally Philip Melanchthon. He transformed a traditional natural philosophy into a specifically Lutheran one, in an effort to promote Luther's cause against civil disobedience.

This book is a major contribution to our understanding of European political theory. Framed as a general account of the period between 1572 and 1651 it charts the formation of a distinctively modern political vocabulary, based upon arguments of raison d'etat in the work of major theorists, including Hobbes and Grotius.

This 1993 collection of essays, all by pre-eminent exponents of the history of political thought, explores the political ideologies of early modern Britain. Organised on a broadly chronological basis, the topics addressed reflect the themes initiated and inspired by the work of the distinguished intellectual historian J. G. A. Pocock.

The sixteen essays in this volume confront the current debate about the relationship between philosophy and its history and asks what purpose the history of philosophy should serve.

This book reassesses the relationship between Enlightenment and religion in England, providing a fresh analysis of rational dissent within English Enlightenment culture. Its wide perspective and research make Enlightenment and Religion an important and original contribution to eighteenth-century studies.

Defining Science, first published in 1993, 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.

Harro Hopfl presents here a full-length study of the single most influential organized group of scholars and pamphleteers in early modern Europe (1540-1630), namely the Jesuits. He explores the academic and political controversies in which they were engaged in and their contribution to academic discourse around ideas of 'the state' and 'politics'. He pays particular attention to their actual teaching concerning doctrines for whose menacing practical implications Jesuits generally were vilified: notably tyrannicide, the papal power to depose rulers, the legitimacy of 'Machiavellian' policies in dealing with heretics and the justifiability of breaking faith with heretics. Hopfl further explores the paradox of the Jesuits' political activities being at once the subject of conspiratorial fantasies but at the same time being widely acknowledged as among the foremost intellects of their time, with their thought freely cited and appropriated. This is an important work of scholarship.

Annabel Brett takes a fresh look at the texts traditionally cited in the history of thinking about rights, using an enormous variety of new primary sources. She begins her analysis with scholastic texts from the thirteenth century and ends with a discussion of Hobbes' theory of natural rights.