scholarly journals Royal Counsel in Tudor England, 1485–1603

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Jonathan McGovern
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
State Policy ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Critical Assessment ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Privy Council ◽  
Literary Scholarship ◽  
Tudor England

Abstract Royal counsel in Tudor England has been a central historiographical theme for over twenty years. This review offers a critical assessment of the state of the field. It appraises historical and literary scholarship on both the theory and practice of royal counsel. Among other themes, it discusses the concepts of evil counsel and arcana imperii. The review concludes by suggesting priorities for future enquiry, including the need to think more carefully about which areas of English government still required royal decision-making, and therefore counsel, in this period. The article also charts the rise of conciliar ‘government under the king but not by the king’ and shows that Tudor counsel often happened the wrong way around: the monarch advised the privy council on the direction of state policy. It calls for a new administrative history in early modern studies, with a renewed focus on institutions and their procedures, to complement existing strengths in the fields of political culture and political thought.

scholarly journals François Fénelon: Modern philosopher or conservative theologian?

2021 ◽  
pp. 147488512110020
Author(s):  
Alexandra Oprea
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Education Of Women ◽  
Political Philosopher

Ryan Patrick Hanley makes two original claims about François Fénelon: (1) that he is best regarded as a political philosopher, and (2) that his political philosophy is best understood as “moderate and modern.” In what follows, I raise two concerns about Hanley’s revisionist turn. First, I argue that the role of philosophy in Fénelon’s account is rather as a handmaiden of theology than as an autonomous area of inquiry—with implications for both the theory and practice of politics. Second, I use Fénelon’s writings on the education of women as an illustration of the more radical and reactionary aspects of his thought. Despite these limits, the book makes a compelling case for recovering Fénelon and opens up new conversations about education, religion, political economy, and international relations in early modern political thought.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Todd Butler
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cognitive Perspective ◽  
Shared Attention ◽  
Stuart England ◽  
To Come

This chapter explains how the political changes of early Stuart England can be usefully examined from a cognitive perspective, with questions of authority and sovereignty being determined not just by what individuals or institutions do but also by how they are understood and expected to think, and in particular how they were expected to come to decisions. In doing so, it links early modern and contemporary understandings of state formation in seventeenth-century England to processes of decision-making and counsel, as well as the management of personal and public opinion, thereby explicating the mental mechanics of early modern governance. More than being simply a form of political thought or doctrine, intellection is presented as a shared attention to cognitive processes amidst historical moments in which we can see particular patterns of thinking—and attention to them as politics—begin to emerge.

God, Tsar, and People

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel B. Rowland
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Russian History ◽  
The West ◽  
Common View ◽  
God's Will ◽  
Political World ◽  
Peter The Great ◽  
Russian State

This book brings together essays written over a period of fifty years, using a wide variety of evidence — texts, icons, architecture, and ritual — to reveal how early modern Russians (1450–1700) imagined their rapidly changing political world. The book presents a more nuanced picture of Russian political thought during the two centuries before Peter the Great came to power than is typically available. The state was expanding at a dizzying rate, and atop Russia's traditional political structure sat a ruler who supposedly reflected God's will. The problem facing Russians was that actual rulers seldom — or never — exhibited the required perfection. This book argues that this contradictory set of ideas was far less autocratic in both theory and practice than modern stereotypes would have us believe. In comparing and contrasting Russian history with that of Western European states, the book is also questioning the notion that Russia has always been, and always viewed itself as, an authoritarian country. The book explores how the Russian state in this period kept its vast lands and diverse subjects united in a common view of a Christian polity, defending its long frontier agai-nst powerful enemies from the East and from the West.

Seneca and English Political Culture

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Curtis Perry
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Stuart England

Early modern writers associated Seneca with sententious socio-political wisdom and saw, in his plays, dramatizations of tyranny and the breakdown of conciliar government. This chapter traces the changing ways that Seneca was used in Elizabethan and early Stuart England, with an emphasis upon the reception of his plays and their developing association with political thought. Changes in the deployment of Senecan drama correlate to broader changes of attitude towards the exemplarity of Rome. Where early Elizabethan writers tended to accommodate Seneca to Ciceronian humanism and the Elizabethan ideal of monarchical republicanism, later writers tended to focus on Seneca’s imperial provenance and to associate his plays with autocracy and the erosion of governmental balance.

Shakespeare and the Politics of Commoners

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Social History ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Crisis ◽  
Modern Politics ◽  
Original Contribution

This book is a highly original contribution to our understanding of Shakespeare’s plays in two ways. First, it breaks important new ground in introducing readers, lay and scholarly alike, to the existence and character of the political culture of the mass of ordinary commoners in Shakespeare’s England, as revealed by the recent findings of ‘the new social history’. Demonstrating the vibrant, critical, and philosophically dissident politics of plebeians in the Tudor period, the volume thereby helps challenge the traditional myths of a non-political commons and a culture of obedience. Second, it brings together leading Shakespeareans, digesting the recent social history, with eminent early modern social historians, turning their focus upon Shakespeare. The genuinely cross-disciplinary work resulting generates fresh readings of ten plays, locating the penetration of Shakespearean drama by popular political thought and pressure in this period of perceived social crisis. No other volume on Shakespeare has engaged and digested the dramatic importance of the discoveries of the new social history, resituating and revaluing Shakespeare within the remarkable social depth of early modern politics.

THE SEARCH FOR THE ORIGINS OF MODERN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLICAN POLITICAL THOUGHT IN EARLY MODERN SWITZERLAND

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 647-658 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARC H. LERNER
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Political World ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Good Government ◽  
History Of

What are the debts that the modern world owes to the political culture of the Enlightenment? For historians of political thought this is a widely debated subject. Throughout Europe, the Enlightenment provided the critical lens for a widespread reassessment of the nature of political authority. Much of the intellectual history of the eighteenth century focuses on this reassessment and the debates over the nature of good government, liberty and sovereignty. The discussion of these issues is linked to the history of liberalism, democratic republicanism, popular sovereignty, and the nature of the modern political world itself.

Brabantia: decoding the main characters of Utopia

Moreana ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 49 (Number 187- (1-2) ◽  
pp. 151-182
Author(s):  
Maarten M.K. Vermeir
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Political System ◽  
Desiderius Erasmus ◽  
Parliamentary Democracy ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
Home Town ◽  
Christian Humanism ◽  
Political Thinker

In this study, we propose a new understanding, according to the principles of ‘humanistic interpretation’, of a fundamental layer of meaning in Utopia. In the work of Thomas More, major references can be found to the particular genesis and a crucial purpose of Utopia. Desiderius Erasmus arranged the acquaintance of Thomas More with Peter Giles, a key figure in the development of Erasmus as political thinker. More and Giles together in Antwerp (Giles’s home town), both jurists and humanists, would lay the foundation of Utopia. With this arranged contact, Erasmus handed over to More the knowledge of a particular political system - the earliest form of ‘parliamentary democracy’ in Early modern Europe - embedded in the political culture of the Duchy of Brabant and its constitution, named the ‘Joyous Entry’. We argue that Erasmus, through the indispensable politicalliterary skills of More in Utopia, intended to promote this political system as a new, political philosophy: applicable to all nations in the Respublica Christiana of Christian humanism. With reference to this genesis of Utopia in the text itself and its prefatory letters, we come to a clear recognition of Desiderius Erasmus in the figure of Raphael Hythlodaeus, the sailor who had discovered the ‘isle of Utopia’ and discoursed, as reported by More, about its ‘exemplary’ institutions.

Philosophic Pride

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Brooke
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
Marcus Aurelius ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
History Of ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Modern Era

This is the first full-scale look at the essential place of Stoicism in the foundations of modern political thought. Spanning the period from Justus Lipsius's Politics in 1589 to Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Emile in 1762, and concentrating on arguments originating from England, France, and the Netherlands, the book considers how political writers of the period engaged with the ideas of the Roman and Greek Stoics that they found in works by Cicero, Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. The book examines key texts in their historical context, paying special attention to the history of classical scholarship and the historiography of philosophy. The book delves into the persisting tension between Stoicism and the tradition of Augustinian anti-Stoic criticism, which held Stoicism to be a philosophy for the proud who denied their fallen condition. Concentrating on arguments in moral psychology surrounding the foundations of human sociability and self-love, the book details how the engagement with Roman Stoicism shaped early modern political philosophy and offers significant new interpretations of Lipsius and Rousseau together with fresh perspectives on the political thought of Hugo Grotius and Thomas Hobbes. The book shows how the legacy of the Stoics played a vital role in European intellectual life in the early modern era.

The Russian Holy Synod and the Greeks

2020 ◽  
Vol 54 (1-3) ◽  
pp. 72-98
Author(s):  
Nikolaos Chrissidis
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Critical Assessment ◽  
Peter The Great ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Greek History ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Creation

Abstract The article first surveys Greek interpretations of the creation of the Russian Holy Synod by Peter the Great. It provides a critical assessment of the historiographical paradigm offered by N.F. Kapterev for the analysis of Greek-Russian relations in the early modern period. Finally, it proposes that scholars should focus on a Greek history of Greek-Russian relations as a complement and possibly corrective to the Kapterev paradigm.

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