The Duke of Guise’s Murder and the Imperative of Vengeance

2021 ◽  
pp. 156-191
Author(s):  
Michael Meere
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Virtuous Action ◽  
French People ◽  
The One

This chapter focuses on Simon Belyard’s Guysien (Troyes, 1592), a tragedy that reenacts the Duke of Guise’s assassination at Blois in 1588. On the one hand, Guise suffers unjust punishment and deserves our pity; on the other, Guise’s loyalty to his homeland inspires virtuous action in the spectators. In Le Guysien, the French king Henry III’s violence is a negative, evil force that paradoxically must be countered with more violence to free the French people from tyranny. The chapter considers the Catholic League’s polemical literature concerning Henry III’s legitimacy, as well as political philosophy and the legitimization of tyrannicide in late sixteenth-century France. Belyard’s play not only incites spectators to pick up the sword to avenge what he considers to be the unjust death of Guise, but is itself a militant act during the turbulent years between Henry III’s own assassination (1589) and Henry IV’s conversion to Catholicism (1593) and subsequent coronation (1594).

The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century in Renaissance Italy

1981 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 149-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip M. J. McNair
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Modern World ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Giordano Bruno ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Renaissance Italy ◽  
The One

Between the execution of Gerolamo Savonarola at Florence in May 1498 and the execution of Giordano Bruno at Rome in February 1600, western Christendom was convulsed by the protestant reformation, and the subject of this paper is the effect that that revolution had on the Italy that nourished and martyred those two unique yet representative men: unique in the power and complexity of their personalities, representative because the one sums up the medieval world with all its strengths and weaknesses while the other heralds the questing and questioning modern world in which we live.

‘HOW HARD AN ENTERPRISE IT IS’: AUTHORIAL SELF-FASHIONING IN JOHN DOWLAND’S PRINTED BOOKS

2007 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 43-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kirsten Gibson
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Title Page ◽  
The Other ◽  
Artistic Creation ◽  
Printed Books ◽  
The One ◽  
Intellectual Activities ◽  
Modern Sense

The naming of John Dowland as ‘Author’ on the title page of his publication The First Booke of Songes or Ayres (1597) suggests a proprietary relationship between the composer and his work. This proprietary relationship is, perhaps, reinforced with the alignment of Dowland’s intellectual activities as ‘author’ with the notions of ‘composition’ and ‘invention’ in the same passage. All three terms could be used by the late sixteenth century to refer to notions of creativity, individual intellectual labour or origination. While many early examples of the use of ‘author’ refer specifically to God or Christ as creator, such as Chaucer’s declaration that ‘The auctour of matrimonye is Christ’, by the sixteenth century it was increasingly used to refer to an individual originator of intellectual or artistic creation closer to the modern sense of the word. Its sixteenth-century usage is, for instance, reflected in the title ‘A tretys, excerpte of diverse labores of auctores’, or as in a reference in 1509 to ‘The noble actor plinius’. Likewise, ‘invent’ or ‘inventor’ could be used to refer to the process of individual intellectual creation, exemplified by its use in 1576 ‘Your brain or your wit, and your pen, the one to invent and devise, the other to write’, while ‘compose’ could mean to make, to compose in words, ‘to write as author’ or, more specifically, to write music.

scholarly journals Jak możliwa (do pomyślenia) jest dobrowolna niewola? O nowożytnych formach rządzenia, ideologii i spektaklu władzy

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 101-110
Author(s):  
Mateusz Falkowski
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Historical Evolution ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Etienne De La Boetie ◽  
The One ◽  
Voluntary Servitude

The article is devoted to the famous The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude by Étienne de La Boétie. The author considers the theoretical premises underlying the concept of “voluntary servitude”, juxtaposing them with two modern concepts of will developed by Descartes and Pascal. An important feature of La Boétie’s project is the political and therefore intersubjective – as opposed to the individualistic perspective of Descartes and Pascal – starting point. It is therefore situated against the background of, on the one hand, the historical evolution of early modern states (from feudal monarchies, through so-called Renaissance monarchies up to European absolutisms) and, on the other hand – of the political philosophy of Machiavelli and Hobbes.

scholarly journals Dynamics of Continuity and Change: Shifts in Labour Relations in the Potosí Mines (1680–1812)

2016 ◽  
Vol 61 (S24) ◽  
pp. 93-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rossana Barragán Romano
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Economic Sectors ◽  
Labour Relations ◽  
Continuity And Change ◽  
The One

AbstractLabour relations in the silver mines of Potosí are almost synonymous with the mita, a system of unfree work that lasted from the end of the sixteenth century until the beginning of the nineteenth century. However, behind this continuity there were important changes, but also other forms of work, both free and self-employed. The analysis here is focused on how the “polity” contributed to shape labour relations, especially from the end of the seventeenth century and throughout the eighteenth century. This article scrutinizes the labour policies of the Spanish monarchy on the one hand, which favoured certain economic sectors and regions to ensure revenue, and on the other the initiatives both of mine entrepreneurs and workers – unfree, free, and self-employed – who all contributed to changing the system of labour.

28. Nietzsche

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Widder
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
The Other ◽  
Death Of God ◽  
Ascetic Ideal ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Ontological Turn ◽  
The One ◽  
Good And Evil ◽  
Genealogy Of Morals

This chapter examines Friedrich Nietzsche's political philosophy, first by focusing on his claim that the ‘death of God’ inaugurates modern nihilism. It then explains Nietzsche's significance for political theory by situating him, on the one hand, against the Platonist and Christian traditions that dominate political philosophy and, on the other hand, with contemporary attempts to develop a new political theory of difference. The chapter also considers Nietzsche's genealogical method and proceeds by analysing the three essays of On the Genealogy of Morals, along with his views on good and bad, good and evil, slave morality, the ascetic ideal, and the nihilism of modern secularism. Finally, it reviews contemporary interpretations of Nietzsche's relation and relevance to political theory and how his philosophy has inspired a broader set of trends that has come to be known as ‘the ontological turn in political theory’.

Lorsque le katechon permet de repenser le politique. Discussion critique d'une thèse de Georgio Agamben en regard de la discursivité de 2 Th 2.1–17

2020 ◽  
Vol 66 (3) ◽  
pp. 406-432 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alain Gignac
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
The Other ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Discursive Analysis ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Law ◽  
The One

This article compares a discursive analysis of 2 Thess 2 and Giorgio Agamben's use of the same passage in his political philosophy (in at least three of his books). On the one hand, 2 Thess 2 is a complex and detailed eschatological scenario, but ultimately elliptical – with a self-referential enunciative device centred on a ‘super blank’, the κατέχον/κατέχων, which it is preferable not to identify. On the other hand, despite some shortcuts, Agamben aligns with the main intuitions of 2 Thess 2, which finally returns the reader to his/her own present where a conflict is played out between, on one front, the Messiah and his community, and, on the other front, the anti-messiah and his anti-messianic community. According to Agamben, the κατέχον/κατέχων is a negative figure, the legal facade that prevents unmasking the anomie of current political systems and delays the establishment of a messianic community beyond the law.

Political Theory and the Study of Politics: A Report of a Conference

1956 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 475-487 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harry Eckstein
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The Other ◽  
Sharp Distinction ◽  
Basic Issue ◽  
Political Inquiry ◽  
The One

The issues which arose during the discussions of the conference fall fairly conveniently into three compartments.First, we obviously had to settle, with reasonable clarity, what we were talking about: what “political philosophy” is, what “political science” is, and whether they are really distinguishable. The basic issue of the conference was to determine the relevance of the one to the study of the other, and if we had decided that they were really the same thing, there would simply have been no problems for us to discuss. On the whole, we felt that a valid, if not necessarily sharp, distinction was to be made between the “philosophical” and the “scientific” approaches to the study of politics and that we were not discussing absurd or tautological issues. We agreed, however, that all types of political inquiry involve the construction of theory, implicit or explicit, and that the title “political theory” has been unjustifiably appropriated by the historians of political thought.

scholarly journals The Inquisition of 1517. Inclosures and Evictions. Part II. Edited from the Lansdowne MS. 1. 153

1893 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 127-292
Author(s):  
I. S. Leadam
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Historical Review ◽  
The Other ◽  
Historical Society ◽  
Sharp Distinction ◽  
Legal Security ◽  
The One ◽  
At Will

In the ‘English Historical Review’ for April (1893) Professor Ashley offers some criticisms upon the ‘Introduction to the Inquisition of 1517,’ contributed by me to the ‘Transactions of the Royal Historical Society’ for 1892. One object of that Introduction, it may be remembered, was to disprove the assertion of Professor Ashley that at the time when the evictions for inclosure began, and until ‘towards the end of the period,’ ‘the mass of copyholders’ had no legal security. In my view, the manorial records, the compilations of laws in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the practice of the courts, even the treatises of the jurists when critically scrutinised, led to the conclusion not merely that copyholders enjoyed protection in legal theory, but that their predecessors in title, the villeins, had done so before them. I drew no distinction in this matter between customary tenants and copyholders, as Professor Ashley appears to suppose, but showed that security extended even to villeins by blood, or ‘nativi,’ on custo-mary lands. Professor Ashley's proposition that ‘customary tenants’ and ‘copyholders’ were equivalent terms was never doubted by me, and is irrelevant to my argument. Indeed, it is assumed by me on the very pages to which he refers. ‘Mr. Leadam,’ he says, ‘draws a sharp distinction between “copyholders” on the one side and “tenants at will” on the other—a distinction which one may doubt whether the men of the sixteenth century would have felt so keenly.’ The distinction, as those who turn to the passage will see, is between ‘copyholders,’ used in Fitzherbert's sense as equivalent to customary tenants, who were ‘tenants at will according to the custom of the manor,’ and ‘tenants at will at Common Law.’

Willing Evil

2020 ◽  
Vol 94 (2) ◽  
pp. 305-322
Author(s):  
Henrik Lagerlund ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
The Other ◽  
Natural Context ◽  
History Of ◽  
William Ockham ◽  
The One ◽  
Do So

In this article, I present two virtually unknown sixteenth-century views of human freedom, that is, the views of Bartolomaeus de Usingen (1465–1532) and Jodocus Trutfetter (1460–1519) on the one hand and John Mair (1470–1550) on the other. Their views serve as a natural context and partial background to the more famous debate on human freedom between Martin Luther (1483–1556) and Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466–1536) from 1524–1526. Usingen and Trutfetter were Luther’s philosophy teachers in Erfurt. In a passage from Book III of John Mair’s commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics from 1530, he seems to defend a view of human freedom by which we can will evil for the sake of evil. Very few thinkers in the history of philosophy have defended such a view. The most famous medieval thinker to do so is William Ockham (1288–1347). To illustrate how radical this view is, I place him in the historical context of such thinkers as Plato, Augustine, Buridan, and Descartes.

The Legal and Political Philosophy of Leonard Nelson

1941 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 437-453
Author(s):  
Levi D. Gresh
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
The Other ◽  
Legal Philosophy ◽  
Human History ◽  
Judicial Decision ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
Historical School ◽  
Principles Of Justice ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The One

The legal philosophy of Nelson is fundamentally a liberal doctrine. It is, on the one hand, opposed to the philosophy which places a supreme trust in human reason and which believes that man can sit down and codify a system of laws in which there will be no gaps; and, on the other, it is opposed to a belief in the necessary rationality of existing institutions in the onward sweep of human history, the idea which was so dear to the Historical School of jurisprudence.Nelson is a Naturrechtlehrer in the sense that he believes in the existence of metajuristic criteria of justice. That there are elemental principles of justice which are universal, and according to which laws are either just or unjust, decisions either right or wrong, Nelson believes cannot be denied. The moment we admit the injustice of a statute, or a judicial decision, we admit that we have used a criterion on which to base our opinion. The mistake we make, however, is to suppose that we can discover criteria, either empirically or logically.

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