The Political Thought of Montaigne

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Biancamaria Fontana
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Control Individual ◽  
Old Regime ◽  
Royal Authority ◽  
Degree Of Certainty ◽  
New Type ◽  
New Vision ◽  
Religious Dogma

Presenting Montaigne’s “political” thought is in itself a problematic exercise. While the Essays are relevant to our understanding of sixteenth-century political discourse, and to the broader reflection of political philosophy, Montaigne did not see politics as a separate domain of human activity; indeed, he questioned the possibility to predict with any degree of certainty, and to control individual and collective human behavior. In the Essays the author developed a full-scale critique of Old Regime society, a system built upon relations of personal dependence and servitude: his attack focused on contemporary social practices and on their founding principles: tradition, the law, royal authority, and religious dogma. Montaigne did not advocate the establishment of a new type of regime, as he was convinced that the form of political institutions was largely dependent on habit and custom. He did suggest the possibility of a new vision of community, one based upon greater equality, toleration, communication, and economic exchange.

Hooker, Richard (1554–1600)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
A.S. McGrade
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
Major Work ◽  
Royal Authority ◽  
English Prose ◽  
Single Idea ◽  
The Ideal ◽  
Civil Government

Hooker’s Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (1593–1662) is the first major work of English prose in the fields of philosophy, theology and political theory. After setting out an entire worldview in terms of the single idea of law, Hooker attempted to justify – and, arguably, to transform – the religious and political institutions of his day. Hooker’s work contributed to later, more narrowly political, political thought (Locke cited ‘the judicious Hooker’ at crucial points in his Second Treatise of Civil Government), but the Laws is chiefly significant for articulating the ideal of a society coherent in and through its religion, a body politic which succeeds in being – not merely having – a church. In Hooker’s England this meant that royal authority in religion was extensive, but derived from the community and limited by law. Modern separations of politics from religion and of philosophy from edification have made him difficult to assimilate. More recent critiques of Enlightenment secularism and purely technical philosophy help make him again intelligible.

Fighting Corruption

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valentina Arena
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Roman Republic ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Private Sphere ◽  
The Public ◽  
Republican Rome ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Late Roman

Corruption was seen as a major factor in the collapse of Republican Rome, as Valentina Arena’s subsequent essay “Fighting Corruption: Political Thought and Practice in the Late Roman Republic” argues. It was in reaction to this perception of the Republic’s political fortunes that an array of legislative and institutional measures were established and continually reformed to become more effective. What this chapter shows is that, as in Greece, the public sphere was distinct from the private sphere and, importantly, it was within this distinction that the foundations of anticorruption measures lay. Moreover, it is difficult to defend the existence of a major disjuncture between moralistic discourses and legal-political institutions designed to patrol the public/private divide: both were part of the same discourse and strategy to curb corruption and improve government.

Byzantine Traditions of the Sublime Porte: the Title qayṣar-i Rūm in the Ottoman Political Thought

Istoriya ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (5 (103)) ◽  
pp. 0
Author(s):  
Dmitry Korobeynikov
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The State ◽  
Great Power ◽  
The Sublime

The article is focused on the problem of the title qayṣar-i Rūm, “Caesar of Rome”, which was a traditional title of the Byzantine emperors in Arabic and Persian sources. It is believed that the title was accepted by Mehmed II Fatih after the conquest of Constantinople in 1453. It seems that the Ottoman chancery began to use the title only during the reign of Suleyman the Magnificent. The first evidence thereof was the famous inscription of Suleyman in the fortress of Bender (Bendery, in Moldavia/Moldova) in 1538—1539. The Ottomans recognized themselves as a new Rome only after they went into conflict with a great power in Persia, the state of the Aq-Qoyunlu and the Safawi Empire at the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century. They did so, however, in the categories of their Persianate political culture, and the title qayṣar-i Rūm was believed to have been an equivalent of the title padishah.

scholarly journals Violence by Royal Command: A Judicial ‘Moment’ (1574–1575)

2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-217
Author(s):  
Penny Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Religious Violence ◽  
Royal Authority

Abstract The Saint Bartholomew’s Day massacre remains the defining event of religious violence in sixteenth-century France. Its causes have preoccupied historians, its consequences far less so. While some contemporary observers called into question the nature of absolute royal authority, others defended its use as long as it was cautious and judicious. In the wake of the massacre, however, the opposite seemed to be true, as a series of measures were taken against leading aristocrats at court and in the provinces. These included the close surveillance and virtual imprisonment of the king’s brother and the princes of the blood, swift and exemplary justice meted out to some of their close servants, the incarceration of two marshals of France, and the judicial execution of Protestant commanders. Above all, this ‘judicial moment’ of 1574-5 suggested that the monarchy was engaged on a new and threatening track, as the agent of violence against its own nobility, fuelling further discontent.

scholarly journals Conceptual Vision of the New University in the Works of Modern Scientists: Typology of the Concepts of Innovatisation of the Higher School

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 186-198
Author(s):  
O. B. Voeykova
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Knowledge Economy ◽  
Innovative Model ◽  
Science And Education ◽  
New Type ◽  
New Vision ◽  
The University ◽  
New Industry ◽  
Innovation In Higher Education

This article is devoted to solving the problem of systematizing the existing concepts of innovation in higher education, reflecting the new vision of the university by modern scientists. The author studied the content and conducted a comparative analysis of various concepts relating to the emergence of the future image of the University. First of all, these are the works of the classics of post-industrialism, who defined science and education as a new industry within the emerging knowledge economy and noted the need to form, in this regard, a new type of University. Important potential for understanding the role and place of the University, as well as to get an idea of its supposed (futuristic) model in the new realities have the concepts of innovatization of higher education, the analysis of which is given most of the article. Under the concepts of innovatization of higher education in the article we understand the concept of modern scientists who consider the transformation of the traditional University in its innovative model that meets the needs of the economy and society focused on innovation. The concepts of innovatization are also divided into several types, grouped according to the relevant features, which suggests the possibility of transition to the innovative model of the University in different ways.

Comment: Overcoming His-story? Ms. Hughes's Treatment of Mr. Mill

1979 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 543-554
Author(s):  
George Feaver
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Patron Saint ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
New Vision ◽  
The Right ◽  
Contemporary Liberalism

There is something intrepidly parochial in Patricia Hughes's account of Mill's views. Her very opening statement, with its new vision of society, its “emerging social forces,” its principals “trapped by traditional influences,” sets the tone for the enterprise which follows—an historical melodrama with J. S. Mill, the patron saint of contemporary liberalism, reborn in Canada without his aspergillum, an affable enough character, a sort of Bruno Gerussi of the political thought set, his do-gooder's heart generally in the right place but his head usually muddled: an admirably earnest figure, even, who some how always misses the point but, up to now, has gotten away with it. Our aspiring script-writer intends to set things right, to show how we can redo the storyline (which may require substituting another nineteenth century great in the leading role), so as to combine passion and theory in a really radical vision of a fully liberated society.

Tyranny and Usurpation

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Doyeeta Majumder
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The Political ◽  
History Plays ◽  
Elizabethan Drama ◽  
Political Drama ◽  
English Stage ◽  
The One ◽  
Tragic Drama ◽  
Law Making

This book examines the fraught relationship between the sixteenth-century formulations of the theories of sovereign violence, tyranny and usurpation and the manifestations of these ideas on the contemporary English stage. It will attempt to trace an evolution of the poetics of English and Scottish political drama through the early, middle, and late decades of the sixteenth-century in conjunction with developments in the political thought of the century, linking theatre and politics through the representations of the problematic figure of the usurper or, in Machiavellian terms, the ‘New Prince’. While the early Tudor morality plays are concerned with the legitimate monarch who becomes a tyrant, the later historical and tragic drama of the century foregrounds the figure of the illegitimate monarch who is a tyrant by default. On the one hand the sudden proliferation of usurpation plots in Elizabethan drama and the transition from the legitimate tyrant to the usurper tyrant is linked to the dramaturgical shift from the allegorical morality play tradition to later history plays and tragedies, and on the other it is reflective of a poetic turn in political thought which impelled political writers to conceive of the state and sovereignty as a product of human ‘poiesis’, independent of transcendental legitimization. The poetics of political drama and the emergence of the idea of ‘poiesis’ in the political context merge in the figure of the nuove principe: the prince without dynastic claims who creates his sovereignty by dint of his own ‘virtu’ and through an act of law-making violence.

A Model Republic? The United States in the Italian Revolutions of 1848

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Axel Körner
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
Italian Experience ◽  
National Movement ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Revolution

This chapter examines how protagonists of the Italian revolutions of 1848, including Giuseppe Montanelli and Carlo Cattaneo, engaged with American political institutions by looking at the cases of Lombardy, Tuscany, and Sicily. Before discussing the role played by the United States of America in Italian political thought of 1848, the chapter considers Italian experience of the revolutions of 1820–1821 and 1830–1831, both of which marked a watershed for the peninsula's national movement. It shows that Italian revolutionaries addressed the United States with very different emphasis, illustrating how references to the United States could serve very different ideological purposes. With respect to Tuscany's long history of engagement with the United States, there were far fewer references to American political institutions than for instance in Sicily, where the revolutionaries adopted a monarchical constitution. The chapter also analyzes Cattaneo's involvement in the Revolution in Lombardy and his understanding of American democracy.

In Search of a Lost Archipelago

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aurelian Craiutu
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Niccolo Machiavelli ◽  
Blaise Pascal ◽  
Michel De Montaigne ◽  
Niccolò Machiavelli ◽  
Ethical Concept ◽  
History Of

This chapter examines different visions of moderation in the history of French political thought. It first considers the reluctance to theorize about moderation, in part because moderation has often been understood as a vague virtue. It then discusses moderation in the classical and Christian traditions, focusing on the works of Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero, followed by an analysis of the writings of sixteenth-century political thinkers such as Niccolò Machiavelli, Claude de Seyssel, Louis Le Roy, Étienne Pasquier, Michel de Montaigne, Blaise Pascal, and French moralists such as La Bruyère and François de La Rochefoucauld. It also describes the transformation of moderation from a predominantly ethical concept into a prominent political virtue. Finally, it explores the views of authors such as David Hume and Jean-Jacques Rousseau on fanaticism in relation to moderation.

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