Panaetius (c.185–c.110 BC)

Author(s):  
Stephen A. White

Panaetius, a Greek philosopher from Rhodes, brought new vitality to Stoicism in the second century bc by shifting the focus of its ethical theory from the idealized sage to the practical problems of ordinary people. Working a century after Chrysippus had systematized Stoicism, Panaetius is often labelled the founder of ‘Middle Stoicism’ for defending new and generally more moderate positions on several issues. Because none of his writings survive, his influence is hard to gauge precisely and easily underrated. But his impact, especially in Rome where he was closely associated with many in the ruling elite, was profound. His emphasis on public service and the obligations imposed by power and high station probably helped shape the ideology of Roman imperialism. Through Cicero, whose writings preserve many of his ideas, he had lasting influence, especially on early modern moral and political thought.

1994 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 133-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve King

Re-creating the social, economic and demographic life-cycles of ordinary people is one way in which historians might engage with the complex continuities and changes which underlay the development of early modern communities. Little, however, has been written on the ways in which historians might deploy computers, rather than card indexes, to the task of identifying such life cycles from the jumble of the sources generated by local and national administration. This article suggests that multiple-source linkage is central to historical and demographic analysis, and reviews, in broad outline, some of the procedures adopted in a study which aims at large scale life cycle reconstruction.


Author(s):  
Christopher Brooke

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.


2021 ◽  
pp. 147488512110020
Author(s):  
Alexandra Oprea

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.


2019 ◽  
Vol 244 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Coast

Abstract The voice of the people is assumed to have carried little authority in early modern England. Elites often caricatured the common people as an ignorant multitude and demanded their obedience, deference and silence. Hostility to the popular voice was an important element of contemporary political thought. However, evidence for a very different set of views can be found in numerous polemical tracts written between the Reformation and the English Civil War. These tracts claimed to speak for the people, and sought to represent their alleged grievances to the monarch or parliament. They subverted the rules of petitioning by speaking for ‘the people’ as a whole and appealing to a wide audience, making demands for the redress of grievances that left little room for the royal prerogative. In doing so, they contradicted stereotypes about the multitude, arguing that the people were rational, patriotic and potentially better informed about the threats to the kingdom than the monarch themselves. ‘Public opinion’ was used to confer legitimacy on political and religious demands long before the mass subscription petitioning campaigns of the 1640s.


2012 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 134-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
SHEILAGH OGILVIE ◽  
MARKUS KÜPKER ◽  
JANINE MAEGRAITH

The “less-developed” interior of early modern Europe, especially the rural economy, is often regarded as financially comatose. This article investigates this view using a rich data set of marriage and death inventories for seventeenth-century Germany. It first analyzes the characteristics of debts, examining borrowing purposes, familial links, communal ties, and documentary instruments. It then explores how borrowing varied with gender, age, marital status, occupation, date, and asset portfolio. It finds that ordinary people, even in a “less-developed” economy in rural central Europe, sought to invest profitably, smooth consumption, bridge low liquidity, and hold savings in financial form.


2014 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 301-326 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas De Vijlder ◽  
Michael Limberger

Indebted cities were a widespread phenomenon during theAncien Régime. However, some found ways to innovate the management of their municipal debt, whilst others fell prey to over-indebtedness or default. In this article we have left the success stories aside and focused on the latter. Using early modern Antwerp as a case study, we have disentangled the underlying mechanisms that ultimately lead to over-indebtedness and (in some cases) default. Whilst the economic climate and the relationship between city and state have been rightly identified as major factors in the previous literature, our contribution brings another element to the table, namely, the inflexibility of long-established rent arrangements and the entanglement between the ruling elite and therentiers. We show that there was a strong overlap between both groups, which had a huge impact on the financial policy of cities during the early modern period.


2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 16
Author(s):  
Dmytriieva Valeriia

<p>The article is aimed at scrutinizing a variety of modernistic writings in a Bluebeard fairytale tradition. It is intended to show what is to be gained by studying texts in relation to the contexts in which they were produced. The period considered here is that of the late XIX and early XX centuries. This takes us into discussing patriarchal authority in the political thought of the early modern time in France and that of the Victorian England.The “Bluebeard” fairytale changes in the domain of gender as a response to certain historical and psychological changes are analyzed. A wide range of writings is investigated to reveal the contribution made by the French and English authors in the field of literature. The analysis implies that certain feministic ideas which grew out of social changes in the society of France and England have provoked some archetypal alterations in the texts of French and English modernists.</p>


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