Search Results

The book offers the first full‐length treatment in English of Hegel's idea of freedom. It explores his theory of what it is for an individual to be free and his account of the social and political contexts in which freedom is developed, realized, and sustained. The book investigates a number of central questions concerning Hegel's ethics and political theory. Is Hegel's outlook unacceptably conservative? Can freedom be equated with rational self‐determination? Is there any special connection between freedom and citizenship? By offering interpretations of Hegel's views on these and other questions, the book develops a novel ‘civic humanist’ reading of Hegel's social philosophy, one that restores to its proper, central place Hegel's idea of freedom. The book is written in a clear and jargon‐free style and will be of interest to anyone concerned with Hegel's ethical, social, and political thought and the sources of contemporary ideas about freedom, community, and the state.

In 1539, Cardinal Jacopo Sadoleto, Bishop of Carpentras, addressed a letter to the magistrates and citizens of Geneva, asking them to return to the Roman Catholic faith. John Calvin replied to Sadoleto, defending the adoption of the Protestant reforms. Sadoleto's letter and Calvin's reply constitute one of the most interesting exchanges of Roman Catholic/Protestant views during the Reformation and an excellent introduction to the great religious controversy of the 16th century. These statements are not in vacuo of a Roman Catholic and Protestant position. They were drafted in the midst of the religious conflict that was then dividing Europe. And they reflect too the temperaments and personal histories of the men who wrote them. Sadoleto's letter has an irenic approach, an emphasis on the unity and peace of the Church, highly characteristic of the Christian Humanism he represented. Calvin's reply is in part a personal defense, an apologia pro vita sua, that records his own religious experience. Its taut, comprehensive argument is characteristic of the disciplined and logical mind of the author of The Institutes of the Christian Religion.

Based on forty years' interviewing experience, this book illustrates the variety of religious, spiritual, and other beliefs held by older people. It provides models of research procedure, especially in the context of bereavement. Participants include not only British Christians, but also Muslims, Humanists, and witnesses of the Soviet persecution of religion. The author argues that both welfare professionals and gerontologists need to pay far more consideration to belief as a constituent of well-being in later life. The book looks to the future and increasing diversity of choice in matters of belief among Britain and Europe's older citizens as a consequence of immigration and globalisation.

A collection of original and previously unpublished essays concerned with the function of scholarship in both the invention and the reception of Milton’s writings in poetry and prose. Following the editors’ introduction to the collection, the eleven essays examine the nature of Milton’s own formidable scholarship and its implications for his prose and poetry–“scholarly Milton” the writer–as well as subsequent scholars’ historical and theoretical framing of Milton studies as an object of scholarly attention–“scholarly Milton” as at first an emergent and later an established academic discipline. The essays are particularly concerned with the topics of the ethical ends of learning, of Milton’s attention to the trivium within the Renaissance humanist educational system, and the development of scholarly commentary on Milton’s writings.

How can stories function as expressions of kindness to others, and how might the narratives we live by then affect our behaviour in the world? Is there such a thing as a ‘humanistic drama’? This book attempts to clarify the narrative conditions of humanism, asking how we can use stories to complicate our understanding of others, and questioning the ethics and efficacy of attempts to represent human social complexity in fiction. With case studies of films like Parenthood (1989), Junebug (2005), Little Miss Sunshine (2006) and The Kids Are All Right (2010), this original study synthesises leading discourses on media and cognition, evolutionary anthropology, literature and film analysis into a new theory of the storytelling instinct.

This book presents a history of modern logic from the Middle Ages through the end of the 20th century. In addition to a history of symbolic logic, the book also examines developments in the philosophy of logic and philosophical logic in modern times. The book begins with chapters on late medieval developments and logic and philosophy of logic from Humanism to Kant. The following chapters focus on the emergence of symbolic logic with special emphasis on the relations between logic and mathematics, on the one hand, and on logic and philosophy, on the other. This discussion is completed by a chapter on the themes of judgment and inference from 1837–1936. The book contains a section on the development of mathematical logic from 1900–1935, followed by a section on main trends in mathematical logic after the 1930s. The book goes on to discuss modal logic from Kant till the late 20th century, and logic and semantics in the 20th century; the philosophy of alternative logics; the philosophical aspects of inductive logic; the relations between logic and linguistics in the 20th century; the relationship between logic and artificial intelligence; and ends with a presentation of the main schools of Indian logic.

This book explores the reception of Augustine of Hippo in the European Reformations. In this religious revolution Augustine was a highly contested authority, with different parties assimilating his thought in contrasting ways. This flexible reception raises fundamental questions about the significance of Augustine's thought in the Reformation period. It can also illuminate the relationship between religious change and the new intellectual culture of Renaissance humanism, with its famous claim to return to the classical sources. Based on a variety of printed and manuscript sources, this study seeks to break new ground on three levels. It systematically grounds the reception of ideas in the history of reading and the material culture of books and manuscripts. Second, it is not restricted to particular confessional parties or geographic boundaries, but offers a cross-confessional account of Augustine's appropriation in early modern Europe. Third, on a conceptual level, this book contributes to a more advanced understanding of the nature of intellectual authority in the early modern period. The book is organized around the production, circulation and consumption of Augustine's works. It studies the impact of print, humanist scholarship and confessional divisions on Augustine's reception. It examines how editors managed patristic knowledge through search tools and anthologies. It illuminates how individual readers used their copies, and how they applied their knowledge in public debates. All this shows that the emerging confessional pressures did not just restrict, but also promote intellectual life. It furthermore reveals that humanism, despite its claim to return to the sources, continued to facilitate selective, purposeful reading styles.

Early modern dietaries are prose texts recommending the best way to maintain physical and psychological well-being. This modern spelling edition is the first to make available to a modern audience three of the most important dietaries from the sixteenth century. The dietaries contained in this volume are Thomas Elyot's Castle of Health, Andrew Boorde's Compendious Regiment, and William Bullein's Government of Health, all popular and influential works that were typical of the genre. These works are here introduced, contextualized and, most importantly, edited for the first time, thus making them more readily available to scholars and students of Renaissance culture. Dietaries illuminate attitudes to food and diet in the period as well as ideas about how lifestyle impacts upon physical and psychological health, for example how much and what type of exercise one should take and how to sleep (for how long and in what position). Introductory material explores the dietary genre, its relationship to humanism, humoral theory, and the wide range of authorities with which the dietary authories engaged. The volume also provides an introduction to each of the works, including a biography of the author and a discussion of what is distinct about their book as well as an examination of the bibliographical and publication history of their dietary. In addition, the reader will benefit from comprehensive explanatory notes and appendices that provide prefaces to earlier editions, a glossary of words commonly used, and a list of authorities and works cited or alluded to in the dietaries.

The first of two volumes, this collection of essays on Scots law represents a selection of the most cited articles published by Professor John W. Cairns over a distinguished career in legal history. It is a mark of his international eminence that much of his prolific output has been published outside of the United Kingdom, in a wide variety of journals and collections. The consequence is that some of his most valuable writing has appeared in sources which are difficult to locate. This collection covers the foundation and continuity of Scots law from sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Scotland through the eighteenth-century influence of Dutch Humanism into the nineteenth century and the further development of the Scots legal system and profession.

After the humanism/anti-humanism debates of the 1940s and ’50s, and after the ‘death of man’ in the linguistic philosophy of the late twentieth-century, French philosophy today is laying fresh claim to the human. This is not to be mistaken for a return to previous ideas of the human, nor is it posthumanism, strictly speaking. It is a series of fundamentally independent and yet strikingly simultaneous initiatives arising in the writing of diverse French thinkers to transform and rework the figure of the human. This book brings together these new figures of the human for the first time, offering the a critique of this contemporary trend in terms of the three categories: the human as ‘capacity’ (Badiou and Meillassoux), as ‘substance’ (Malabou) and as ‘relation’ (Serres and Latour). Tracing these varied transformations of the human makes visible for the first time one of the most widespread, surprising and potentially transformative trends in contemporary French thought. This book draws out both the promises and perils inherent in today’s attempts to rethink humanity’s relation to “nature” and “culture”, to the objects that surround us, to the possibility of social and political change, to ecology and to our own brains, arguing that the stakes of this project are high for our technologically advanced but socially atomised and ecologically vulnerable world.

This book surveys early modern ‘sacred history’, i.e. the historiography of the Christian Church, its leaders and saints, and its institutional and doctrinal developments, in the two centuries c.1450–1650. Thirteen thematic chapters examine the influence of Renaissance humanism, religious reform, and other political, intellectual, and social developments of these two centuries on the writing of ecclesiastical history in its various forms. These diverse genres of historical writing, inherited from medieval culture, included saints’ lives, diocesan histories, national chronicles, and travel accounts. Early chapters examine Catholic and Protestant traditions of sacred historiography in Western Europe, especially Italy and Switzerland. Subsequent chapters examine particular instances of sacred historiography in Germany, Central Europe, Spain, England, Ireland, France, and Portuguese India and developments in Christian art historiography and Holy Land antiquarianism. With deep medieval roots, ecclesiastical history was generally a conservative enterprise, often serving to reinforce confessional, national, regional, dynastic, or local identities. But writers of sacred history innovated in research methods and in techniques of scholarly production, especially after the advent of print. The demand for sacred history was particularly acute in the various movements for religious reform, in both Catholic and Protestant traditions. After the Renaissance, many writers sought to apply humanist critical principles to writing about the Church, but the sceptical thrust of humanist historiography threatened to undermine many ecclesiastical traditions, and religious historians often had to wrestle with tensions between criticism and piety.

The immense success of the Italian romance or chivalric epic between the mid-14th century and the 16th century constitutes a striking paradox. The flowering of the genre, between the composition of Boccaccio's Teseida and the Orlando Furioso of Ariosto occurred in precisely the same period as the emergence of Humanism and the revival of classical culture and literature based on re-readings of ancient texts. The two cultural phenomena — of medieval, vernacular narratives and the imitation of classical texts, veneration for classical antiquity — seem antithetical. Through an analysis of aspects of both the cultural context and major literary texts, this book shows that the traditional distinction of popular versus élite culture cannot be maintained. The book reveals a process of syncretism and symbiosis through which the romance epic adapted to the challenges posed by the classical revival, absorbing and rewriting elements of classical texts into the tradition of the matter of France and the matter of Britain to create a new ‘matter of Italy’ — texts which appealed to all levels of society.