From Personal Duties Towards Personal Rights: Late Medieval and Early Modern Political Thought, 1300-1600

AbstractIn contrast to recent commentators on Quentin Skinner's Foundations of Modern Political Thought, this work argues that Skinner's approach to the development of the modern theory of the state is strictly consistent with his earlier methodological proposals. But it is also established that Skinner's consistency ultimately leaves him without a “genuinely historical” basis for a unified state-tradition within late medieval and early modern Europe. The article proposes an alternative historical methodology which allows for the explanation of persisting traditions of discourse (such as that of the state) within a coherent historical framework.

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Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought

The Oxford Handbook of Classics in Contemporary Political Theory ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198717133.013.19 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Don Herzog

Keyword(s):

Early Modern ◽

Political Theory ◽

Political Thought ◽

Reference Book ◽

History Of Political Thought ◽

Late Medieval ◽

History Of ◽

Multiple Languages ◽

Cambridge School

In The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, Quentin Skinner has three aims: creating a sort of reference book for hundreds of primary texts in multiple languages, illuminating a more general historical theme using late medieval and early modern political texts, and giving us a history of political thought with a genuinely historical character. Skinner allows us to see political theorists creatively wrestling with difficult political problems of their day, and attempting to solve them through their writing. Skinner’s critics, however, cannot shake the sense that placing these texts in historical contexts robs them of some of their profundity and value as works of political theory. This chapter examines some of Skinner’s treatments of particular authors, notes some difficulties with the book’s methods, and situates the debate around Foundations within the emergence of a self-conscious Cambridge School.

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Late medieval and early modern cloth seals in the collection of the Hungarian National Museum

Archaeologiai Értesítő ◽

10.1556/archert.139.2014.9 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 139 (1) ◽

pp. 193-237 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Maxim Mordovin

Keyword(s):

Early Modern ◽

National Museum ◽

Late Medieval

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Philosophic Pride

10.23943/princeton/9780691152080.001.0001 ◽

2012 ◽

Cited By ~ 12

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.

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