Freedom and the Construction of Europe
Freedom and the Construction of Europe
Martin van Gelderen, European University Institute, Florence
Freedom, today perceived simply as a human right, was a continually contested idea in the early modern period. In Freedom and the Construction of Europe an international group of scholars explore the richness, diversity and complexity of thinking about freedom in the shaping of modernity. Volume 1 examines debates about religious and constitutional liberties, as well as exploring the tensions between free will and divine omnipotence across a continent of proliferating religious denominations. Volume 2 considers free persons and free states, examining differing views about freedom of thought and action and their relations to conceptions of citizenship. Debates about freedom have been fundamental to the construction of modern Europe, but represent a part of our intellectual heritage that is rarely examined in depth. These volumes provide materials for thinking in fresh ways not merely about the concept of freedom, but how it has come to be understood in our own time.
- Truly world-class team of contributors assembled by two of the world's leading historians of ideas
- Discussion ranges across the length and breadth of Europe, exploring a wide range of thinkers, political systems and Protestant, Catholic and Islamic states
- Sheds fresh light on a neglected part of Europe's intellectual heritage, which is as resonant today as in centuries past
Product details
April 2013Hardback
9781107033078
419 pages
253 × 180 × 27 mm
0.91kg
Available
Table of Contents
- Introduction Quentin Skinner
- Part I. Free Persons and Freedom of Action:
- 1. Human freedom and Jesuit moral theology Annabel Brett
- 2. Freedom and self-possession: the case of Montaigne's Essais Felicity Green
- 3. Autonomy and inner freedom: Lipsius and the revival of stoicism Freya Sierhuis
- 4. Freedom of the will as a basis for equality: Descartes, Princess Elisabeth and Poullain de la Barre Martina Reuter
- 5. Language as a means and an obstacle to freedom: the case of Moses Mendelssohn Avi Lifschitz
- Part II. Free Citizens and the State:
- 6. Liberty and citizenship in early modern English political discourse Iain Hampsher-Monk
- 7. Free elections and freedom of speech in English republican thought Antti Tahvanainen
- 8. John Milton's free citizens and the politics of the family Rosanna Cox
- 9. Vattel's Rousseau: Jus Gentium and the natural liberty of states Theodore Christov
- 10. The state of freedom: Kant and his conservative critics Reidar Maliks
- 11. Freedom and state action in German Enlightenment thought Alexander Schmidt
- 12. The political conditions of free agency: the case of Mary Wollstonecraft Lena Halldenius
- Part III. Freedom and the Limits of Europe:
- 13. The idea of freedom in missionary writings about the new world Catherine Ballériaux
- 14. From European to cosmopolitan freedom Fonna Forman
- 15. Is political freedom an Islamic value? Michael Cook.
