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The Languages of Political Theory in Early-Modern Europe

The Languages of Political Theory in Early-Modern Europe

The Languages of Political Theory in Early-Modern Europe

Anthony Pagden
June 1990
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Paperback
9780521386661
£47.00
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    This volume studies the concept of a political 'language', of a discourse composed of shared vocabularies, idioms and rhetorical strategies, which has been widely influential on recent work in the history of political thought. The collection brings together a number of essays by a distinguished group of international scholars, on the four dominant languages in use in Europe between the end of the fourteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century. They are: the language of political Aristotelianism and the natural law; the language of classical republicanism; the language of commerce and the commercial society; and the language of a science of politics. Each author has chosen a single aspect of his or her language, sometimes the work of a single author, in one case the history of a single team, and shown how it determined the shape and development of that language, and the extent to which each language was a response to the challenge of other modes of discourse.

    Product details

    June 1990
    Paperback
    9780521386661
    376 pages
    228 × 152 × 25 mm
    0.609kg
    Available

    Table of Contents

    • Acknowledgements
    • Introduction Anthony Pagden
    • 1. The concept of a language and the métier d'historien: some considerations on practice J. G. A. Pocock
    • Part I:
    • 2. The history of the word politicus in early-modern Europe Nicolai Rubinstein
    • 3. Civil science in the Renaissance: the problem of interpretation Donald Kelley
    • 4. Dispossessing the barbarian: the language of Spanish Thomism and the debate over the property rights of the American Indians Anthony Pagden
    • 5. The 'modern' theory of natural law Richard Tuck
    • Part II:
    • 6. Sir Thomas More's Utopia and the language of Renaissance humanism Quentin Skinner
    • 7. The concept of ordre and the language of classical republicanism in Jean-Jacques Rousseau Maurizio Viroli
    • 8. The language of seventeenth-century republicanism in the United Provinces: Dutch or European? Eco Haitma Mulier
    • 9. The civil religion of James Harrington Mark Goldie
    • Part III:
    • 10. Liberty, luxury and the pursuit of happiness M. M. Goldsmith
    • 11. The language of sociability and commerce: Samuel Pufendorf and the theoretical foundations of the 'Four-Stages Theory' Istvan Hont
    • 12. 'Da metafisico a mercatante': Antonio Genovesi and the development of a new language of commerce in eighteenth-century Naples Richard Bellamy
    • Part IV:
    • 13. The criticism of rhetorical historiography and the ideal of scientific method: history, nature and science in the political language of Thomas Hobbes Gigliola Rossini
    • 14. Saint-Simon and the passage from political to social science Robert Wokler
    • 15. Alexander Hamilton and the language of political science Judith N. Shklar
    • Index.
      Contributors
    • Anthony Pagden, J. G. A. Pocock, Nicolai Rubinstein, Donald Kelley, Richard Tuck, Quentin Skinner, Maurizio Viroli, Eco Haitma Mulier, Mark Goldie, M. M. Goldsmith, Istvan Hont, Richard Bellamy, Gigliola Rossini, Robert Wokler, Judith N. Shklar

    • Editor
    • Anthony Pagden