Download or read book Political Meritocracy in Renaissance Italy written by James Hankins and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2023-03-21 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first full-length study of Francesco Patrizi—the most important political philosopher of the Italian Renaissance before Machiavelli—who sought to reconcile conflicting claims of liberty and equality in the service of good governance. At the heart of the Italian Renaissance was a longing to recapture the wisdom and virtue of Greece and Rome. But how could this be done? A new school of social reformers concluded that the best way to revitalize corrupt institutions was to promote an ambitious new form of political meritocracy aimed at nurturing virtuous citizens and political leaders. The greatest thinker in this tradition of virtue politics was Francesco Patrizi of Siena, a humanist philosopher whose writings were once as famous as Machiavelli’s. Patrizi wrote two major works: On Founding Republics, addressing the enduring question of how to reconcile republican liberty with the principle of merit; and On Kingship and the Education of Kings, which lays out a detailed program of education designed to instill the qualities necessary for political leadership—above all, practical wisdom and sound character. The first full-length study of Patrizi’s life and thought in any language, Political Meritocracy in Renaissance Italy argues that Patrizi is a thinker with profound lessons for our time. A pioneering advocate of universal literacy who believed urban planning could help shape civic values, he concluded that limiting the political power of the wealthy, protecting the poor from debt slavery, and reducing the political independence of the clergy were essential to a functioning society. These ideas were radical in his day. Far more than an exemplar of his time, Patrizi deserves to rank alongside the great political thinkers of the Renaissance: Machiavelli, Thomas More, and Jean Bodin.
Download or read book Virtue Politics written by James Hankins and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2019-12-17 with total page 769 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Helen and Howard Marraro Prize A Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year “Perhaps the greatest study ever written of Renaissance political thought.” —Jeffrey Collins, Times Literary Supplement “Magisterial...Hankins shows that the humanists’ obsession with character explains their surprising indifference to particular forms of government. If rulers lacked authentic virtue, they believed, it did not matter what institutions framed their power.” —Wall Street Journal “Puts the politics back into humanism in an extraordinarily deep and far-reaching way...For generations to come, all who write about the political thought of Italian humanism will have to refer to it; its influence will be...nothing less than transformative.” —Noel Malcolm, American Affairs “[A] masterpiece...It is only Hankins’s tireless exploration of forgotten documents...and extraordinary endeavors of editing, translation, and exposition that allow us to reconstruct—almost for the first time in 550 years—[the humanists’] three compelling arguments for why a strong moral character and habits of truth are vital for governing well. Yet they are as relevant to contemporary democracy in Britain, and in the United States, as to Machiavelli.” —Rory Stewart, Times Literary Supplement “The lessons for today are clear and profound.” —Robert D. Kaplan Convulsed by a civilizational crisis, the great thinkers of the Renaissance set out to reconceive the nature of society. Everywhere they saw problems. Corrupt and reckless tyrants sowing discord and ruling through fear; elites who prized wealth and status over the common good; religious leaders preoccupied with self-advancement while feuding armies waged endless wars. Their solution was at once simple and radical. “Men, not walls, make a city,” as Thucydides so memorably said. They would rebuild the fabric of society by transforming the moral character of its citizens. Soulcraft, they believed, was a precondition of successful statecraft. A landmark reappraisal of Renaissance political thought, Virtue Politics challenges the traditional narrative that looks to the Renaissance as the seedbed of modern republicanism and sees Machiavelli as its exemplary thinker. James Hankins reveals that what most concerned the humanists was not reforming institutions so much as shaping citizens. If character mattered more than laws, it would have to be nurtured through a new program of education they called the studia humanitatis: the precursor to our embattled humanities.
Download or read book Virtue Politics written by James Hankins and published by Belknap Press. This book was released on 2019 with total page 769 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: James Hankins challenges the view that the Renaissance was the seedbed of modern republicanism, with Machiavelli as exemplary thinker. What most concerned Renaissance political theorists, Hankins contends, was not reforming laws but shaping citizens. To secure the social good, they fostered virtue through a new program of education: the humanities.
Download or read book Cultures of Charity written by Nicholas Terpstra and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2013-02-14 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Renaissance debates about politics and gender led to pioneering forms of poor relief, devised to help women get a start in life. These included orphanages for illegitimate children and forced labor in workhouses, but also women’s shelters and early forms of maternity benefits, unemployment insurance, food stamps, and credit union savings plans.
Download or read book Plato in the Italian Renaissance 1 1990 written by James Hankins and published by BRILL. This book was released on 1990 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Success and Suppression written by Dag Nikolaus Hasse and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2016-11-28 with total page 683 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Renaissance marked a turning point in Europe’s relationship to Arabic thought. On the one hand, Dag Nikolaus Hasse argues, it was the period in which important Arabic traditions reached the peak of their influence in Europe. On the other hand, it is the time when the West began to forget, and even actively suppress, its debt to Arabic culture. Success and Suppression traces the complex story of Arabic influence on Renaissance thought. It is often assumed that the Renaissance had little interest in Arabic sciences and philosophy, because humanist polemics from the period attacked Arabic learning and championed Greek civilization. Yet Hasse shows that Renaissance denials of Arabic influence emerged not because scholars of the time rejected that intellectual tradition altogether but because a small group of anti-Arab hard-liners strove to suppress its powerful and persuasive influence. The period witnessed a boom in new translations and multivolume editions of Arabic authors, and European philosophers and scientists incorporated—and often celebrated—Arabic thought in their work, especially in medicine, philosophy, and astrology. But the famous Arabic authorities were a prominent obstacle to the Renaissance project of renewing European academic culture through Greece and Rome, and radical reformers accused Arabic science of linguistic corruption, plagiarism, or irreligion. Hasse shows how a mixture of ideological and scientific motives led to the decline of some Arabic traditions in important areas of European culture, while others continued to flourish.
Download or read book Republics and Kingdoms Compared written by Aurelio Lippo Brandolini and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Socratic dialogue set in the court of King Mattias Corvinus of Hungary (the book was written ca. 1490), the work depicts a debate between the king himself and a Florentine merchant. This is the first critical edition and the first translation into any language. --publisher's description.
Download or read book Paradoxes of Inequality in Renaissance Italy written by Samuel K. Cohn, Jr. and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-08-05 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Element explores the longest spell that can be computed from quantifiable fiscal records when the gap between rich and poor narrowed. It was the post-Black-Death century, c. 1375 to c. 1475. Paradoxically, with economic equality and prosperity on the rise, peasants, artisans and shopkeepers suffered losses in political representation and status within cultural spheres. Threatened by growing economic equality after the Black Death, elites preserved and then enhanced their political, social, and cultural distinction predominantly through noneconomic means and within political and cultural spheres. By investigating the interactions between three 'elements'-economics, politics, and culture-this Element presents new facets in the emergence of early Renaissance society in Italy.
Download or read book Being a Jesuit in Renaissance Italy written by Camilla Russell and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2022-04-19 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new history illuminates the Society of Jesus in its first century from the perspective of those who knew it best: the early Jesuits themselves. The Society of Jesus was established in 1540. In the century that followed, thousands sought to become Jesuits and pursue vocations in religious service, teaching, and missions. Drawing on scores of unpublished biographical documents housed at the Roman Jesuit Archive, Camilla Russell illuminates the lives of those who joined the Society, building together a religious and cultural presence that remains influential the world over. Tracing Jesuit life from the Italian provinces to distant missions, Russell sheds new light on the impact and inner workings of the Society. The documentary record reveals a textual network among individual members, inspired by Ignatius of LoyolaÕs Spiritual Exercises. The early Jesuits took stock of both quotidian and spiritual experiences in their own records, which reflect a community where the worldly and divine overlapped. Echoing the SocietyÕs foundational writings, members believed that each JesuitÕs personal strengths and inclinations offered a unique contribution to the wholeÑan attitude that helps explain the SocietyÕs widespread appeal from its first days. Focusing on the JesuitsÕ own words, Being a Jesuit in Renaissance Italy offers a new lens on the history of spirituality, identity, and global exchange in the Renaissance. What emerges is a kind of genetic codeÑa thread connecting the key Jesuit works to the first generations of Jesuits and the Society of Jesus as it exists today.
Download or read book Florence and Beyond written by John M. Najemy and published by Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies. This book was released on 2008 with total page 534 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume celebrates John M. Najemy and his contributions to the study of Florentine and Italian Renaissance history. Over the last three decades, his books and articles on Florentine politics and political thought have substantially revised the narratives and contours of these fields. They have also provided a framework into which he has woven innovative new threads that have emerged in Renaissance social and cultural history. Presented by his many students and friends, the essays aim to highlight his varied interests and to suggest where they may point for future studies of Florence and, indeed, beyond. -- Amazon.com.
Download or read book The Return of Lucretius to Renaissance Florence written by Alison Brown and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2010-05-05 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brown demonstrates how Florentine thinkers used Lucretius—earlier and more widely than has been supposed—to provide a radical critique of prevailing orthodoxies. She enhances our understanding of the “revolution” in sixteenth-century political thinking and our definition of the Renaissance within newly discovered worlds and new social networks.
Download or read book The Duke and the Stars written by Monica Azzolini and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2013-02-11 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Duke and the Stars explores science and medicine as studied and practiced in fifteenth-century Italy, including how astrology was taught in relation to astronomy. It illustrates how the “predictive art” of astrology was often a critical, secretive source of information for Italian Renaissance rulers, particularly in times of crisis.
Download or read book Giannozzo Manetti written by David Marsh and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2019-11-19 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Giannozzo Manetti was one of the most remarkable figures of the Italian Renaissance, though today his works are unfamiliar in English. In this authoritative biography, the first ever in English, David Marsh guides readers through the vast range of Manetti’s writings, which epitomized the new humanist scholarship of the quattrocento.
Download or read book Italy Illuminated written by Biondo Flavio and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 640 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Biondo Flavio was a pioneering figure in the Renaissance discovery of antiquity and popularized the term Middle Age to describe the period between the fall of the Roman Empire and the revival of antiquity in his own time. Italy Illuminated is a topographical work exploring the Roman roots of Italy.
Download or read book History of the Florentine People Books 9 12 Memoirs written by Leonardo Bruni and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 524 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leonardo Bruni was famous in his day as a translator, orator, and historian, and was one of the best-selling authors of the 15th century. Bruni's 'History of the Florentine People' is generally considered the first modern work of history.
Download or read book Forgotten Healers written by Sharon T. Strocchia and published by I Tatti Studies in Italian Ren. This book was released on 2019 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Renaissance Italy women from all walks of life played a central role in health care and the early development of medical science. Observing that the frontlines of care are often found in the household and other spaces thought of as female, Sharon Strocchia encourages us to rethink women's place in the history of medicine.
Download or read book The Politics of Exile in Renaissance Italy written by Christine Shaw and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2000-03-23 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Political exiles were a prominent feature of political life in Renaissance Italy, often a source of intense concern to the states from which they were banished, and a ready instrument for governments wishing to intervene in the affairs of their rivals and enemies. This book, first published in 2000, provides a systematic analysis of the role of exiles in the political life of fifteenth-century Italy. The main focus is on the experiences and reactions of the exiles, and on how Italian states dealt with their own exiles and those of other powers. Siena, notorious in the 1480s for the numbers of her citizens in exile, is used as the model with which other cities are compared. Such a detailed study of the phenomenon of exile also provides alternative perspectives on the nature and power of governments in fifteenth-century Italy, and on ideas about the legitimacy of political authority and political action.
