Download or read book The Defeat of a Renaissance Intellectual written by Francesco Guicciardini and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2019-05-17 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A papal advisor and sixteenth-century power broker, Francesco Guicciardini wrote voluminously throughout his time in service to the Medici. The texts in this volume chart his career chronologically, revealing an intellectual whose philosophy of self-interest failed not only to perceive the interests of others but ultimately to serve his own. During Guicciardini’s life, Florentine politics was dominated by the struggle of republican leaders to retain civic political autonomy against the ambitions of the Medici family. Like Machiavelli and Petrarch, and arguably even Dante, Guicciardini was what Carlo Celli calls an “establishment intellectual,” one whose talents furthered the hegemony of authoritarian rule against the interests of his own class. The letters, treatises, reports, and orations included in this volume span Guicciardini’s long career, from his first appointment as ambassador to the Spanish court to just a few years before his forced retirement from political life. They reveal Guicciardini’s role as a protagonist in the events related in his famous History of Italy (1540), shed light on the self-recriminations and remorse that sometimes gnawed at his conscience, and explain why, ultimately, Guicciardini fell from political grace into irrelevance. Through these previously untranslated writings, The Defeat of a Renaissance Intellectual evidences the hard lessons Guicciardini learned in service to the Medici: working within a corrupt system does not lead to solutions, and reason and self-interest are not foolproof guides for predicting human behavior. This book will appeal especially to scholars who study the Medici clan, the Italian Wars, and Renaissance politics and history.
Download or read book Renaissance and Reformation written by Anthony Levi and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a revisionist examination of the development of European intellectual culture between the high middle ages and 1550. It draws particular attention to the roles of Marsilio Ficino and Erasmus and analyzes major aspects of the work of Aquinas, Soctus, and Ockham, before moving on to Petrarch, Valla, Pico della Mirandola, the devotio moderna, More, Luther, Calvin, and their contemporaries. It establishes radically new perspectives on the Renaissance and the Reformation and on the continuity between them. "It is an important work and sets forth new constructs about Renaissance and Reformation that must be considered."--Marion Leathers Kuntz, American Historical Review "[Levi's] skillfully navigated intellectual journey is a tour de force."--Choice "A refreshingly broad vision of the period."--Times Literary Supplement "A massive and learned work. . . . [A] great wealth of learning."--History: Reviews of New Books
Download or read book The Intellectual Struggle for Florence written by Arthur Field and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-07-14 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Intellectual Struggle for Florence is an analysis of the ideology that developed in Florence with the rise of the Medici, during the early fifteenth century, the period long recognized as the most formative of the early Renaissance. Instead of simply describing early Renaissance ideas, this volume attempts to relate these ideas to specific social and political conflicts of the fifteenth century, and specifically to the development of the Medici regime. It first shows how the Medici party came to be viewed as fundamentally different from their opponents, the 'oligarchs', then explores the intellectual world of these oligarchs (the 'traditional culture'). As political conflicts sharpened, some humanists (Leonardo Bruni and Francesco Filelfo) with close ties to oligarchy still attempted to enrich traditional culture with classical learning, while others, such as Niccolò Niccoli and Poggio Bracciolini, rejected tradition outright and created a new ideology for the Medici party. What is striking is the extent to which Niccoli and Poggio were able to turn a Latin or classical culture into a 'popular culture', and how the culture of the vernacular remained traditional and oligarchic.
Download or read book The Italian Renaissance and the Origin of the Humanities written by Christopher S. Celenza and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-09-09 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Connecting to issues in the humanities today, this book shows how the Italian Renaissance influenced and changed Early Modern Europe.
Download or read book Textual Spaces written by Richard E. Keatley and published by . This book was released on 2017-12 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Culture and Politics of Regime Change in Italy c 1494 c 1559 written by Alexander Lee and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-09-30 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers the first comprehensive survey of regime change in Italy in the period c.1494–c.1559. Far from being a purely modern phenomenon, regime change was a common feature of life in Renaissance Italy – no more so than during the Italian Wars (1494–1559). During those turbulent years, governments rose and fell with dizzying regularity. Some changes of regime were peaceful; others were more violent. But whenever a new reggimento took power, old social tensions were laid bare and new challenges emerged – any of which could easily threaten its survival. This provoked a variety of responses, both from newly established regimes and from their opponents. Constitutional reforms were proposed and enacted; civic rituals were developed; works of art were commissioned; literary works were penned; and occasionally, aspects of material culture were pressed into service, as well. Comparative in approach and broad in scope, it offers a provocative new view of the diverse political, culture, and economic factors, which ensured the survival (or demise) of regimes – not only in "major" polities like Florence, Rome, and Venice, but also in less-well-studied regions like Savoy. This book will appeal to researchers and students alike interested in cultural, political, and military history.
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 Civil Religion in Modern Political Philosophy written by Steven Frankel and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2020-07-15 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inspired by Machiavelli, modern philosophers held that the tension between the goals of biblical piety and the goals of political life needed to be resolved in favor of the political, and they attempted to recast and delimit traditional Christian teaching to serve and stabilize political life accordingly. This volume examines the arguments of those thinkers who worked to remake Christianity into a civil religion in the early modern and modern periods. Beginning with Machiavelli and continuing through to Alexis de Tocqueville, the essays in this collection explain in detail the ways in which these philosophers used religious and secular writing to build a civil religion in the West. Early chapters examine topics such as Machiavelli’s comparisons of Christianity with Roman religion, Francis Bacon’s cherry-picking of Christian doctrines in the service of scientific innovation, and Spinoza’s attempt to replace long-held superstitions with newer, “progressive” ones. Other essays probe the scripture-based, anti-Christian argument that religion must be subordinate to politics espoused by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and David Hume, both of whom championed reason over divine authority. Crucially, the book also includes a study of civil religion in America, with chapters on John Locke, Montesquieu, and the American Founders illuminating the relationships among religious and civil history, acts, and authority. The last chapter is an examination of Tocqueville’s account of civil religion and the American regime. Detailed, thought-provoking, and based on the careful study of original texts, this survey of religion and politics in the West will appeal to scholars in the history of political philosophy, political theory, and American political thought.
Download or read book Machiavelli s Discourses on Livy New Readings written by Diogo Pires Aurélio and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-10-11 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Original scholarly essays by leading philosophers, which bring to life Machiavelli’s lengthiest and most challenging work.
Download or read book Renaissance Thought written by Robert Black and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a fascinating collection of essays focusing on humanism and thought and other key aspects of Renaissance culture such as philology, political thought and scholastic and platonic philosophy. An essential read for all students of this era.
Download or read book Sudanese Intellectuals in the Global Milieu written by Gada Kadoda and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-03-28 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sudanese Intellectuals in the Global Milieu: Capturing Cultural Capital propels Sudanese intellectuals into the global intellectual milieu and argues for their place in world intellectual history. The contributors posit that Sudan is currently in its most uncertain and perhaps most generative period, as the unrest, conflicts, and upheavals of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries threw Sudanese intellectuals and activists into identity, economic, environmental, religious, and existential crises. Despite these crises, the unrest has created a period of knowledge production and cultural production in Sudan. The contributors to the collection are Sudanese intellectuals who explore the history and evolution of knowledge production, thought, and cultural capital in Sudan.
Download or read book New African Intellectuals and New African Political Thought in the Twentieth Century written by Mbukeni Herbert Mnguni and published by Waxmann Verlag. This book was released on 2015 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is purposely and deliberately entitled New African Intellectuals and New African Political Thought in the Twentieth Century. It encapsulates the recent debate about the political and cultural role played by the New African intellectuals in developing modern African political thought. The authors argue that the "New African Intellectuals" was a culturally and politically dominant movement of the twentieth century, despite the fact that it was suppressed and oppressed by white colonialism and racism. It was a political and cultural expression of the oppressed and disposed people. During its cultural and political splay the "New African Intellectuals" was preoccupied with three inseparable historical issues: forming the concept of the New African, constructing the foundations of African modernity, and formulating the principles of African Nationalism. Offering fresh insights that are both empirically and theoretically informed, this book illuminates the processes and consequences of the New African scholars and writers. The political contribution made by the New African intellectuals is traced from its origins in literature, music and language. The discussion concludes with an exploration of the dilemma faced by African languages as they are dominated by European languages. The authors argue that this dominance has resulted to the petrifaction and mummification of African languages because outstanding, even great African writers are not using them in relation to modern technological and linguistic experience. The authors believe that this broad-ranging book will be of interest to all those studying African politics and culture, and who are concerned with understanding modern African societies in the light of post-colonialism.
Download or read book The Lost Italian Renaissance written by Christopher S. Celenza and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2006-01-09 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A groundbreaking work of intellectual history, The Lost Italian Renaissance uncovers a priceless intellectual legacy suggests provocative new avenues of research.
Download or read book The Scarith of Scornello written by Ingrid D. Rowland and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2004-12-31 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "As recounted here by Ingrid D. Rowland, Curzio preyed on the Italian fixation with ancestry to forge an array of ancient Latin and Etruscan documents. For authenticity's sake, he stashed the counterfeit treasure in scarith (capsules made of hair and mud) near Scornello. To the seventeenth-century Tuscans who were so eager to establish proof of their heritage and history, the scarith symbolized a link to the prestigious culture of their past. But because none of these proud Italians could actually read the ancient Etruscan language, they couldn't know for certain that the documents were frauds. The Scarith of Scornello traces the career of this young scam artist whose "discoveries" reached the Vatican shortly after Galileo was condemned by the Inquisition, inspiring participants on both sides of the affair to clash again - this time over Etruscan history."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Contesting the Renaissance written by William Caferro and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2010-08-24 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, William Caferro asks if the Renaissance was really a period of progress, reason, the emergence of the individual, and the beginning of modernity. An influential investigation into the nature of the European Renaissance Summarizes scholarly debates about the nature of the Renaissance Engages with specific controversies concerning gender identity, economics, the emergence of the modern state, and reason and faith Takes a balanced approach to the many different problems and perspectives that characterize Renaissance studies
Download or read book Lu Mountain written by and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance written by John Hale and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1995-06 with total page 676 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring every aspect of art, philosophy, politics, life and culture between 1450 and 1620, this enthralling panorama examines one of the most fascinating and exciting periods in European history. "A rich, dense book which combines inspiring generalizations with idiosyncratic detail".--The Spectator. Photos.
