This article revisits the question of the modernity of the Renaissance by examining the political language of Florentine civic humanism and by critically analyzing the debate over Hans Baron’s interpretation of the movement. It engages two debates that are usually conducted separately: one concerning the originality of civic humanism in comparison to medieval thought, and the other concerning the political and social function of the civic humanists’ political republicanism in fifteenth-century Florence. The article’s main contention (...) is that humanist political discourse rejected the perception of social and political reality as being part of, or reflecting, a metaphysical and divine order or things, and thus undermined the traditional justifications for political hierarchies and power relations. This created the conditions of possibility for the distinctively modern aspiration for a social and political order based on liberty and equality. It also resulted in the birth of a distinctively modern form of ideology, one that legitimizes the social order by disguising its inequalities and structures of domination. Humanism, like modern political thought generally, thus simultaneously constructs and reflects the dialectic of emancipation and domination so central to modernity itself. (shrink)

Because a thorough investigation of Machiavelli's thought and the thought of those who explicitly drew on it can be achieved only through the kind of Herculean labours displayed by Pocock in his Machiavellian Moment, I propose here to examine only two works by admirers of Machiavelli: Harrington's Oceana, which imports the Italian Renaissance to England's shores, and John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon's Cato's Letters, which prepares its departure for America. I argue that a re-examination of these critical links in the (...) civic humanist chain does not bear out the civic humanist interpretation of Machiavelli's influence. Further, because Pocock, at times, asserts that what is crucial for establishing Machiavelli's participation in this tradition is not, in fact, what Machiavelli said, but how others read him, I believe that this examination begins to raise significant questions about the validity of Pocock's portrait of a Machiavellian civic humanist tradition. (shrink)

Explores and partially defends Hegel's claim that freedom is most fully realized through membership in the modern state. It contrasts Hegel's ‘civic humanist’ understanding of this claim with the social contract theory's view of the relationship between freedom and the state. The chapter also argues against those commentators who see something sinister in the Hegelian association of freedom with the state. In developing its interpretation, the chapter considers Hegel's distinction between state and civil society and it offers an overview (...) of the basic structure of Hegel's main work of political philosophy—the Philosophy of Right. (shrink)

This article considers one element within the long tradition of the church’s self-identification as a city. It focuses on England, c. 1450 to c. 1510, and considers how the civic rhetoric developed by Italian humanists, pre-eminently Leonardo Bruni, was refracted through an ecclesiastical lens and so appropriated for English clerical use. It describes how two useful elements were quarried from recent writings imported from Italy: the first was the emphasis on the city and its buildings as a locus of (...) virtue; the second was that, because of its virtue, that city was under attack. The discussion begins with the time of social unrest in the mid-fifteenth century,in the wake of which Thomas Chaundler wrote his praise of Thomas Bekynton, bishop of Bath and Wells, and his building works in his episcopal city. It ends in the first years of the sixteenth century with the relations between Christopher Urswick, dean of Windsor, and Thomas Goldstone, prior of Christ Church, Canterbury. Their re-use of older texts, specifically the Speculum regis Edwardi III, which they assumed to be by Archbishop Simon Islip, and more recent humanist ones, by Celso Maffei and Goldstone’s predecessor as prior, William Sellyng, identified other enemies who attacked the church: invoking the name of Thomas Becket, they saw those oppressing them to be not rebels against authority but those in authority. This allows us to reflect on how a few English readers of humanist civic rhetoric found in it potentially radical force. (shrink)

In his famous Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance Hans Baron treated the Dominican political thinker Ptolemy of Lucca as purely medieval, his ideas totally separate from the doctrine that Baron named civic humanism. However, in an unpublished, and previously-unstudied, manuscript written more than a decade earlier, Baron maintained that Ptolemy's ideology evolved into something quite close to civic humanism. He attempted to prove this through a comparison of early and late work of Ptolemy and through (...) an analysis of Ptolemy's process of composition of his De Regimine Principum. This article analyses Baron's arguments and in general supports them, with some qualifications. Baron's manuscript supports the conclusions previously published by Blythe and is also significant in what it reveals about the intellectual evolution of one of the twentieth century's most significant historians of political thought. (shrink)

(1994). From Cassandra to Gaia: The limits of civic humanism in a post‐ecological world. Social Epistemology: Vol. 8, Public Indifference to Population Issues, pp. 243-259.

Virtue Politics is the highly self-aware (of its ever-widening compass, paradigm-shifting ambition, and controversy potential) magnum opus of a consummate intellectual historian. James Hankins is t...

Gilberto Monteiro foi médico municipal da freguesia de Carnaxide de 1921 a 1961, Chefe dos Serviços Clínicos da extinta fábrica dos Fermentos Holandeses (F.P.F.H.), sediada na Cruz Quebrada, de 1934 a 1962 e, durante a II Guerrra Mundial, exerceu no Hospital Militar de Belém, na qualidade de tenente médico miliciano. Amante do desporto e desportista, G. Monteiro foi um dos fundadores do Sport Algés e Dafundo (SAD), instituição onde, enquanto membro da sua primeira Comissão Cultural, criou a Biblioteca, organizou conferências, (...) exposições e concertos e outras actividades culturais que ali atrairam figuras de relevo como Aquilino Ribeiro, Viana da Mota, Hernâni Cidade e Norton de Matos, entre outros. Se nas suas crónicas escritas para “O Fermento” deparamos com o G. Monteiro, historiador inconformado, que denuncia os constantes atentados à integridade histórica e patrimonial, no Esboço Histórico do Hospital Militar (1945) convivemos com um testemunho de vertical e desassombrada coragem cívica, denunciadora dos males de que padecia a medicina contemporânea. Finalmente, acompanhamos o esforço e as diligências que, numa linha de justiça, educação e melhoria da qualidade de vida das pessoas, G. Monteiro desenvolveu, em pleno Estado Novo, a fim de instituir na fábrica (FPFH) uma assistência médico-social moderna. (shrink)

This paper wants to address the Aristotelian analysis of the concept of mimesis from a social and cultural angle. It is going to show that mimesis is crucial if we want to understand why the institution of the theatre played such a crucial role in the civic educational programme of classical Athens. The paper’s argument is that the magic spell of theatrical imitation, its aesthetic machinery was exploited by the city for civic educational function. Dramas, and in particular (...) tragedies helped to articulate the city’s political expectations from the citizens, and they achieved it with far better efficiency than any other medium of propaganda which was available in those days. It will first reconstruct the duality within the internal structure of the Aristotelian account of mimesis in Poetics: it will show both 1.) the aesthetic and 2.) the socio-cultural dimensions of his theory of civic initiation through dramatic imitation. In the second part it will compare this Greek cultural context with a similar context in Rome in the activity and writings of Cicero. Finally, the paper presents the Renaissance republican context of early modern Europe, which also connected politico-moral education with the idea of mimesis. (shrink)

An exposition of the views of literary critics of present day influence, presented to illustrate the thesis that the study of the humanities guided by a traditional mode of analysis, fails to encourage and produce the methodological habits and styles of thought needed by the citizen to understand social and political problems. Lane--a political scientist--proposes that the teaching of the humanities would contribute to the development of democratic citizenship if it were recognized that there is no logical or methodological difference (...) between the sciences and the humanities.--P. D. J. (shrink)

"This volume in Religion and Public Life, a series on religion and public affairs, provides a wide-ranging forum for differing views on religious and ethical considerations. The contributions address the decline of social capital-those patterns of behavior which are conducive to self-governance and the spirit of self-reliance-and its relation to the demise of the civic-humanist tradition in American education. The unifying theme, is that classical studies do not merely result in individual mastery over a particular technique or body of (...) knowledge, but also link the individual to the polity and even to the whole of the cosmic order. At the same time, American republicanism, in its exaltation of the common man from the Jeffersonian agrarian soldier to the apotheosis of Lincoln tempers the classical ideal into something less exalted, if more democratic. The effects on the contemporary state of the liberal arts curriculum are demonstrated in articles critical of the market-model university. Two essays explore the historical and philosophical significance of the discipline of rhetoric, that has suffered under the hegemony of rationalistic philosophy. A concluding contribution, invokes Giambattista Vico as an eloquent defender of the humanities. Humanities and Civic Life includes: "Rome, Florence, and Philadelphia: Using the History of the Humanities to Renew Our Civic Life" by Robert E. Proctor; "The Dark Fields of the Republic: The Persistence of Republican Thought in American History" by David Brown; "Unleashing the Humanities" by Robert Weisbuch; "Liberal Arts: Listening to Faculty" by Dennis O'Brien; "Historical Consciousness in Antiquity" by Paul Gottfried; "Taking the Measure of Relativism and the Civic Virtue of Rhetoric" by Gabriel R. Ricci; "The River: A Vichian Dialogue on Humanistic Education" by Randall E. Auxier."--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

By far the best collection of sources to introduce readers to Renaissance humanism in all its many guises. What distinguishes this stimulating and useful anthology is the vision behind it: King shows that Renaissance thinkers had a lot to say, not only about the ancient world--one of their habitual passions--but also about the self, how civic experience was configured, the arts, the roles and contributions of women, the new science, the 'new' world, and so much more. --Christopher S. (...) Celenza, Johns Hopkins University. (shrink)

For more than a century, scholars have believed that Italian humanism was predominantly civic in outlook. Often serving in communal government, fourteenth-century humanists like Albertino Mussato and Coluccio Saltuati are said to have derived from their reading of the Latin classics a rhetoric of republican liberty that was opposed to the "tyranny" of neighbouring signori and of the German emperors. In this ground-breaking study, Alexander Lee challenges this long-held belief. From the death of Frederick II in 1250 to (...) the failure of Rupert of the Palatinate's ill-fated expedition in 1402, Lee argues, the humanists nurtured a consistent and powerful affection for the Holy Roman Empire. Though this was articulated in a variety of different ways, it was nevertheless driven more by political conviction than by cultural concerns. Surrounded by endless conflict--both within and between city-states--the humanists eagerly embraced the Empire as the surest guarantee of peace and liberty, and lost no opportunity to invoke its protection. Indeed, as Lee shows, the most ardent appeals to imperial authority were made not by "signorial" humanists, but by humanists in the service of communal regimes. The first comprehensive, synoptic study of humanistic ideas of Empire in the period c.1250-1402, this volume offers a radically new interpretation of fourteenth-century political thought, and raises wide-ranging questions about the foundations of modern constitutional ideas. As such, it is essential reading not just for students of Renaissance Italy and the history of political thought, but for all those interested in understanding the origins of liberty. (shrink)

The gradual secularization of European society and culture is often said to characterize the development of the modern world, and the early Italian humanists played a pioneering role in this process. Here Benjamin G. Kohl and Ronald G. Witt, with Elizabeth B. Welles, have edited and translated seven primary texts that shed important light on the subject of "civic humanism" in the Renaissance.Included is a treatise of Francesco Petrarca on government, two representative letters from Coluccio Salutati, Leonardo Bruni's (...) panegyric to Florence, Francesco Barbaro's letter on "wifely" duty, Poggio Bracciolini's dialogue on avarice, and Angelo Poliziano's vivid history of the Pazzi conspiracy. Each translation is prefaced by an essay on the author and a short bibliography. The substantial introductory essay offers a concise, balanced summary of the historiographcal issues connected with the period. (shrink)

Christopher Lasch's True and Only Heaven and Michael Sandel 's Democracy's Discontent are similarly motivated criticisms of consumer society. However, Lasch identifies the ideals animating American consumer society as stemming from a broader humanist impulse, the roots of which he explores and criticizes. This strategy allows Lasch to place his critique of consumerism alongside criticisms of a full range of humanist ideals. Sandel, who articulates a more narrowly focused criticism of consumer society, never links its underlying imperatives to a broader (...) humanism, thus failing to recognize how his alternative, civic republicanism, might share some of the same problems. (shrink)

This is the first English translation of the work of Eugenio Garin, one of the foremost modern historians of the Italian Renaissance. The present text, translated so intelligently, is based on the revised Italian edition of 1958.. Garin treats the growth of Italian humanism from Petrarch in the fourteenth century to its point of radical transformation with Tommaso Campanella at the beginning of the seventeenth century. The commentary on Giordano Bruno is especially clear, concise, and penetrating. For Garin, the (...) elements of Renaissance humanism are multiple. It sought its own rhetoric and shrank from the dry syllogistic reasoning of scholastic philosophy. It used philology as an essential tool and basis of a revolutionary historiography. As well, Renaissance humanism was engage in civic life. In seeing Renaissance humanism as the link with the modern world, Garin opposes those historians of science who posit medieval science and philosophy as the vital bridge. Garin minimizes the importance of Aristotelianism and finds Renaissance humanism severely hostile to scholasticism. Nevertheless, the book is a rich mine of facts, summarization, and syntheses of texts; the very index of the book, restricted to Italian Renaissance figures, occupies five pages of double columns. In addition, Peter Munz has written an introduction which is a full-blown critique—P. J. M. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the developments of Young Hegelianism in Restoration Prussia, with a special focus on Max Stirner’s radical critique of Hegelian thinking. It presents an overview of the history of Hegelianism in the 1830s and 1840s, and addresses the theoretical issues raised by Stirner’s attack in 1844. It examines important aspects of Young Hegelianism, including ideas of a modernized civic humanism and emancipation, and traces the Young Hegelians’ reconfiguration of Hegel’s thought in order to eliminate what they (...) saw as its conservative or insufficiently critical elements. The refurbished republicanism of the Young Hegelians took up the new challenges of the industrial age that was dawning in Germany, with special attention to the social question and the intransigent conflicting interests that typified the emergent economic order. Stirner’s critique is framed by its anti-humanist repudiation of Left Hegelian emancipatory projects. (shrink)

How are we to understand the nature and value of higher education's public purposes, mission, and work in a democratic society? How do-and how should-academic professionals contribute to and participate in civic life in their practices as scholars, scientists, and educators? Democracy and Higher Education addresses these questions by combining an examination of several normative traditions of civic engagement in American higher education with the presentation and interpretation of a dozen oral history profiles of contemporary practitioners. In his (...) analysis of these profiles, Scott Peters reveals and interprets a democratic-minded civic professionalism that includes and interweaves expert, social critic, responsive service, and proactive leadership roles. Democracy and Higher Education contributes to a new line of research on the critically important task of strengthening and defending higher education's positive roles in and for a democratic society. (shrink)

Paul Kurtz will be long remembered as the late twentieth century’s pre-eminent philosophical defender of freethinking rationalism and skepticism, the scientific worldview to replace superstition and religion, the healthy ethics of humanism, and democracy’s foundation in secularism. Reason, science, ethics, and civics – Kurtz repeatedly cycled through these affirmative agendas, not only to relegate religion to humanity’s ignorant past, but mainly to indicate the direction of humanity’s better future.

The article examines Alberti’s dialogue Della famiglia as a reflection on the foundations of ethics and politics from the perspective of humanist discourse. The polyphonic work presents and critically examines several views. The authorial voice of the text rehearses the traditional philosophical view the humanists inherited, according to which humans are sociable by nature. However, some of the interlocutors reject this convenient view, implying that it cannot be squared with the humanist critique of the premises of mainstream classical and medieval (...) philosophy. Another line of argumentation in the dialogue attempts to harness the key humanist notion of gloria as the basis of human association, according to which humans self-interestedly seek fame and glory but to gain them they must promote the common good. But also this position is contested in the dialogue, with some arguing that the agonistic competition for glory produces envy and resentment rather than a civic spirit and as such threatens social cohesion. Finally, Della famiglia also explores the implications of the radical possibility that men and women are asocial creatures, by casting them as selfish economic actors who are only interested in making material gains. (shrink)

1. The birth of dialogue from the spirit of the Polish October political uprising: From social civil war and simple exclusions (even physical) to negotiations andcomplicated “Dialogue of Contradictions” within national entity. Almost 25 years before the much later birth and international triumph of the Solidarity Union, the “Polish October” of 1956, history’s first victorious anti-Stalinist political uprising and most certainly a historical milestone for Poland—if not all of Europe—was the main harbinger of change in all fundamental spheres of life.2. (...) Secularism in the place of atheism or the acceptance of pluralism at the price of indifference :the “our little stability” ideology3. International cooperation as a fundamental inspiration and “umbrella”4. Patriotism as a “civic religion” mainly for unbelievers and even mediatisation of materialism and Christianity5. Towards a new complementarity/synergy-founded universalism6. New names, new problems7. Synopsis, updates8. The next stage: Dialogue and Universalism Virtual University experimental project. (shrink)

Using Australia to illustrate the case, in this paper it is argued that the transformation of universities into businesses and the undermining of the liberal arts is motivated by either contempt for or outright hostility to democracy. This is associated with a global managerial revolution that is enslaving nations and people to the global market and the corporations that dominate it. The struggle within universities is the site of a struggle to reverse the gains of the Radical Enlightenment, the tradition (...) of Enlightenment that, committed to upholding and developing the civic humanism of the Renaissance, strove for liberty, understood as democratic self-governance. The central place the liberal arts had in upholding this liberty is shown. Inspired by the Ancient Greek notion of paideia, the liberal arts, which originated in republican Rome, was the form of education required designed for free people, in opposition to the specialist education appropriate for slaves, to inspire them to maintain their liberty and enable them to govern themselves. While not always upholding this ideal, it is argued in this paper that the liberal arts always kept alive this quest for liberty, bequeathing this quest to the Renaissance philosophers and to the proponents of the Radical Enlightenment. With managerialism and the undermining of democracy, such education and the questioning, creative people it produced, are now seen as a threat to the new global corporatocracy who, to achieve cultural hegemony, have coöpted university managers and academics to impose their agenda to cripple the liberal arts. Their goal, never fully articulated as such but successfully prosecuted, is a dumbed-down population. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Books ReceivedAquinas on Being. By Anthony Kenny. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002. Pp. x + 212. Price not given.Before and after Avicenna: Proceedings of the First Conference of the Avicenna Study Group. Edited by David C. Reisman, with the assistance of Ahmed H. al Rahim. Leiden: Brill, 2003. Pp. xix + 302. Price not given.Beside Still Waters: Jews, Christians, and the Way of the Buddha. Edited by Harold Kasimow, John (...) P. Keenan, and Linda Klepinger Keenan. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2003. Pp. 284. Paper $14.95.The Buddhist Unconscious: The ālaya-vijñāna in the Context of Indian Buddhist Thought. By William S. Waldron. London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003. Pp. xvi + 269. Price not given.Comparative Political Philosophy: Studies under the Upas Tree. Edited by Anthony J. Parel and Ronald C. Keith. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2003. Pp. xxxviii + 260. Paper $26.95.The Confucian Quest for Order: The Origin and Formation of the Political Thought of Xun Zi. By Masayuki Sato. Leiden: Brill, 2003. Pp. xviii + 500. Price not given.Gathering the Meanings: The Compendium of Categories: The Arthaviniścaya Sūtra and Its Commentary Nibandhana. Translated from the Sanskrit by N. H. Samtani. Berkeley: Dharma Publishing, 2002. Pp. xxxiv + 390. Price not given.I Have Arrived, I Am Home: Celebrating Twenty Years of Plum Village Life. By Thich Nhat Hanh. Berkeley: Parallax Press, 2003. Pp. 253. Paper $25.00.Identity and the Moral Life. By Mrinal Miri. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. xvii + 132. Hardcover Rs 645.00.Indian Philosophers and Postmodern Thinkers: Dialogues on the Margins of Culture. By Carl Olson. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. xv + 331. Hardcover Rs 950.00.Islamic Humanism. By Lenn E. Goodman. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. xiii + 273. Price not given.Letting Go: The Story of Zen Master Tōsui. Translated by Peter Haskel. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2001. Pp. xv + 167. Hardcover $45.00. Paper $16.95.A Life Journey to the East: Sinological Studies in Memory of Giuliano Bertuccioli (1923-2001). Edited by Antonino Forte and Federico Masini. Kyoto: Scuola Italiana di Studi sull'Asia Orientale, 2002. Pp. xxxv + 280. Price not given.The Measure of Things: Humanism, Humility and Mystery. By David E. Cooper. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002. Pp. ix + 372. Price not given. [End Page 277]Mencius, Hume and the Foundations of Ethics. By Xiusheng Liu. Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2003. Pp. vii + 204. Price not given.Monks and Monarchs, Kinship and Kingship: Tanqian in Sui Buddhism and Politics. By Chen Jinhua. Kyoto: Scuola Italiana di Studi sull'Asia Orientale, 2002. Pp. xiii + 310. Price not given.Music in the Sky: The Life, Art, and Teachings of the 17th Gyalwa Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje. By Michele Martin. Ithaca: Snow Lion Publications, 2003. Pp. 351. Paper $18.95, U.K. £12.95.New Confucianism: A Critical Examination. Edited by John Makeham. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Pp. 262. Hardcover $55.00.On the Boundaries of Theological Tolerance in Islam: Abū Hāmid Al-Ghāzalī's Faysal al-Tafriqa Bayna al-Islām wa al-Zandaqa. By Sherman A. Jackson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. xiv + 156. Hardcover Rs 295.00.Pandita Ramabai's American Encounter: The Peoples of the United States (1889). By Pandita Ramabai and translated and edited by Meera Kosambi. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003. Pp. xi + 284. Hardcover $59.95. Paper $29.95.Parmenides of Elea: A Verse Translation with Interpretative Essays and Commentary to the Text. By Martin J. Henn. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2003. Pp. 147. Hardcover $59.95.Philosophes taoïstes, tome II: Huainan Zi, texte traduit, présenté et annoté sous la direction de Charles le Blanc et de Rémi Mathieu. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2003. Pp. lxxxiii + 1182. Hardcover €56,90.The Philosophy and Ethics of the Vīraśaiva Community. By Dan A. Chekki. Lewiston, New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2003. Pp. xxv + 287. Hardcover $119.95.Poems of Hanshan. Translated by Peter Hobson with introduction by T. H. Barrett. Walnut Creek, California: AltaMira Press, 2003. Pp. viii + 151. Hardcover $65.00. Paper $19.95.Psychoanalysis and Buddhism: An Unfolding Dialogue. Edited by Jeremy D. Safran. Boston... (shrink)

The Machiavellian Moment is a classic study of the consequences for modern historical and social consciousness of the ideal of the classical republic revived by Machiavelli and other thinkers of Renaissance Italy. J.G.A. Pocock suggests that Machiavelli's prime emphasis was on the moment in which the republic confronts the problem of its own instability in time, and which he calls the "Machiavellian moment." After examining this problem in the thought of Machiavelli, Guicciardini, and Giannotti, Pocock turns to the revival of (...) republican thought in Puritan England and in Revolutionary and Federalist America. He argues that the American Revolution can be considered the last great act of civic humanism of the Renaissance. He relates the origins of modern historicism to the clash between civic, Christian, and commercial values in the thought of the eighteenth century. (shrink)

Civic Humanism is one de most relevant theories in present day political philosophy. Its main characteristics are the rejection of radical individualism, the emphasis on the social and political responsibility of citizens, and the consideration that the realisation of a mature personality is only possible through communities on pre-political and pre-economical levels. The author of this paper maintains that there is a continuity from the start of Civic Humanism in Renaissance until its revival in XX Century. (...) He defends as well that the philosophical roots of Civic Humanism can be found in the aristotelian practical philosophy, especially in the notions of good citizen, good life, common good and teleological praxis. (shrink)