The purpose of this book is to show that “far from being an enemy of Natural Law, Burke was one of the most eloquent and profound defenders of Natural Law morality and politics in Western civilization”. Professor Stanlis rightly points out that Burke was for too long treated as a utilitarian in politics, and he blames such writers as Morley, Stephen and Vaughan, who were mainly responsible for this interpretation. He might have added that Burke himself must bear part of (...) the blame: is he not famous for his rejection, in his American speeches, of all appeals to “abstract” or natural rights? “I do not enter into these metaphysical distinctions; I hate the very sound of them …”. “The question with me is, not whether you have a right to render your people miserable; but whether it is not your interest to make them happy”. Such phrases sound rather like utilitarianism; and the impression is strengthened by Burke’s famous denunciation of the whole “Rights of Man” school in his Reflections on the Revolution in France: “How can any man claim, under the conventions of civil society, rights which do not so much as suppose its existence? Rights which are absolutely repugnant to it? … In the gross and complicated mass of human passions and concerns, the primitive rights of men undergo such a variety of refractions and reflections, that it becomes absurd to talk of them as if they continued in the simplicity of their original direction.… The pretended rights of these theorists are all extremes; and in proportion as they are metaphysically true, they are morally and politically false.… The rights of men in government are their advantages.… The body of the community … has no right inconsistent with virtue, and the first of all virtues, prudence. Men have no right to what is not reasonable, and to what is not for their benefit. …”. (shrink)

The work of re-interpreting Burke goes on. Recent critical studies have made it clear that he is not to be regarded as a utilitarian in ethics or an empiricist in politics. In this book Fr. Canavan shows convincingly that, despite his well-known appeals to feelings, sentiments, and traditions, and his use in a pejorative sense of such words as ‘theory’, ‘speculation’, and ‘metaphysics’, Burke is by no means an anti-rationalist. Indeed, Burke held very strongly that politics and law were the (...) work of reason, but of practical reason, accompanied and modified by prudence. (shrink)

In 1940 the Manchester University Press published volume I of its edition of the political works of William of Ockham, edited by J. G. Sikes. It contained the Octo Quaestiones and the first part of the Opus Nonaginta Dierum, besides some minor treatises. The war, and the untimely death of Prof. Sikes, have delayed the publication of Vol. II, which is to contain the second part of the Opus Nonaginta Dierum. Meanwhile the editing of Vol. III has been completed by (...) Dr. H. S. Offler. This volume contains three works by Ockham: the Epistola ad Fratres Minores, the Tractatus contra Ioannem, and the Tractatus contra Benedictum. Of these, the Epistola has already been edited twice: by L. Baudry in 1926 and by C. K. Brampton in 1929. The other two are now edited and published in full for the first time. (shrink)

John Stuart Mill has been much admired for his liberalism. His best-known work, the essay On Liberty, may be interpreted as a valiant attempt to protect individual freedom in modern society by determining the proper limits of state intervention; as a cogently reasoned plea for freedom of opinion and freedom of the press; as a defence of private initiative; as a demonstration that progress and culture are better safeguarded by moral and religious plurality than by a socially imposed pattern of (...) conduct. And, in conformity with this benign view, Mill himself has been regarded as a man devoted to the cause of toleration and reason, a good and gentle humanitarian. (shrink)

The Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza, Florence, Italy, possesses an astrolabe with five latitude plates that is now attributed to the Duisburg workshop of Gerard Mercator. Although it is known that Mercator made instruments, this is the first surviving example to be identified. Another latitude plate is shown to come from the workshop of the Florentine, Giovan Battista Giusti. A seventh plate, possibly engraved by Rumold Mercator, provides the only known Mercatorian polar stereographic projection. The role of (...) Egnazio Danti, cosmographer to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, in the acquisition of the astrolabe in about 1570 is considered. (shrink)