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Loading... The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, Vol. 1: The Renaissanceby Quentin Skinner
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. This seems like a great introduction to Renaissance political thought. I particularly liked the first two parts which linked Italian political thought with the political fortunes of the city states. The third part on the northern Renaissance was a bit less interesting, but it certainly serves its purpose as a connecting link to Volume 2. The book is well-written throughout and does not over-emphasize the most famous authors, such as Machiavelli or More, at the expense of their contemporaries. The author has partitioned his presentation well, which makes the book an enjoyable reading experience. What's to review? There's no competition, nothing else you can read that will fill in the story for you so well or so clearly. It can get a bit dry, but you can put up with that for a couple hundred pages, because the garbage that Skinner had to read to write this must have been equally if not more dry, and run into the hundreds of thousands of pages. A wonderful combination of history, history of ideas, and the ways they act on each other. no reviews | add a review
Belongs to SeriesFoundations of Modern Political Thought (Volume 1) Is contained in
A two-volume study of political thought from the late thirteenth to the end of the sixteenth century, the decisive period of transition from medieval to modern political theory. The work is intended to be both an introduction to the period for students, and a presentation and justification of a particular approach to the interpretation of historical texts. Quentin Skinner gives an outline account of all the principal texts of the period, discussing in turn the chief political writings of Dante, Marsiglio, Bartolus, Machiavelli, Erasmus and more, Luther and Calvin, Bodin and the Calvinist revolutionaries. But he also examines a very large number of lesser writers in order to explain the general social and intellectual context in which these leading theorists worked. He thus presents the history not as a procession of 'classic texts' but are more readily intelligible. He traces by this means the gradual emergence of the vocabulary of modern political thought, and in particular the crucial concept of the State. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)320Social sciences Political Science Political ScienceLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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