Visions of Politics

Second of three volumes of essays by Quentin Skinner, one of the world's leading historians.

Quentin Skinner (Author)

9780521589253, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 16 September 2002

478 pages, 12 colour illus.
22.9 x 15.2 x 3.2 cm, 0.784 kg

' … this is a deeply impressive collection which displays Skinner's exceptional range.' The New York Review

The second of three volumes of essays by Quentin Skinner, one of the world's leading intellectual historians. This collection includes some of his most important essays on the political thought of the Italian renaissance, each of which has been carefully revised for publication in this form. All of Professor Skinner's work is characterised by philosophical power, limpid clarity, and elegance of exposition; these essays, many of which are now recognised classics, provide a fascinating and convenient digest of the development of his thought. Professor Skinner has been awarded the Balzan Prize Life Time Achievement Award for Political Thought, History and Theory. Full details of this award can be found at http://www.balzan.it/News_eng.aspx?ID=2474

1. Introduction
2. The rediscovery of republican values
3. Ambrogio Lorenzetti and the portrayal of virtuous government
4. Ambrogio Lorenzetti on the power and glory of republics
5. Republican virtues in an age of princes
6. Machiavelli on virtu and the maintenance of liberty
7. The idea of negative liberty: Machiavelli and modern perspectives
8. Thomas More's Utopia and the virtue of true nobility
9. Was there a Calvinist theory of revolution? 10. Moral ambiguity and the renaissance art of eloquence
11. John Milton and the politics of slavery
12. Classical liberty, Renaissance translation and the English civil war
13. From the state of princes to the modern state
14. Augustan party politics and Renaissance constitutional thought.

Subject Areas: Educational: History [YQH], Political science & theory [JPA], History of ideas [JFCX], Philosophy [HP], History [HB]