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Professor Skinner presents a lucid analysis of Machiavelli's text as a response to the world of Florentine politics.
The aim of this collection is to illustrate the pervasive influence of humanist rhetoric on early-modern literature and philosophy. The first half of the book focuses on the classical rules of judicial rhetoric. One chapter considers the place of these rules in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, while two others concentrate on the technique of rhetorical redescription, pointing to its use in Machiavelli's The Prince as well as in several of Shakespeare's plays, notably Coriolanus. The second half of the book examines the humanist background to the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes. A major new essay discusses his typically humanist preoccupation with the visual presentation of his political ideas, while other chapters explore the rhetorical sources of his theory of persons and personation, thereby offering new insights into his views about citizenship, political representation, rights and obligations and the concept of the state.
Provides one of the most substantial statements about the importance, relevance, and potential excitement of this form of historical enquiry.
Forensic Shakespeare illustrates Shakespeare's creative processes by revealing the intellectual materials out of which some of his most famous works were composed. Focusing on the narrative poem Lucrece, on four of his late Elizabethan plays (Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar and Hamlet) and on three early Jacobean dramas, (Othello, Measure for Measure and All's Well That Ends Well), Quentin Skinner argues that major speeches, and sometimes sequences of scenes, are crafted according to a set of rhetorical precepts about how to develop a persuasive judicial case, either in accusation or defence. Some of these works have traditionally been grouped together as 'problem plays', but here Skinner offers a different explanation for their frequent similarities of tone. There have been many studies of Shakespeare's rhetoric, but they have generally concentrated on his wordplay and use of figures and tropes. By contrast, this study concentrates on Shakespeare's use of judicial rhetoric as a method of argument. By approaching the plays from this perspective, Skinner is able to account for some distinctive features of Shakespeare's vocabulary, and also help to explain why certain scenes follow a recurrent pattern and arrangement. More broadly, he is able to illustrate the extent of Shakespeare's engagement with an entire tradition of classical and Renaissance humanist thought.
A dazzling comparison of two rival theories about the nature of human liberty.
An outstanding new interpretation of Hobbes, one of the most difficult and challenging of political philosophers.
This book is the first comprehensive exposition of the work of one of the most important intellectual historians and political theorists writing today. Quentin Skinner's treatment of political theory as a dimension of political life marks a revolutionary move in the historical as well as the philosophical study of political thought. Skinner brings the study of political theory closer to the language of agents and treats theorists as politicians of a special kind. This is as true of his accounts of his contemporaries, such as Rawls, Rorty, Geertz and Habermas, as it is of his interpretations of classical thinkers such as Machiavelli and Hobbes. Skinner has become internationally renowned for this approach, which ties together historical and contemporary analysis in order to integrate the study of the past and the present, and which tries fully to uncover the historical context and development of key concepts in political theory such as freedom and the state. This volume charts Skinner's work from the early 1960s right up to the present, including his most recent studies in the theory of persuasive speech, and is organized around five major themes: history, linguistic action, political thought, liberty and rhetoric. It pays particular attention to Skinner's work in relation to that of continental thinkers, especially Max Weber and Reinhart Koselleck. The book will be essential reading for students and scholars of political and social theory, history, philosophy and cultural studies.
This book contains studies of four of the most influential political theorists in the Western tradition: Machiavelli, whose name is a byword for duplicity, Hobbes, the first great English political philosopher, Mill, liberal thinker and champion of individual liberty, and Marx, whose legacy has affected the lives of millions.
States and Citizens offers a coherent survey of perceptions of the state, its history, its theoretical underpinnings, and its prospects in the contemporary world. The coverage of the Western European experience is thorough and wide-ranging, with the greatest post-colonial democratic state, India, as an important comparative example. The provocative and accessible contributions of a very distinguished and genuinely pan-European team of contributors ensure that States and Citizens provides a unique and valuable resource, of interest to students and teachers of the history of ideas, political theory and European studies.
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.