A lively and provocative account of Bernard Mandeville and the work that scandalized and appalled his contemporaries—and made him one of the most influential thinkers of the eighteenth centuryIn 1714, doctor, philosopher and writer Bernard Mandeville published The Fable of the Bees, a humorous tale in which a prosperous hive full of greedy and licentious bees trade their vices for virtues and immediately fall into economic and societal collapse. Outrage am...

This is the first edited collection devoted entirely to the question of the role of animals in the thought of Immanuel Kant. Though the topic is not one treated systematically in his work, mentions of animals occur throughout his corpus in relation to many of his central concerns. In this volume, a team of leading scholars address issues ranging over Kant's theoretical and practical philosophy, including questions regarding the possibility of objective representation and intentionality in ...

Thomas Hobbes, the first great English political philosopher, has long had the reputation of being a pessimistic atheist, who saw human nature as inevitably evil and proposed a totalitarian state to subdue human failings. In this illuminating study, Richard Tuck re-evaluates Hobbes's philosophy and dispels these myths, revealing him to have been passionately concerned with the refutation of scepticism, and to have developed a theory of knowledge which rivalled that of Descartes in its impo...

John Locke (1632-1704) one of the greatest English philosophers of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, argued in his masterpiece, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, that our knowledge is founded in experience and reaches us principally through our senses; but its message has been curiously misunderstood. In this book John Dunn shows how Locke arrived at his theory of knowledge, and how his exposition of the liberal values of toleration and responsible governme...

After the restoration of the English monarchy in 1660, Protestants worried that King Charles II might favour religious freedom for Roman Catholics, and many suspected that the king was unduly influenced by his Catholic mistresses. Nell Gwyn, actress and royal mistress, stood apart by virtue of her Protestant loyalty. In 1681, Gwyn, her carriage surrounded by an angry anti-Catholic mob, famously declared 'I am the protestant whore.' Her self-branding invites an investigation into the alignm...

In Climbing Parnassus, winner of the 2005 Paideia Prize, Tracy Lee Simmons presents a defense and vindication of the formative power of Greek and Latin. He also shows how these languages have played a crucial role in the development of authentic Humanism, the foundation of the West's cultural order and America's understanding of itself as a union of citizens. Simmons's persuasive witness to the unique, now all-but-forgotten advantages of study in and of the classical languages con...

The history of the rise and transformation of corporations—and their political power—in Renaissance England.Winner of the Elizabeth Dietz Memorial Prize for the Best Book in Renaissance StudiesThe Corporate Commonwealth traces the evolution of corporations during the English Renaissance and explores the many types of corporations that once flourished. Along the way, the book offers important insights into our own definitions of fic...

Hobbes is widely regarded as one of the most important figures in the history of ideas and political thought, and his seminal text Leviathan is widely recognised as one of the greatest works of political philosophy ever written.The Routledge Guidebook to Hobbes’ Leviathan introduces the major themes in Hobbes’ great book and acts as a companion for reading this key work, examining:The context of Hobbes’ work and the background to his writing

Gendering the Nation studies the role of the comic theatre in Britain during the long eighteenth century as a nation-building discourse. It evaluates the impact of the cultural phenomenon of Sentimentality on the English comic stage in conceptualising gendered identities for the men and women of a polite, genteel nation. The book analyses certain popular comic plays of the time to ascertain the extent to which they could constitute gender masculinity and femininity as the basis of a secure ...

"This may well be the most important study of the development of prose fiction in England since Ian Watt's classic Rise of the Novel, on which it builds." — Library JournalThe Origins of the English Novel, 1600-1740, combines historical analysis and readings of extraordinarily diverse texts to reconceive the foundations of the dominant genre of the modern era. Now, on the fifteenth anniversary of its initial publication, The Origins of...

In early modern Europe the law developed as one of the few non-religious orderings of civil life. Its separation from religion was, however, never complete and we see the contest continued today not only in the campaigns of religious fundamentalists of the right, but also in the clains of critical intellectuals to reshape government institutions and the legal apparatus in accordance with moral principle - whether of indivudual autonomy or communitarian self-determination. In Anti-Lawye...

Adam Smith (1723–1790) is widely regarded as one of the great thinkers of the Enlightenment period. Best-known for his founding work of economics, The Wealth of Nations, Smith engaged equally with the nature of morality in his Theory of Moral Sentiments. He also gave lectures on literature and jurisprudence, and wrote papers on art and science*.*In this outstanding philosophical introduction Samuel Fleischacker argues that Smith is a superb example of the broadly ...