Early Modern Debate Research Articles

Pre-contractual duties to inform in Early Modern Scholasticism

AbstractThis paper seeks to highlight the early modern scholastic contribution to dealing with the issue of pre-contractual duties to inform. Bringing together different strands of thought, ranging from Aristotelian philosophy to Roman law, the 16th and 17th century scholastics developed adequate analytical tools to solve legal and moral problems arising from information disparities between contracting parties. While first looking at the different classical and medieval texts that shaped the early modern debate, this paper then goes on to give a systematic account of how the early modern scholastics dealt with duties of disclosure about both intrinsic and extrinsic defects in the merchandise. A final chapter looks at how the early modern scholastic debate was received in the Northern natural law school, before concluding that the early modern scholastics took a surprisingly negative attitude towards duties to inform.

The Riddle of Hume’s Treatise: Skepticism, Naturalism, and Irreligion (review)

Reviewed by: The Riddle of Hume’s Treatise: Skepticism, Naturalism, and Irreligion J.W. McNabb (bio) Paul Russell. The Riddle of Hume’s Treatise: Skepticism, Naturalism, and Irreligion. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. 448pp. US$74. ISBN 9780195110333. Paul Russell challenges the contemporary critical orthodoxy of the Treatise’s apparent indifference towards religion. Despite the Treatise’s eighteenth-century reception to vocal and frequent declamations of the contrary, current scholarship downplays any religious engagement. Russell believes that the religious context so crucial to the early modern [End Page 151] perspective could, if reinvigorated, mediate a common ground for contemporary philosophical factions. The present-day philosophical schism presents two antithetical positions: either Hume is fundamentally sceptical and directs a rational enquiry (that he, in turn, subverts); or he follows the principles of naturalism that rely upon sentimental constructions. Russell’s interpretation “differs, not only from those who would emphasize one side of the skepticism/naturalism dichotomy at the expense of the other, but also from those who attempt to reconcile Hume’s skepticism and naturalism in the Treatise without any reference to his (fundamentally) irreligious aims and ambitions” (222). Russell explores a third moderating methodology that finds its foundation in the historical milieu of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century irreligion. This is a bold and novel approach. Russell greatly illuminates the early modern debate, and the controversy over of the spectre/reality of atheism left in the wake of the Terror of Malmsbury is broadly contextualized in this highly nuanced work. One of the more intriguing examples of the latter is Russell’s chapter “Atheism under Cover,” which develops a conjectural hypothesis using Hume’s epigrams to signal an alliance with other “free thinkers.” This argument maintains a subtle sophistication, but remains probable rather than proven. Russell’s great success is in providing a historical, intellectual foundation for Hume’s Treatise. The intellectual relation between Hobbes and Hume is a standout contribution to the Treatise’s antecedent influences. The structural affinities from “The Form and Face of Hume’s System” complement a more rigorous investigation a few chapters later in “The Nature of Hume’s Universe.” Hobbes’s basic influence on Hume’s faculty of “decaying sense” (86) is convincing, but it could use further analysis of their respective faculty models (instead of just a tacit recognition of their structural affinities). Despite, or perhaps because of, the impressive range of material, Russell often achieves his parallels and intellectual relationships too readily, and the correlations between thinkers can occasionally appear too exact through an affirmation of familiar generalities. As a variable intellectual trajectory, Russell’s position needs to resituate even those premises that are most familiar, which would make the intellectual relationships considerably more transparent. In virtually all respects, Russell’s intellectual history provides an entirely credible and admirable series of philosophical juxtapositions. His exploration of the blind man’s potential to know colour and the correlative application to the abstract idea of God is an exceptional investigation that balances historical context with philosophical exegesis. His sagacious examples chart the relationships and debates on the validity of experience weighted against the tenets of abstraction. Russell tempers Hobbes’s rejection of the infinite with Descartes’s meditation on infinite substance, which, in the latter, then finds an English complement in Cudworth and in Clarke’s justification of [End Page 152] reason. The arguments of Locke’s moderate concession to abstract universals within his experiential methodology quickly shift to the more radical Toland. A quick succession of concise argumentative interrelations between Collins, Law, and Berkeley follows, which allows an overarching significance to the weighted positions for both sides of the religious factions. With a rare degree of critical acumen, Russell takes this broad survey and applies the argument to Hume’s critique of religion, which, if not directly critical of God, then it is at least unfavourable to “our ideas as they relate to God’s most essential attributes” (94). With the application of this historical background and the realization of Hume’s covert censure of divine attributes, Russell introduces Hume’s subversive considerations on infinite and eternal attributes in the context of Clarke’s theological model that bases itself upon Newtonian principles. Russell...

Just 'Farewell Performances'? Curiosity in Eighteenth-Century German Literature and its Role in the Creation of a Specific Genre of Political Theatre

This article focuses on curiosity's career in eighteenth-century German literature, thus counteracting the commonly held view that curiosity left the centre stage in cultural and literary debates quickly after 1700. Examining texts ranging from the anonymous Centi-Folium Stultorum to works of manifold genres, types, and backgrounds by authors such as Lang, Schnabel, Gellert, Loen, Belach, Frederick II, Haller, Vulpius, Seume, Breitinger, Grosser, Keilhacker and Borkenstein, it shows that curiosity's role after 1700 was far from being reduced to just a brief 'farewell performance'. In fact, its position within eighteenth-century culture remains highly complex; while early modern debates about curiosity were unforgotten and continued to be reflected in literary works, 'practices' of curiosity spread, Neugier was hailed as a key element in securing literature's success as one of the Artes populares, and it played a pivotal part in creating a particular and innovative type of early Enlightenment political drama that has (wrongfully) received hardly any attention as of yet although it dared to stage the rationale and strategies behind contemporary European politics of war.

Rousseau and the Love of Animals

This article examines Jean-Jacques Rousseau's views on the need for an ethical treatment of animals, placing them within the context of the early modern debate on this topic, and the tradition of "love of animals" known as "theriophily." It discusses the broad extent of Rousseau's views on this issue, and their importance, specifically because of his wide influence. However, an emphasis is put on the clear anthropocentric limits of Rousseau's sensitivity to animals, and of a similar limit discernible in the history of theriophilic attitudes toward animals in general.

Parsing the City: Jonson, Middleton, Dekker, and City Comedy’s London as Language

HEATHER C. EASTERLING Parsing the City: Jonson, Middleton, Dekker, and City Comedy's Language. New York: Routledge, 2007. 197 pp. £60.00. Reviewed by Trish Thomas HenleyAs many historians and literary critics have noted, the popularity of the comedy results in part from the comedies' representation of the possibility of social transformation. The comedies are intriguing in their ambivalence toward the stock characters that inhabit these plays. On the one hand, the plays expose the crass consumerism and reprehensible amorality of these types. On the other hand, these comedies celebrate the wit and ambition of these gallants, whores, and merchants. In Parsing the City: Jonson, Middleton, Dekker, and City Comedy's Language, Heather C. Easterling argues that these conflicted reactions can be found not only in relation to these stereotypes, but also in relation to the very they speak. Easterling's book explores the ways in which the genre of the city comedy not only represents but interrogates the of in plays that regularly stage the precisely or languages (1). In the world of early modern London, where someone's rank is increasingly difficult to ascertain at glance, becomes locus of the anxiety about class-climbing, while it simultaneously exists an additional avenue to obscuring one's own origins. Easterling examines how the comedies reflect early modern ambivalence toward the vernacular. Applying several different methodologies to her topic, the author traces the way in which the vernacular represents London's apprehension about the types of people who inhabit and even about England's place in Europe. In addition to materialist studies of the comedy, Easterling looks to what she calls non-literary frameworks concerning language (8). Of particular interest to the author are two branches of socio-linguistic studies: the first involves descriptive linguistic surveys tracing early modern culture's delight and anxiety about its expanding vernacular; the second concerns gender and language.Parsing the City consists of an introduction and four chapters. The first chapter outlines the linguistic milieu of England, and each of the other chapters interrogates single play's representation of language. Chapters 2 and 4 focus on Ben Jonson's plays, and address Epicoene and Bartholomew Fair respectively. Chapter 3 considers Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker's The Roaring Girl, exploring themes similar to those considered in relation to Jonson's work.Easterling begins her first chapter by examining various texts in which anxiety about containment and order is prominent. She connects early modern debates about the English vernacular's place in the linguistic hierarchy with the problem of encompassing the increasingly urban world of in the same (17). In these debates, Easterling reads a trope of the particular copiae of seventeenth-century London and finds preoccupation with words as much the root the symbol of the society's sense of proliferation and fragmentation (17). Following on Jean Howard's reading of the comedy genre that both rehearses the problems of life and offers up solutions, Easterling contends, Jacobean comedies are self-conscious responses to their society's coincident preoccupation with proliferation and with language (18).One sign of preoccupation with the culture's burgeoning is the concerted effort in this period to provide taxonomies for the vernacular. Around the same time that comedies reigned on the stage, writers struggled with ordering their through lists, glossaries, and tables. In the section dealing with such taxonomic texts, Easterling relies heavily on Juliet Fleming's work on gender and early dictionaries. Fleming has noted that many early dictionaries were constructed works that might appeal especially to female readers. …

The Politics of Conservation in Corneille's Théodore: Dramatic Action and Reason of State

This article examines the reappraisal of political action that was central to early modern theories of reason of state, and suggests how this reappraisal might be brought to bear upon our understanding of neo-classical dramatic action. Drawing on Foucault's distinction between sovereignty and governmentality, the essay explores key passages from political writers such as Botero and Silhon, and shows the importance of the language of 'conservation' to the new biopolitical practices of government. The essay reads the infamous failure of Pierre Corneille's play Théodore, vierge et martyre in the context of these political debates, arguing that the entwined prostitution/martyrdom plot of the tragedy literally embodies early modern debates about political 'conservation'. Despite its lack of success, the crisis of Théodore urges us to think through the relation between theories of action and the narratives they elicit, and prompts a conceptually significant exploration of the limits both of tragic action and of our modern understanding of it.

POLITICIZING REPRODUCTION IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE: OTTOMAN, TURKISH, AND FRENCH APPROACHES TO ABORTION LAW

AbstractIn this essay I discuss modern abortion legislation in the Ottoman Empire, Turkey, and France. Using late nineteenth and early twentieth century fears of population decline and "race suicide" as a starting point, the first half of the essay examines the relationship between nationalist or authoritarian state formation and the criminalization of abortion in all three states. The second half of the paper discusses the gradual de-criminalization of abortion after the Second World War and its relationship to twentieth century rights rhetoric. In this essay I argue that both the criminalization and de-criminalization of abortion in the Ottoman Empire, Turkey, and France were central to modern citizenship formation, each process equally essential to the increasing politicization of reproductive behavior over the modern period. At the same time, I also argue that legislators in all three states looked back to unique "traditions" to serve as foundations for their post-eighteenth century laws—Ottoman and Turkish jurists making use of medieval and early modern debates in the Islamic world surrounding abortion and French jurists making use of an equally well-established Catholic tradition.

The Rhetoric of Sensibility in Eighteenth-Century Culture by Paul Goring

162 gernon Sidney, and John Locke, we will observe the emergence of distinctively liberal and republican modes of thought and discourse.’’ For the most part, it succeeds wonderfully. Mr. Ward’s simple but profound contribution to the debate shows that the liberal and republican interpretations present a false dichotomy—they both can be true. The intellectual forces that shaped the Exclusion Crisis and Glorious Revolution drew strength from the principles of natural liberty and individual rights as well as from the principles of civic virtue and political participation . The Whig political discourse of the period emphasized the value of liberty as well as the importance of virtue, which means that it is overly simplistic and schematic to reduce the whole conversation to a single paradigm. Mr. Ward does an excellent job of recreating the intellectual milieu of the Exclusion Crisis by revivifying the major alternative political philosophies, many of which are virtually unknown today, that formed the horizon of the early modern debate over sovereignty. The only pervasive problem in the work is that in trying to recreate this intellectual world, Mr. Ward sometimes finds his material slipping away from him. He shows that the liberal and republican traditions in Anglo-American thought were originally part of a single discourse of opposition against divine right absolutism, yet the differences between these traditions are often as glaring as their shared rejection of absolutism . Mr. Ward himself seems to feel the problem. He says that he has tried to ‘‘reconcile the different strands of this early modern philosophy into the complex heterogeneous whole it originally was.’’ But in what sense are the parts ‘‘reconciled’’ when the whole remains complexly ‘‘heterogeneous.’’ Matthew Simpson PAUL GORING. The Rhetoric of Sensibility in Eighteenth-Century Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge, 2005. Pp. 222. $50; $22.50 (paper). Aaron Hill’s The Art of Acting argues that actors summon up bodily signs in performance; a grammar of gestures manifests specific, identifiable ‘‘passions .’’ For Mr. Goring, power sharing and capitalism created a need in the middle class for the means of gentility, and orators revealed a model of politeness through physical movement and eloquence in public and in conduct books. British culture saw the human body as objectively performing ‘‘eloquent’’ movement and gestures in public; thus the body responds to cultural developments . The body in place and in motion is the site on which permutations of British ‘‘polite society’’ were displayed, recognized, and valued. While stage speech in the eighteenth century has been studied extensively, the body as a medium for public oratory and its attendant gestures has not. Mr. Goring distinguishes between polite bodily discourse and that of enthusiastic bodies, such as those ‘‘associated with Methodism,’’ especially the exuberant preaching of John Henley, who challenged religious propriety. Thomas Sheridan believed systematically ‘‘fixing ’’ British oratory and bodily performance would make English speech more natural than the ornamented French oratory , and these improvements would lend cultural coherence to the English nation. Bodily eloquence also appears in the sentimental novel and language of feeling. Readers ‘‘stage’’ politeness by 163 learning and sharing with others. Works by Richardson—particularly Pamela— Sarah Fielding, Frances Sheridan, and Henry Mackenzie constitute a genre of sentimental fiction featuring performance . Mr. Goring’s Epilogue examines Sterne’s oratory and bodily expression in sermons and literature. In sermonizing , Sterne’s indecorous wit and bawdiness did not exhibit appropriate gravitas, but in Tristram Shandy and Sentimental Journey he gently mocks scholars who produced technical formulae for public oration and somatic delivery: Corporal Trim’s now-famous reading of Sterne’s own sermon. Rebecca Shapiro Westminster College LYNN FESTA. Sentimental Figures of Empire in Eighteenth-Century Britain and France. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 2006. Pp. 312. $55. Recently, I overheard a renowned eighteenth-century scholar opine, ‘‘Aren’t we through with sensibility yet?’’ For some, it has been a long twenty years in which studies of sentiment have come of age and matured. By refusing to accept sentimentality on its own terms, however, Ms. Festa discovers some new dimensions to explore. She stakes the originality of this book on her insights into the concept of the person, but I find that the project is most memorable for unearthing the volatile politics of...

"The Dark Backward and Abysm of Time": The Tempest and Memory

This essay examines The Tempest in light of models of memory derived from cognitive psychology, sociology, and philosophy, placed within the context of early modern debates about the nature and locus of memory. In The Tempest, Shakespeare stages profound tensions between an individualist, faculty-based model of memory in which the mind is figured as a "cell" bounded by a monodic subject, and the constant threats to such order and control on the part of other minds represented in the play. Attention to the tensions between control and disorder in memory, allows us to understand three critical cruces of the play: 1) Prospero's apparently unmotivated demand for Miranda's attention during the exposition of 1.2; 2) the destruction of the masque by a moment of forgetting, and the subsequent agitation caused; 3) the play's own apparent amnesia about the founding narrative recounted by Prospero, as Alonso increasingly displaces Antonio as the play goes on.

The Origins of al Qaeda’s Ideology: Implications for US Strategy

fight against the enemy nearest to you has precedence over the fight against the enemy farther away.... In all Muslim countries the enemy has the reins of power. The enemy is the present rulers. --Muhammad Abd al-Salam Faraj, tried and hanged in connection with the 1981 assassination of Anwar al-Sadat (1) Victory for the Islamic movements ... cannot be attained unless these movements possess an Islamic base in the heart of the Arab region. --Ayman al-Zawahiri, Bin Laden deputy, 2001 (2) do not want stability in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and even Saudi Arabia.... The real issue is not whether, but how to destabilize. We have to ensure the fulfillment of the democratic --Michael Ledeen, American Enterprise Institute, 2002 (3) The leader of Sadat's assassins, Bin Laden's chief ideologue, and a leading American neoconservative supporter of Israel all call for a revolutionary transformation of the Middle East. However, the United States, the existing Arab regimes, and the traditional Sunni clerical establishments all share an interest in avoiding instability and revolution. This shared interest makes the establishments in the Sunni world America's natural partners in the struggle against al Qaeda and similar movements. If American strategists fail to understand and exploit the divide between the establishments and the revolutionaries within Sunni Islam, the United States will play into the radicals' hands, and turn fence-sitting Sunnis into enemies. Outsiders of the Sunni World Sunni is a very big tent, and there always have been insiders and outsiders within Sunnism playing out their rivalries with clashing philosophies. (4) Throughout the past century, the most important of these clashes have occurred between Sunni reformers and the traditional Sunni clerical establishment. The ideology espoused today by al Qaeda and similar groups can be traced directly from the 19th-century founders of modernist reform in Sunnism. Al Qaeda's leading thinkers are steeped in these reformers' long struggle against the establishment. The teaching of the reformers has been heterodox and revolutionary from the beginning; that is, the reformers and their intellectual descendants in al Qaeda are the outsiders of today's Sunni world. For the most part this struggle has been waged in Egypt, Sunni Islam's center of gravity. On one side of the debate, there is Cairo's Al-Azhar, a seminary and university that has been the center of Sunni orthodoxy for a thousand years. On the other side, al Qaeda's ideology has its origins in late-19th-century efforts in Egypt to reform and modernize faith and society. As the 20th century progressed, the Sunni establishment centered on Al-Azhar came to view the modernist reform movement as more and more heterodox. It became known as Salafism, for the supposedly uncorrupted early Muslim predecessors (salaf, plural aslaf) of today's Islam. The more revolutionary tendencies in this Salafist reform movement constitute the core of today's challenge to the Sunni establishment, and are the chief font of al Qaeda's ideology. A Century of Reformation In contemporary Western discussions of the Muslim world, it is common to hear calls for a in Islam as an antidote to al Qaeda. (5) These calls often betray a misunderstanding of both Sunni and of the early modern debate between Catholics and Protestants. In fact, a Sunni reformation has been under way for more than a century, and it works against Western security interests. The Catholic-Protestant struggle in Europe weakened traditional religious authorities' control over the definition of doctrine, emphasized scripture over tradition, idealized an allegedly uncorrupted primitive religious community, and simplified theology and rites. The Salafist movement in the Sunni Muslim world has been pursuing these same reforms for a century. …

"Fill the Earth and Subdue it": Biblical Warrants for Colonization in Seventeenth Century England

The importance of conceptions of natural law in early-modern debates about the legitimacy of colonization is well known. The role played by specific arguments drawn from Scripture is less recognized. In seventeenth century England the biblical injunction to “fill the earth and subdue it,” along with the account of the Exodus and the occupation of “the promised land,” informed debates about the origins of private property, and was directly relevant to developing conceptions of indigenous property rights and the legitimacy of dispossession. Although there were powerful economic and evangelical incentives for the establishment of foreign plantations in the early-modern period, these were strongly reinforced, in the English context at least, by particular readings of Old Testament narratives.

Friendship, Coercion, and Interest: Debating the Foundations of Justice In Early Modern England

AbstractThis essay examines the significance of friendship and the expectations associated with it in the early modern debate about trust and the fulfillment of obligations as that debate unfolded in England. A thorough rethinking about the foundations of society and the mechanisms of social order focused on the motives and justifications that led people to create and fulfill obligations to others, especially in the area of commutative justice. Commutative justice was achieved when contracts were secure, promises kept, exchanges carried through, and debts paid. The growth of the state, new economic theories, and the development of strict contract encouraged reliance on coercion (or punitive measures) and self-interest. While these visions of society triumphed, there was a show of resistance based on the idea that friendship was a more valuable source of justice because it brought into play the virtues of generosity, gratitude, and promise-keeping (or fidelity). At stake was the very de fi nition and scope of human personality and morality.

A Woman Not Fit to Rule: The Gendering of Jealousy in Lope de Vega's Arminda Celosa

The jealousy of the powerful female protagonist, Queen Arminda, is disparaged and greatly feared by other characters in this play by Lope de Vega. But these characters need not fear. Unlike their male counterparts in similar situations in Lope's plays, such jealous women never kill anyone. Rather, the women are made to look irrational for their jealousy, even when it is rationally justifiable (as in the case of Queen Arminda, whose husband is a philanderer). Such representations of women's jealousy propagate cultural stereotypes of women's weakness and especially their irrationality, and tend toward the conservative side of the early modern political debates on the suitability of queens as rulers. Furthermore, the contradictions in the text demonstrate the need for a philosophical re-appraisal of the emotions and of their representation in literature.

Animals, Extraterrestrial Life and Anthropocentrism in the Seventeenth Century

Both the issue of early modern attitudes toward animals and the early modern debate on the possibility of the existence of extraterrestrial life have received ample attention in early modern scholarship. However, almost no attention has been given to possible connections between these two issues. Such a connection nevertheless exists, since the early modern debates of both these issues were closely linked to the development of an anthropocentric outlook in western culture, according to which man had a God-given right to make use of nature. While the specific term 'anthropocentrism' was not in common use at the time, early modern thought, as discussed below, presents distinct phenomena which answer to the definition of this concept in its modern sense, i.e. a world-view placing man and human interests above those of the rest of the natural world. In the present article we shall therefore not be concerned with a separate discussion of the debate on the possibility of existence of other worlds and creatures on the one hand, and the debate on the status of animals and the possibility of moral duties toward them on the other. Rather, we shall centre on various cases where they were discussed in the same context, or on cases when the same person expressed distinct views on both these issues. As we shall see, there were many such cases, and their study has a profound influence on the understanding of early modern anthropocentrism. In the following discussion the connection between these two issues will be considered as a distinct phenomenon, sui generis in the history of ideas. Suffice it to say here, by way of introduction, that the rise of empirical science, particularly modern astronomy, gave an added impetus to speculations and debates on the possibility of the existence of other worlds and creatures, perhaps even rational creatures. As for the debate regarding animals, it fell broadly into two camps: on the one hand the theriophiles, who apportioned various degrees of feeling and rationality to animals (although usually less than human beings), and occasionally inferred from this a need for consideration toward them; and on the other hand the antitheriophiles, who denied or belittled the capacity for feeling and rationality in animals, and consequently also their right to moral consideration. Of particular importance in this context was the Cartesian theory of the 'beastmachine', which regarded animals as senseless automata. While Descartes himself remained rather agnostic toward this issue, certain of his followers developed more extreme variations of it, and the theory in general also bore the brunt of many theriophilic attacks.1IBefore discussing the literature on extraterrestrial life, one should mention some examples of a somewhat related type of literature, the Utopian genre. Indeed, the supposition of 'another place' always contained a potential for anti-anthropocentric argumentation, and of discussions of animals, albeit this potential did not always materialize. In Thomas More's Utopia (1516) most people eat animals, but the slaughtering of livestock is done by slaves, and ordinary people are not allowed to become accustomed to the cutting up of animals, since it tends to destroy the natural feelings of humanity. Hunting and hawking are also left to the slave-butchers. Hunting is regarded as the vilest department of butchery, since a butcher kills animals to satisfy a need, whereas a hunter does so for pleasure, exemplifying a blood-lust not found in any but the most savage animals. Hunting is a cruel sport and a stupid pleasure which should arouse pity rather than amusement. The Utopians also refrain from religious sacrifice of animals, believing that God would not enjoy slaughter and bloodshed. Some of the Utopians believe that animals have an immortal soul, although inferior to man's, and they generally believe that man's reason and intelligence is superior to that of the animals. As a child More himself did not seem to exemplify kindness toward animals, and even excelled in the cruel custom of cock-throwing. …

Un troisième concept de liberté au-delà d'Isaiah Berlin et du libéralisme anglais

Isaiah Berlin is celebrated for having defended the claim that there are two distinct concepts of liberty. According to the more familiar view, liberty is a « negative » concept. The presence of liberty is said to be marked, that is, by the absence of something, and specifically by the absence of inteference with an agent’s capacity to pursue some chosen end. According to Berlin, however, this concept stands in contrast with a « positive » view, according to which liberty is the name of that state in which we shall have realised ourselves most completely. Liberty on this account is the name not of an opportunity but of a moral achievement. Berlin considered the second view dangerously confused, but one aim of the present essay is to defend its coherence. Its principal aim, however, is to show that Berlin’s understanding of negative liberty is a misleadingly narrow one. As is evident from classical and early-modern debates, we have in fact inherited two rival conceptions of negative liberty. One of these focuses, as Berlin rightly observed, on the idea of absence of interference. But the other, which he overlooked, sees lack of liberty as arising from relations of domination and dependence. The principal aim of the present essay is to distinguish these two traditions and to give new prominence to the idea of negative liberty as absence not of interference but of dependence.

STOICS WHO SING: LESSONS IN CITIZENSHIP FROM EARLY MODERN LUCCA

Lucca was the smallest and least important of the three Italian republics that survived the Renaissance. Venice and Genoa still command the attention of historians. But in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, for all that it might seem out-of-the-way, Lucca developed an extraordinary political literature. The regular election of senators was marked by the musical performance of a text, generally drawn from Roman history, that illustrated the way citizens of a republic were to behave. The poet and composer were natives and the event was a lesson in citizenship. A close look at the content of these serenades, or operas, makes clear that the republic's motto might have been Libertas but its teaching emphasized constantia. The themes and the heroes of Lucca's political literature were those we associate with neo-Stoicism. The relationship between neo-Stoicism and citizenship in early modern Lucca is the focus of this article. These texts present us with the self-image of an early modern republic and its understanding of what it meant to be a citizen. They are an important source for anyone interested in early modern debates about citizenship and in the political ideas that are conveyed in the commonplaces of baroque visual and musical culture.

Curiosity, forbidden knowledge, and the reformation of natural philosophy in early modern England.

From the patristic period to the beginning of the seventeenth century curiosity was regarded as an intellectual vice. Curious individuals were considered to be proud and "puffed up," and the objects of their investigations were deemed illicit, dispute engendering, unknowable, or useless. Seventeenth-century projects for the advancement of learning had to distance themselves from curiosity and its dubious fruits or, alternatively, enhance the moral status of the curious sensibility. Francis Bacon's proposals for the instauration of knowledge were an integral part of a process by which curiosity underwent a remarkable transformation from vice to virtue over the course of the seventeenth century. The changing fortunes of this human propensity highlight the morally charged nature of early modern debates over the status of natural philosophy and the particular virtues required of its practitioners. The rehabilitation of curiosity was a crucial element in the objectification of scientific knowledge and led to a gradual shift of focus away from the moral qualities of investigators and the propriety of particular objects of knowledge to specific procedures and methods.

The early modern debate about foreign drugs: localism versus universalism in medicine

The early modern debate about foreign drugs: localism versus universalism in medicine

Boys to men

comprising two words that are bound to turn a few heads in the scholarly community: patriarchal rage. In fact, such a focus on patriarchy should not surprise or shock even the most traditional colonial historians, especially those interested in Filmer, Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau as well as lesser figures who contributed to the early-modern debates over constitutional government. Political theorists from Gordon Schochet in Patriarchalism in Political Thought (1975) to Carole Pateman in The Sexual Contract (1988) have recognized that paternal rights assumed a crucial role in defining state ideologies in England and Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. For Americanists, Jay Fliegelman's Prodigals and Pilgrims: The American Revolution Against Patriarchal Authority, 1750-1800 (1982) likewise provided the most important reconceptualization of patriarchy through his effort to treat family politics as an integral part of the cultural revolution that surrounded American independence. Given the warm reception of his book, Fliegelman's study

A Predecessor on Nature and Art in the Renaissance

Frances E. Dolan's Taking the Pencil out of God's Hand: Art, Nature, and the Face-Painting Debate in Early Moder England (108 [1993]: 224-39) merits praise as one of the better articles in the issue. So it is dispiriting to find that Dolan does not cite her most obvious-one would have thought unavoidablepredecessor. Her article begins, Numerous scholars in the history of ideas have identified and as the categories organizing many discussions of education, gardening, cosmetics, poetry, and rhetoric in Renaissance England. She uses the words (and the ideas) nature and art repeatedly, and the topic sentence of her conclusion begins, The early modern debate over the relation between and ...