William of Ockham: A Short Discourse on Tyrannical Government

William of Ockham: A Short Discourse on Tyrannical Government
Author: William (of Ockham)
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 256
Release: 1992-08-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521358033

William of Ockham (c. 1285-c. 1347) was the most eminent and influential theologian and philosopher of his day, a giant in the history of political thought. He was a Franciscan friar who came to believe that the Avignonese papacy of John XXII had set out to destroy the religious ideal on which the Franciscan order was based: the complete poverty of Christ and the apostles. This is the first complete text by Ockham to be published in English. The Short Discourse is a passionate but compelling statement of Ockham's position on the most fundamental political problem of the medieval period: the relationship of supreme spiritual authority, as represented by the pope, to the autonomous secular authority claimed by the medieval empire and the emerging nation-states of Europe. Professor McGrade's introduction, and the notes on the translation make the volume wholly accessible to a modern readership, while a full bibliography and chronology are included as further aids to the reader.

A Humanist in Reformation Politics

A Humanist in Reformation Politics
Author: Mads L. Jensen
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2019-11-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004414134

This book is the first contextual account of the political philosophy and natural law theory of the German reformer Philipp Melanchthon (1497-1560). Mads Langballe Jensen presents Melanchthon as a significant political thinker in his own right and an engaged scholar drawing on the intellectual arsenal of renaissance humanism to develop a new Protestant political philosophy. As such, he also shows how and why natural law theories first became integral to Protestant political thought in response to the political and religious conflicts of the Reformation. This study offers new, contextual studies of a wide range of Melanchthon's works including his early humanist orations, commentaries on Aristotle's ethics and politics, Melanchthon's own textbooks on moral and political philosophy, and polemical works.

The Avignon Papacy Contested

The Avignon Papacy Contested
Author: Unn Falkeid
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2017-08-21
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0674971841

Unn Falkeid considers the work of six fourteenth-century writers who waged literary war against the Avignon papacy’s increasing claims of supremacy over secular rulers—a conflict that engaged contemporary critics from every corner of Europe. She illuminates arguments put forth by Dante, Petrarch, William of Ockham, Catherine of Siena, and others.

The Cambridge Companion to Ockham

The Cambridge Companion to Ockham
Author: Paul Vincent Spade
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 440
Release: 1999-12-13
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780521587907

Offers a full discussion of all significant aspects of this medieval philosopher's thought.

On Tyranny and the Global Legal Order

On Tyranny and the Global Legal Order
Author: Aoife O'Donoghue
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 479
Release: 2021-10-07
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1108585159

Since classical antiquity debates about tyranny, tyrannicide and preventing tyranny's re-emergence have permeated governance discourse. Yet within the literature on the global legal order, tyranny is missing. This book creates a taxonomy of tyranny and poses the question: could the global legal order be tyrannical? This taxonomy examines the benefits attached to tyrannical governance for the tyrant, considers how illegitimacy and fear establish tyranny, asks how rule by law, silence and beneficence aid in governing a tyranny. It outlines the modalities of tyranny: scale, imperialism, gender, and bureaucracy. Where it is determined that a tyranny exists, the book examines the extent of the right and duty to effect tyrannicide. As the global legal order gathers ever more power to itself, it becomes imperative to ask whether tyranny lurks at the global scale.

Maitland: State, Trust and Corporation

Maitland: State, Trust and Corporation
Author: F. W. Maitland
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2003-11-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521526302

The essays collected in State, Trust and Corporation contain the reflections of England's greatest legal historian on the legal, historical and philosophical origins of the idea of the state. All written in the first years of the twentieth century, Maitland's essays are classics both of historical writing and of political theory. They contain a series of profound insights into the way the character of the state has been shaped by the non-political associations that exist alongside it, and their themes are of continuing relevance today. This is the first new edition of these essays for sixty years, and the first of any kind to contain full translations, glossary and expository introduction. It has been designed to make Maitland's writings fully accessible to the non-specialist, and to make available to anyone interested in the idea of the state some of the most important modern writings in English on that subject.

Transformations in Medieval and Early-Modern Rights Discourse

Transformations in Medieval and Early-Modern Rights Discourse
Author: Virpi Mäkinen
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2006-02-27
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1402042124

Rights language is a fundamental feature of the modern world. Virtually all significant social and political struggles are waged, and have been waged for over a century now, in terms of rights claims. In some ways, it is precisely the birth of modern rights language that ushers in modernity in terms of moral and political thought, and the struggle for a modern way of life seems for many synonymous with the fight for a universal recognition of equal, individual human rights. Where did modern rights language come from? What kinds of rights discourses is it rooted in? What is the specific nature of modern rights discourse; when and where were medieval and ancient notions of rights transformed into it? Can one in fact find any single such transformation of medieval into modern rights discourse? This book brings together some of the most central scholars in the history of medieval and early-modern rights discourse. Through the different angles taken by its authors, the volume brings to light the multifaceted nature of rights languages in the medieval and early modern world.

The Democracy of Objects

The Democracy of Objects
Author: Levi R. Bryant
Publisher: Good Press
Total Pages: 371
Release: 2023-11-28
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN:

Since Kant, philosophy has been obsessed with epistemological questions pertaining to the relationship between mind and world and human access to objects. In The Democracy of Objects, Bryant proposes that we break with this tradition and once again initiate the project of ontology as first philosophy. Drawing on the object-oriented ontology of Graham Harman, as well as the thought of Roy Bhaskar, Gilles Deleuze, Niklas Luhman, Aristotle, Jacques Lacan, Bruno Latour and the developmental systems theorists, Bryant develops a realist ontology that he calls "onticology". This ontology argues that being is composed entirely of objects, properties, and relations such that subjects themselves are a variant of objects. Drawing on the work of the systems theorists and cyberneticians, Bryant argues that objects are dynamic systems that relate to the world under conditions of operational closure. In this way, he is able to integrate the most vital discoveries of the anti-realists within a realist ontology that does justice to both the material and cultural. Onticology proposes a flat ontology where objects of all sorts and at different scales equally exist without being reducible to other objects and where there are no transcendent entities such as eternal essences outside of dynamic interactions among objects. Contents: Towards a Finally Subjectless Object Grounds For a Realist Ontology The Paradox of Substance Virtual Proper Being The Interior of Objects Regimes of Attraction, Parts, and Structure The Four Theses of Flat Ontology

The Political Thought of William Ockham

The Political Thought of William Ockham
Author: Arthur Stephen McGrade
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2002-08-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521522243

The English Franciscan, William of Ockham (c. 1285-1349), was one of the most important thinkers of the later middle agesThis book provides a coherent account of Ockham's aims and the principles operating in all his political works.