Table of Contents

Volume I: General Introduction; Acknowledgments; Notes on the text; 1. Introduction: seeing things their way; 2. The practice of history and the cult of the fact; 3. Interpretation, rationality and truth; 4. Meaning and understanding in the history of ideas; 5. Motives, intentions and interpretation; 6. Interpretation and the understanding of speech acts; 7. 'Social meaning' and the explanation of social action; 8. Moral principles and social change; 9. The idea of a cultural lexicon; 10. Retrospect: Studying rhetoric and conceptual change. Volume II. 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. Volume III: 1. Introduction: Hobbes's career in philosophy; 2. Hobbes and the studia humanitatis; 3. Hobbes's changing conception of a civil science; 4. Hobbes on rhetoric and the construction of morality; 5. Hobbes and the purely artificial person of the state; 6. Hobbes on the proper signification of liberty; 7. Hobbes and the classical theory of laughter; 8. History and ideology in the English revolution; 9. The context of Hobbes's theory of political obligation; 10. Conquest and consent: Hobbes and the engagement controversy; 11. Hobbes and his disciples in France and England; 12. Hobbes and the politics of the early Royal Society; 13. Hobbes's last word on politics.

Promotional Information

A major collection of the principal published and unpublished essays of Quentin Skinner.

About the Author

QUENTIN SKINNER is Regius Professor of Modern History in the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Christ's College.

Reviews

'This is an essential collection of essays, written by one of the world's greatest exponents of the history of political thought. ... it should serve to challenge the all too often naive approach to the history of ideas employed in IR, while pointing to the richness of human lived experience and the political traditions that are our heritage and that have shaped and structured the very world in which we live.' International Affairs 'As a retrospective showcase of the work of a major scholar, this is impressive. Skinner's ability to combine political and philosophical insight with minute knowledge of several centuries of political literature is awe inspiring.' The Times Higher Education Supplement ' ... this is a deeply impressive collection which displays Skinner's exceptional range.' The New York Review