Freedom, today perceived simply as a human right, was a continually contested idea in the early modern period. In Freedom and the Construction of Europe an international group of scholars explore the richness, diversity and complexity of thinking about freedom in the shaping of modernity. Volume 1 examines debates about religious and constitutional liberties, as well as exploring the tensions between free will and divine omnipotence across a continent of proliferating religious denominations. Debates about freedom have been fundamental to the construction of modern Europe, but represent a part of our intellectual heritage that is rarely examined in depth. These volumes provide materials for thinking in fresh ways not merely about the concept of freedom, but how it has come to be understood in our own time.

Freedom, today perceived simply as a human right, was a continually contested idea in the early modern period. In Freedom and the Construction of Europe an international group of scholars explore the richness, diversity and complexity of thinking about freedom in the shaping of modernity. Volume 2 considers free persons and free states, examining differing views about freedom of thought and action and their relations to conceptions of citizenship. Debates about freedom have been fundamental to the construction of modern Europe, but represent a part of our intellectual heritage that is rarely examined in depth. These volumes provide materials for thinking in fresh ways not merely about the concept of freedom, but how it has come to be understood in our own time.

In recent years religion has resurfaced amongst academics, in many ways replacing class as the key to understanding Europe's historical development. This has resulted in an explosion of studies revisiting issues of religious change, confessional violence and holy war during the early modern period. But the interpretation of the European wars of religion still remains largely defined by national boundaries, tied to specific processes of state building as well as nation building. In order to more thoroughly interrogate these concepts and assumptions, this volume focusses on terms repeatedly used and misused in public debates such as "religious violence" and "holy warfare" within the context of military conflicts commonly labelled "religious wars". The chapters not only focus on the role of religion, but also on the emerging state as a driver of the escalation of violence in the so-called age of religious war. By using different methodological and theoretical approaches historians, philosophers, and theologians engage in an interdisciplinary debate that contributes to a better understanding of the religio-political situation of early modern Europe and the interpretation of violent conflicts interpreted as religious conflicts today. By adopting a multi-disciplinary approach, new and innovative perspectives are opened up that question if in fact religion was a primary driving force behind these conflicts.

This volume brings together scholars from a range of disciplines to explore the intersections between crisis, scholarship, and action. The aim of this book is to think about the “moment of crisis,” through the concepts, writings, and methodologies awarded to us by Jewish thinkers in modernity. This book offers a broad gallery of accounts on the notion of crisis in Jewish modernity while emphasizing three terms: interpretation, heresy, and messianism. The main thesis of the volume is that the diasporic and exilic experience of the Jewish people turned their philosophers and theologians into “experts in crisis management” who had to find resources within their own religion, culture and traditions in order to react, endure and overcome short- and long-term historical crises. The underlining assumption of this book is therefore that Jewish thought obtains resources for conceptualizing and reacting to the current forms of crisis in the global, European, and Israeli spheres. The volume addresses a large readership in humanities, social and political sciences and religious studies, taking as its assumption that scholars in modern Jewish thought have an extended responsibility to engage in contemporary debates.

A new history of the idea of the modern state and its 'personality', showing the centrality of Pufendorf to its development and propagation.

Freedom, today perceived simply as a human right, was a continually contested idea in the early modern period. In Freedom and the Construction of Europe an international group of scholars explore the richness, diversity and complexity of thinking about freedom in the shaping of modernity. Volume 1 examines debates about religious and constitutional liberties, as well as exploring the tensions between free will and divine omnipotence across a continent of proliferating religious denominations. Debates about freedom have been fundamental to the construction of modern Europe, but represent a part of our intellectual heritage that is rarely examined in depth. These volumes provide materials for thinking in fresh ways not merely about the concept of freedom, but how it has come to be understood in our own time.

Kant's Politics in Context is the first book-length contextual study of Kant's legal and political philosophy. It gives an account of the development of his thought before, during, and after the French revolution. The book argues that Kant provided a philosophical defence of the revolution's liberal ideals while aiming to avoid the twin dangers of anarchy and despotism. Central to this was a concept of freedom as non-domination, constituted by legal rights and duties within a state. The close connection between freedom and the rule of law accounts for the centrality of the state in Kant's liberalism. Understanding Kant's political philosophy poses difficulties that can be resolved by paying attention to the high stakes debates in Germany during the 1790s, of which it was a part. Kant's theory of politics was not the result of dispassionate academic reasoning, but crystallized in polemical interventions against his conservative and radical critics in debates about freedom, political rights, revolution, and international law. By revealing the neglected origins of Kant's political concepts, this book explains their meaning as well as their relevance to current debates in political philosophy.

First published in Italian in 1990, Fiammetta Palladini’s ground-breaking study of Samuel Pufendorf (1632–1694) remains one of the most important discussions of the subject to date. Now available in English for the first time, Palladini's book cuts through the existing field of Pufendorf studies, laying bare its inherited templates and tacit assumptions. Palladini is thus able to peel back the ‘Grotian’ commentary in which the great thinker had been shrouded, revealing a Pufendorf well-known in the 1680s—a formidable and dangerous natural jurist and political theorist—but doubly obscured in the 1980s and still today, by a philosophical history that flies too high to see him, and by a commentary literature that too often does not like what it sees. David Saunders’ lucid translation carries Palladini’s argument into English with maximum fidelity. Translation of: Samuel Pufendorf discepolo di Hobbes. Per una reinterpretazione del giusnaturalismo moderno (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1990).

Original scholarly essays by leading philosophers, which bring to life Machiavelli’s lengthiest and most challenging work.