Obeissant a la logique d'une specialisation toujours plus grande, les societes contemporaines ne tiennent pas l'amateur en grande estime. Or, s'il est vrai que le 18e siecle consacre le triomphe de cette figure, c'est aussi l'epoque ou s'amorce son irreversible declin. Couvrant un large spectre de disciplines et d'aires culturelles au sein de l'Europe, les contributions de specialistes reunies dans ce volume permettent de mieux cerner ce moment-pivot de l'histoire culturelle. Sans se limiter aux formes institutionnalisees de l'amateurship etudiees par les historiens de l'art ou des sciences, l'ouvrage examine ainsi les relations que le non-professionnel entretient avec les gens de metier (dans la presse, le milieu musical ou litteraire) ; la specificite des oeuvres qu'il produit et sa contribution au progres des arts et des sciences ; l'emergence, a l'age de l'esthetique naissante, d'un amateur compris comme instance de jugement ; la maniere dont il est investi par les discours et annexe a leurs logiques propres (en tant que fiction litteraire, ideal ou ethos). Observer le phenomene dans ses manifestations plurielles, confronter l'ordre des realites et celui des representations, articuler les diverses approches sur la question: l'enjeu, on l'aura compris, est moins de definir une quelconque identite de l'amateur, que d'interroger sa raison d'etre. --- Amateurs are not particularly appreciated in our ever specialising contemporary societies. Yet the figure of the amateur was highly celebrated in the eighteenth century, even though its irremediable decline began at the same time. The articles collected in this book allow a better understanding of this turning point in cultural history as they cover a wide spectrum of academic disciplines and European cultural areas. This book does not only deal with the institutionalised forms of amateurship that have been studied by art historians and historians of science. This work considers the relationships that non-professionals had with professionals (working in periodicals, in the musical world, or in the book trade) ; the specificity of the works that amateurs produced and their contribution to the progress of arts and sciences ; the rise of the amateur as a judging instance in a period that saw the development of aesthetics ; and the way this figure was handled in different discourses and subjected to their own logics (whether as a literary fiction, an ideal or an ethos). Since this collective work focuses on the phenomenon of amateurship in its diverse manifestations, confronts the real to its representations, and articulates different perspectives on the subject, it obviously does not aim at defining any identity for the amateur, but rather intends to question its raison d'etre.

A distinguished philosopher offers a novel account of experience and reason, and develops our understanding of conscious experience and its relationship to thought: a new reformed empiricism. The role of experience in cognition is a central and ancient philosophical concern. How, theorists ask, can our private experiences guide us to knowledge of a mind-independent reality? Exploring topics in logic, philosophy of mind, and epistemology, Conscious Experience proposes a new answer to this age-old question, explaining how conscious experience contributes to the rationality and content of empirical beliefs. According to Anil Gupta, this contribution cannot be determined independently of an agent's conceptual scheme and prior beliefs, but that doesn't mean it is entirely mind-dependent. While the rational contribution of an experience is not propositional-it does not, for example, provide direct knowledge of the world-it does authorize certain transitions from prior views to new views. In short, the rational contribution of an experience yields a rule for revising views. Gupta shows that this account provides theoretical freedom: it allows the observer to radically reconceive the world in light of empirical findings. Simultaneously, it grants empirical reason significant power to constrain, forcing particular conceptions of self and world on the rational inquirer. These seemingly contrary virtues are reconciled through novel treatments of presentation, appearances, and ostensive definitions. Collectively, Gupta's arguments support an original theory: reformed empiricism. He abandons the idea that experience is a source of knowledge and justification. He also abandons the idea that concepts are derived from experience. But reformed empiricism preserves empiricism's central insight: experience is the supreme epistemic authority. In the resolution of factual disagreements, experience trumps all.

The first modern biography of William Robertson, a key figure of the Scottish EnlightenmentA prominent figure in the Scottish Enlightenment, William Robertson differed from his contemporaries, such as Voltaire, Hume and Gibbon, because he used the critical tools of the Enlightenment to strengthen religion, not to attack it. As an historian, he helped shape 18th-century historiography. As a minister of the Church of Scotland, he sought to make the church fit for a polite age. And, as principal of the University of Edinburgh, he presided over a flourishing of intellectual inquiry in the midst of the Enlightenment. But despite his European fame, he was a controversial figure. Drawing extensively on his unpublished correspondence, Jeffrey Smitten captures both the man and his work in his own words. By foregrounding Robertson's religious outlook, Smitten gives us a more contextualised and nuanced interpretation of Robertson's motives, intentions and beliefs than we have had before.Key Features:Includes new biographical information drawn from archival sources and from all Robertson's largely unpublished correspondenceDiscusses Robertson's works, published and unpublishedAssesses Robertson's achievement based on fresh consideration of all facets of his career as minister, historian and principal

Aucun autre siecle n'a autant inspire grand comme petit ecran, de l'epoque des Freres Lumiere a celle de Kubrick, Jacquot et Coppola. Grand inventeur de dispositifs techniques produisant des images animees, le dix-huitieme siecle est l'ancetre en ligne directe du cinematographe. Operer, par le cinema, une autre approche du siecle des Lumieres, tel est l'objet de cet ouvrage. Aux cotes des specialistes des medias, de la litterature et de l'histoire culturelle, des practiciens examinent un rapport a la fois memoriel, imaginaire et historique avec le passe. Au fonds naturel des adaptations en costumes et decors d'epoque vient s'ajouter une constellation de films indirectement impregnes d'un certain esprit des Lumieres, qui participent pleinement d'un imaginaire collectif construit au present et relevant d'un processus plus large d'actualisation. L'Ecran des Lumieres dessine un champ d'etude neuf ou les investigations culturelles, esthetiques et historiques se combinent dans une visee a la fois scientifique et creatrice qui reste aujourd'hui ouverte.

French painting of Louis XV's reign (1715-74), generally categorized by the term rococo, has typically been understood as an artistic style aimed at furnishing courtly society with delightful images of its own frivolous pursuits. Instead, this book shows the significance and seriousness underpinning the notion of pleasure embedded in eighteenth-century history painting. During this time, pleasure became a moral ideal grounded not only in domestic life but also defining a range of social, political, and cultural transactions oriented toward transforming and improving society at large. History, painting, and the seriousness of pleasure in the age of Louis XV reconsiders the role of history painting in creating a new visual language that presented peace and happiness as an individual's natural rights in the aftermath of Louis XIV's bellicose reign (1643-1715). In this new study, Susanna Caviglia reinvestigates the artistic practices of an entire generation of painters born around 1700 (e.g. Francois Boucher, Charles-Joseph Natoire, and Carle Vanloo) in order to highlight the cultural forces at work within their now iconic images.

Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, his main work of theoretical philosophy, frequently uses metaphors from law. In this first book-length study in English of Kant's legal metaphors and their role in the first Critique, Sofie Moller shows that they are central to Kant's account of reason. Through an analysis of the legal metaphors in their entirety, she demonstrates that Kant conceives of reason as having a structure mirroring that of a legal system in a natural right framework. Her study shows that Kant's aim is to make cognisers become similar to authorized judges within such a system, by proving the legitimacy of the laws and the conditions under which valid judgments can be pronounced. These elements consolidate her conclusion that reason's systematicity is legal systematicity.

In this concise and powerful book, one of the world's leading historians of the Enlightenment provides a bracing and clarifying new interpretation of this watershed period. Arguing that philosophical and historical interpretations of the era have long been hopelessly confused, Vincenzo Ferrone makes the case that it is only by separating these views and taking an approach grounded in social and cultural history that we can begin to grasp what the Enlightenment was--and why it is still relevant today. Ferrone explains why the Enlightenment was a profound and wide-ranging cultural revolution that reshaped Western identity, reformed politics through the invention of human rights, and redefined knowledge by creating a critical culture. These new ways of thinking gave birth to new values that spread throughout society and changed how everyday life was lived and understood. Featuring an illuminating afterword describing how his argument challenges the work of Anglophone interpreters including Jonathan Israel, The Enlightenment provides a fascinating reevaluation of the true nature and legacy of one of the most important and contested periods in Western history. The translation of this work has been funded by SEPS--Segretariato Europeo per le Pubblicazioni Scientifiche.

'The ideal interpreter of the Ring ... a fascinating and valuable study ... absorbing and convincing' Sunday Times The Ring of the Nibelung is one of the greatest works of art created in modern times. Roger Scruton's brilliant and passionate exploration of the drama, music, symbolism and philosophy of Wagner's masterpiece - with its themes of love, death, sacrifice and freedom - shows how, ultimately, it expresses the truth about the human condition. 'Highly original and penetrating ... tremendous' Tim Blanning, Literary Review 'A rich, historical account ... After reading this book, only the most unadventurous reader would turn down the chance to see Wagner's masterpiece' Economist 'A brilliant gallop through the master's religious, musical and philosophical contexts' Sue Prideaux, Spectator 'Scruton is one of the finest philosopher-musicians since Schopenhauer' Jonathan Gaisman, Standpoint

Students of the Enlightenment have long assumed that the major movement towards atheism in the Ancien Regime was centered in the circle of intellectuals who met at the home of Baron d'Holbach during the last half of the eighteenth century. This major critical study shows, contrary to the accepted views, that in fact, atheism was not the common bond of a majority of the members and that, far from being alienated figures, most of the members were privileged and publicly successful citizens devoted to peaceful and gradual reform. Alan Charles Kors determines the coterie's membership and discovers it to have been a diverse assemblage of philosophes, men of letters, and scientists. Analyzing the thought and behavior of those members who lived past 1789, the author argues that the hostility to the Revolution expressed by the coterie's survivors was fully consistent with their world view. Originally published in 1976. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

A major history of how the Enlightenment transformed people's everyday lives The Secular Enlightenment is a panoramic account of the radical ways life began to change for ordinary people in the age of Locke, Voltaire, and Rousseau. In this landmark book, familiar Enlightenment figures share places with voices that have remained largely unheard until now, from freethinkers and freemasons to French materialists, anticlerical Catholics, pantheists, pornographers, and travelers. Margaret Jacob takes readers from London and Amsterdam to Berlin, Vienna, Turin, and Naples, drawing on rare archival materials to show how ideas central to the emergence of secular democracy touched all facets of daily life. A majestic work of intellectual and cultural history, The Secular Enlightenment demonstrates how secular values and pursuits took hold of eighteenth-century Europe, spilled into the American colonies, and left their lasting imprint on the Western world for generations to come.

Mind, Body, Motion, Matter investigates the relationship between the eighteenth century's two predominant approaches to the natural world - mechanistic materialism and vitalism - in the works of leading British and French writers such as Daniel Defoe, William Hogarth, Laurence Sterne, the third Earl of Shaftesbury and Denis Diderot. Focusing on embodied experience and the materialization of thought in poetry, novels, art, and religion, the literary scholars in this collection offer new and intriguing readings of these canonical authors. Informed by contemporary currents such as new materialism, cognitive studies, media theory, and post-secularism, their essays demonstrate the volatility of the core ideas opened up by materialism and the possibilities of an aesthetic vitalism of form.

David Hume was a highly original thinker. Nevertheless, he was a writer of his time and place in the history of philosophy. In this book, M. A. Stewart puts Hume's writing in context, particularly that of his native Scotland, but also that of British and European philosophy more generally. Through meticulous research Stewart brings to life the circumstances by means of which we can get a deeper understanding of Hume's writings on the nature and reach of human reason, the foundation of morals, and, especially, on the philosophy of religion. Stewart pays particular attention to Hume's intellectual development, beginning with his education at the College of Edinburgh, the writing of his Treatise of Human Nature, and his subsequent philosophical responses to criticisms of that book. He argues that Hume's scepticism set him at odds with the Christian Stoicism of Scottish contemporaries including that of Francis Hutcheson - and shows that this conflict played a major role in his failure to obtain the Edinburgh Moral Philosophy Chair in 1745. Stewart's detailed study of the physical character of Hume's surviving manuscripts in Chapters 8 and 9 provides the best available dating of his early 'Essay on Modern Chivalry', his 'Early Fragment on Evil' and the periods of composition of his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Other chapters compare Hume's theory of abstraction with that of Locke and Berkeley, provide the 17th and 18th century philosophical context of the central argument of his essay 'Of miracles', and consider the 18th and 19th century reception of his writings in England and Ireland.

This book brings together fourteen essays by Christopher Janaway on the philosophy of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. They illuminate central philosophical issues in the work of these thinkers - the death of God, the meaning of existence, suffering, compassion, the will, Christian values, the affirmation or negation of life. Some of the essays concern Schopenhauer in his own right, focusing on his concept of will to life, an underlying drive which constitutes our inner essence, but which traps us in self-centred desire, a wrong identification of our true self with the human individual, an egoistic conception of the good, conflict with other beings, and an existence pervaded by suffering. Opposed to the will to life stands everything of real value: art, morality, and the kind of redemption from suffering recognized by mystics from several of the world's religions. Other essays discuss Nietzsche's critical responses to Schopenhauer, and his own challenging views on related topics. For Nietzsche, morality is a questionable phenomenon and egoism is wrongly maligned; suffering is an enhancement of life, and the attempt to eliminate it is impoverishing; art is full, not drained, of willing; the world religions and the whole idea of being saved from our life are symptoms of a malaise from which modern culture has somehow to recover. The book also features discussions of the reception of Schopenhauer by two contemporaries of Nietzsche, Richard Wagner and the analyst of pessimism, Olga Plumacher.

Catharine Macaulay was a celebrated republican historian, whose account of the reasons for the seventeenth-century English Revolution, the parliamentary period, and its aftermath was widely read by the mothers and fathers of American Independence and by central players in the French Revolution. As well as publishing her eight volume history, spanning the period from the accession of James I to the Glorious Revolution of 1688, she wrote political pamphlets, offered a sketch of a republican constitution for Corsica, advocated parliamentary reform, and published a response to Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France. Her Letters on Education of 1790 made a decisive impact on the thought of Mary Wollstonecraft, and her Treatise on the Immutability of Moral Truth opposed the skeptical and utilitarian attitudes being developed by Hume and others. This volume brings together for the first time all the available letters between her and her wide-ranging correspondents, who include George Washington, John Adams, Abigail Adams, Mercy Otis Warren, James Otis, Benjamin Rush, David Hume, James Boswell, Thomas Hollis, John Wilkes, Horace Walpole, Mary Wollstonecraft, Jacques-Pierre Brissot de Warville, and many other luminaries of the eighteenth-century enlightenment. It includes an extended introduction to her life and works and offers a unique insight into the thinking of her friends and correspondents during the period between 1760 and 1790, the crucible for the development of modern representative democracies. The Correspondence of Catharine Macaulay will appeal to scholars of philosophy, political thought, women's studies, and eighteenth-century history, as well as those interested in the development of democratic ideas.

It is widely recognised that Spinoza ended the Cartesian dualism of body and mind by thinking through the possibility of their unity. Revisiting this generally accepted notion of psycho-physical parallelism in Spinoza, Chantal Jaquet offers a new analysis of the relation between body and mind. Looking at a range of Spinoza's texts, and using an original methodology, she analyses their unity in action through the affects that bring together a body's affection and the idea of this affection. Jaquet reveals that understanding affects, actions and passions provides the key to how the mind and body are the same individual expressed in two different ways. She presents the Spinozist model in all its complexity, illuminating its potentialities for contemporary debates on the nature of the mind-body problem.

The Scottish Enlightenment was the first intellectual movement to view commercial society as a distinct and distinctive social formation - one that still shapes our everyday lives. In this title the author explains why enlightenment thinkers considered commercial society to be wealthier and freer than earlier forms, and charts the arguments Scottish philosophers put forward for and against the idea. The first book to focus on the Scottish Enlightenment's conception of commercial society, revealing it to be the movement's core idea; it analyses key works like Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, David Hume's Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects and Adam Ferguson's Essay on the History of Civil Society and looks at lesser known works such as Robert Wallace's Dissertation on Numbers of Mankind.

Dugald Stewart's Empire of the Mind recasts the cultivation of a democratic intellect in the late Scottish Enlightenment. It comprises an intellectual history of what was at stake in moral education during a transitional period of revolutionary change between 1772 and 1828. Stewart was a child of the Scottish Enlightenment, who inherited the Scottish philosophical tradition of teaching metaphysics as moral philosophy from the tuition of Adam Ferguson and Thomas Reid. But the Scottish Enlightenment intellectual culture of his youth changed in the aftermath of the French Revolution. Stewart sustained the Scottish school of philosophy by transforming how it was taught as professor of moral philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. His elementary system of moral education fostered an empire of the mind in the universal pursuit of happiness. The democratization of Stewart's didactic Enlightenment-the instruction of moral improvement-in a globalizing, interconnected nineteenth-century knowledge economy is examined in this book.

What happens when human beings fail to do as reason bids? This book is an attempt to address this age-old question within Kant's mature practical philosophy, i.e. the practical philosophy that emerged with the watershed discovery of autonomy in the mid-1780s. As always, Kant is good for a surprise. There is, it is argued, not one answer but two: He advocates Socratic intellectualism in the realm of prudence whilst defending an anti-intellectualist or volitional account of immoral action. This 'hybrid' theory of practical failure is more than a philosophical curiosity. There are ramifications for Kant's theory of practical reason as a whole. In particular, the hybrid account emphasizes the divide between pure and empirical practical rationality to the extent that the latter, while containing practically relevant propositions, no longer counts a branch of practical reason at all. Hypothetical and categorical imperatives exemplify two entirely distinct kinds of normativity. In fact, the dichotomy between pure and empirical determining grounds of the will goes hand in hand with many other dualisms and dichotomies that, whether we like them or not, continue to define Kant's mature ethical thought.

'Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains.' These are the famous opening words of a treatise that has stirred vigorous debate ever since its first publication in 1762. Rejecting the view that anyone has a natural right to wield authority over others, Rousseau argues instead for a pact, or 'social contract', that should exist between all the citizens of a state and that should be the source of sovereign power. From this fundamental premise, he goes on to consider issues of liberty and law, freedom and justice, arriving at a view of society that has seemed to some a blueprint for totalitarianism, to others a declaration of democratic principles. Translated by Quintin Hoare With a new introduction by Christopher Bertram

In this book, Arthur gives fresh interpretations of Gottfried Leibniz's theories of time, space, and the relativity of motion, based on a thorough examination of Leibniz's manuscripts as well as his published papers. These are analysed in historical context, but also with an eye to their contemporary relevance. Leibniz's views on relativity have been extremely influential, first on Mach, and then on Einstein, while his novel approach to geometry in his analysis situs inspired many later developments in geometry. Arthur expounds the latter in some detail, explaining its relationship to Leibniz's metaphysics of space and the grounding of motion, and defending Leibniz's views on the relativity of motion against charges of inconsistency. The brilliance of his work on time, though, has not been so well appreciated, and Arthur attempts to remedy this through a detailed discussion of Leibniz's relational theory of time, showing how it underpins his theory of possible worlds, his complex account of contingency, and his highly original treatment of the continuity of time, providing formal treatments in an appendix. In other appendices, Arthur provides translations of previously untranslated writings by Leibniz on analysis situs and on Copernicanism, as well as an essay on Leibniz's philosophy of relations. In his introductory chapter he explains how the framework for the book is provided by the interpretation of Leibniz's metaphysics he defended in his earlier Monads, Composition, and Force (OUP 2018, winner of the 2019 annual JHP Book Prize for best book in the history of philosophy published in 2018).

A thorough examination of the influence of David Hume's work early American political thought. This book explores the reception of David Hume's political thought in eighteenth-century America. It presents a challenge to standard interpretations that assume Hume's thought had little influence in early America. Eighteenth-century Americans are often supposed to have ignored Hume's philosophical writings and to have rejected entirely Hume's "Tory" History of England. James Madison, if he used Hume's ideas in Federalist No. 10, it is commonly argued, thought best to do so silently -- open allegiance to Hume was a liability. Despite renewed debate about the impact of Hume's political ideas in America, existing scholarship is often narrow and highly speculative. WereHume's works available in eighteenth-century America? If so, which works? Where? When? Who read Hume? To what avail? To answer questions of that sort, this books draws upon a wide assortment of evidence. Early American bookcatalogues, periodical publications, and the writings of lesser-light thinkers are used to describe Hume's impact on the social history of ideas, an essential context for understanding Hume's influence on many of the classic texts of early American political thought. Hume's Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects, was readily available, earlier, and more widely, than scholars have supposed. The History of England was read most frequently ofall, however, and often in distinctive ways. Hume's History, which presented the British constitution as a patch-work product of chance historical developments, informed the origins of the American Revolution and Hume's subsequent reception through the late eighteenth century. The 326 subscribers to the first American edition of Hume's History [published in Philadelphia in 1795/96] are more representative of the History's friendly reception in enlightened America than are its few critics. Thomas Jefferson's latter-day rejection of Hume's political thought foreshadowed Hume's falling reputation in nineteenth-century America. MARK G. SPENCER is Associate Professor of History at Brock University where he holds a Chancellor's Chair for Research Excellence. His books include Hume's Reception in Early America [2002], Utilitarians and Their Critics in America, 1789-1914 [2005], andUlster Presbyterians in the Atlantic World [2006].

Plus qu'aucun grand philosophe peut-etre, Rousseau a fait l'objet d'interpretations contradictoires et de jugements partisans. Apres la Revolution francaise et les critiques liberales ou contre-revolutionnaires, faut-il considerer le XXe siecle comme le temps de la critique erudite, enfin delivree des passions revolutionnaires et du fardeau de l'ideologie? Contre cette vision illusoire d'une transposition de la polemique politique a la controverse savante, Celine Spector met en lumiere les usages philosophiques et ideologiques de l'oeuvre de Rousseau depuis la guerre froide. Usages et non images : plutot que d'etudier sa reception ou de proposer une historiographie de son commentaire, son ambition est de cartographier les usages de la conceptualite rousseauiste dans la philosophie politique contemporaine. Si le magistere d'opinion exerce par Rousseau pendant la Revolution francaise n'a plus lieu d'etre, C. Spector demontre a quel point son autorite theorique regit toujours le debat philosophique, sa pensee offrant un horizon au sein duquel prennent sens les reflexions sur la democratie, l'autonomie, la justice et la reconnaissance. Au-dela du renouveau du contractualisme, notamment dans l'univers anglophone, les developpements des analyses marxistes, liberales, straussiennes, communautariennes, republicaines, habermassiennes ou feministes se traduisent par un 'retour' a Rousseau. Depuis une trentaine d'annees surtout, le Citoyen de Geneve est au coeur de polemiques majeures: dans une constellation post-marxiste ou le liberalisme lui-meme est sur la sellette, son oeuvre recele des tresors pour qui veut diagnostiquer les perversions et les maux des democraties liberales.

Colonial Canada changed enormously between the 1760s and the 1860s, the Conquest and Confederation, but the idea of civilization seen to guide those transformations changed still more. A cosmopolitan and optimistic theory of history was written into the founding Canadian constitution as a check on state violence, only to be reversed and undone over the next century. Civilization was hegemony, a contradictory theory of unrestrained power and restraints on that power. Occupying a middle ground between British and American hegemonies, all the different peoples living in Canada felt those contradictions very sharply. Both Britain and America came to despair of bending Canada violently to their will, and new forms of hegemony, a greater reckoning with soft power, emerged in the wake of those failures. E.A. Heaman shows that the view from colonial Canada matters for intellectual and political history. Canada posed serious challenges to the Scottish Enlightenment, the Pax Britannica, American manifest destiny, and the emerging model of the nation-state. David Hume's theory of history shaped the Canadian imaginary in constitutional documents, much-thumbed histories, and a certain liberal-conservative political and financial orientation. But as settlers flooded across the continent, cosmopolitanism became chauvinism, and the idea of civilization was put to accomplishing plunder and predation on a transcontinental scale. Case studies show crucial moments of conceptual reversal, some broadly representative and some unique to Canada. Dissecting the Seven Years' War, domestic relations, the fiscal military state, liberal reform, social statistics, democracy, constitutionalism, and scholarly history, Heaman shows how key British and Canadian public figures grappled with the growing gap between theory and practice. By historicizing the concept of civilization, this book connects Enlightenment ideals and anti-colonialism, shown in contest with colonialism in Canada before Confederation.

A number of Montesquieu's lesser-known discourses, dissertations and dialogues are made available to a wider audience, for the first time fully translated and annotated in English. The views they incorporate on politics, economics, science, and religion shed light on the overall development of his political and moral thought. They enable us better to understand not just Montesquieu's importance as a political philosopher studying forms of government, but also his stature as a moral philosopher, seeking to remind us of our duties while injecting deeper moral concerns into politics and international relations. They reveal that Montesquieu's vision for the future was remarkably clear: more science and less superstition; greater understanding of our moral duties; enhanced concern for justice, increased emphasis on moral principles in the conduct of domestic and international politics; toleration of conflicting religious viewpoints; commerce over war, and liberty over despotism as the proper goals for mankind.

'Man being born...to perfect freedom...hath by nature a power...to preserve his property, that is, his life, liberty and estate.' Locke's Second Treatise of Government (1689) is one of the great classics of political philosophy, widely regarded as the foundational text of modern liberalism. In it Locke insists on majority rule, and regards no government as legitimate unless it has the consent of the people. He sets aside people's ethnicities, religions, and cultures and envisages political societies which command our assent because they meet our elemental needs simply as humans. His work helped to entrench ideas of a social contract, human rights, and protection of property as the guiding principles for just actions and just societies. Published in the same year, A Letter Concerning Toleration aimed to end Christianity's wars of religion and called for the separation of church and state so that everyone could enjoy freedom of conscience. In this edition of these two major works, Mark Goldie considers the contested nature of Locke's reputation, which is often appropriated by opposing political and religious ideologies. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.