Cary J Nederman
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 1052014 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Cary J Nederman |
| NOMBRES | Cary J |
| APELLIDO | Nederman |
| FIRMA | NEDERMAN C J |
| AFILIACIONES | Texas A&M University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8175-7141 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 99 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 86 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 98 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 2 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1969 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 5 |
Marsiglio of Padua’s Two Bodies
Marsiglio of Padua’s extensive application of a cardiocentric organic analogy for the organization of the political community in Dictio I of his Defensor pacis , derived from Aristotelian biology, has received wide attention from scholars. Seldom noticed is that he also invoked a craniocentric version of the body politic metaphor in the second discourse of the Defensor pacis in the context of his discussion of the papal claim to a plenitude of po…
Tyranny, Despotism, and Consent in Marsiglio of Padua's Defensor pacis
Within the political lexicon of the European Middle Ages, tyranny (along with related terms such as tyrant and tyrannical) constituted one of its most ubiquitous and flexibly applied discursive fields. Moreover, once Aristotle’s Ethics and Politics began to circulate in the West after their translation into Latin in the mid-1200s, a closely related term for tyranny emerged: despotism. Yet when we turn to Marsiglio of Padua, the fourteenth-century…
Medieval Political Thought
The present chapter addresses the nature and scope of political theory during the Western Middle Ages. After a brief examination of the chronology and application of the term “medieval,” it turns to a theme common to a large range of political thinkers from the period: the organic analogy between the community and a living body as a means of explaining the relationship between the public good and the particular parts of the communal order. First,…
Dismembering the Body Politic
This article examines the use of political analogies to the physical body employed by the quintessential Northern humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam. While medical metaphors are found across the vast range of his writings, he stands at a distance from his medieval predecessors and most of his Renaissance contemporaries, who also relied on bodily imagery for their conceptions of political order. Rather, Erasmus did not subscribe to a single model of me…
In Memoriam
Wisdom Up in Flames
In his encyclopedic masterwork Li livres dou Tresor ( The Books of Treasure ), the mid-thirteenth-century Florentine civil servant and rhetorician Brunetto Latini proclaimed “the very wise Marcus Tullius Cicero” to be “the finest orator in the world and the master of rhetoric.” 1 How might this remark by a medieval professional civic administrator (even one with pronounced Ciceronian proclivities) pertain to Goodman's book? I take as my inspirati…
Addressing Injustice in the Medieval Body Politic
Justice and injustice were subjects of ongoing debate in medieval Europe. Received classical and biblical models both influenced how these qualities of moral and political life were perceived, discussed and acted upon. Important among these influences was the anonymous seventh-century Irish text, On The Twelve Abuses of the Age, a biblically-inspired discussion of the moral duties particular to each sector of society. This volume probes its long …
Give peace a chance ... for what? Paine, Kant and democratic peace
Paul Kelly pays scant attention to the so‐called ‘democratic peace’ thesis that has played a major role in recent International Relations scholarship, a lacuna which we regard to be serious. Our paper investigates the normative background to the connection between democracy and peace, commonly associated with Immanuel Kant. We argue that attention should be devoted instead to the critique of international conflict found in the writings of Thomas …
Why Can’t We Be Friends? John of Salisbury, Thomas Becket and the Discourse of Amicitia
There has been an almost universal tendency to treat Thomas Becket as a personal—even close and intimate—friend of John of Salisbury, based on their decades-long association. Evidence for this position has rested, for example, on the fact that the two writings that have primarily sustained John’s intellectual reputation through the centuries—the Policraticus and the Metalogicon—he chose to dedicate to Becket. During the Middle Ages, however, addr…
Mother Knows Best
Matilda, the mother of King Henry II, was a formidable presence in mid-twelfth century England (and in the sprawling continental empire of which it was a part). Her father, Henry I of England, left with no legitimate male issue, arranged for his nobles to swear allegiance to her claim to the English throne. Deprived of the crown as a result of its usurpation by her cousin Stephen of Blois, she eventually raised an army and invaded England to pres…
This is the way I pray”
Machiavelli’s antipathy toward institutionalized Christianity has been very well documented, but less attention has been afforded to whether there might be some version of Christianity of which he would have approved. In the present paper, we investigate Machiavelli’s misgivings about Christianity by inquiring into the role that he assigned to prayer, through which Christian “ideology” was operationalized. To our knowledge, nowhere in the large b…
A Companion to Heresy Inquisitions
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Socio-Political Naturalism and the History of Republican Thought
Recent scholarship on republicanism often looks back to Aristotle as the Greco-Roman epitome of the history of republican theory. This article contends that Aristotle offers a poor model in comparison with the premiere political philosopher of the Roman Republic, Marcus Tullius Cicero. The argument concentrates on the implications of the respective conceptions of Aristotle and Cicero of the origins of social and political association rooted in hu…
The Bonds of Humanity
Cicero in Political Philosophy
The Bonds of Humanity
Of the great philosophers of pagan antiquity, Marcus Tullius Cicero is the only one whose ideas were continuously accessible to the Christian West following the collapse of the Roman Empire. Yet, in marked contrast with other ancient philosophers, Cicero has largely been written out of the historical narrative on early European political thought, and the reception of his ideas has barely been studied. The Bonds of Humanity corrects this glaring o…
Three Concepts of Tyranny in Western Medieval Political Thought
During the Latin Middle Ages, as today, "tyranny" connotes the exercise of power arbitrarily, oppressively, and violently. Medieval thinkers generally followed in the footprints of early Christian theologians (e.g., Gregory the Great and Isidore of Seville) and ancient philosophers (especially Aristotle) regarding the tyrant as the very embodiment of evil rulership and thus as the polar opposite of the king, who governed for the good of his peopl…
Cicero
This chapter examines Cicero's social and political theory, which rests upon his conception of human nature, namely that human beings are capable of speech and reason. It first provides a short biography of Cicero before discussing his discursive approach to republican rule based on the claim that human nature can only be fully realized through articulate and wise speech. For Cicero, social order requires wise leaders who direct citizens toward t…
Machiavelli against Method
Contemporary scholars seeking to advance the study of political phenomena identify their inquiry as a ‘science' that attains success through rigorous method. Thus the ‘methodological anarchism' of Paul Feyerabend's philosophy of science might seem an inauspicious place to find a fruitful disciplinary vision. Nonetheless, it echoes a longstanding conception of the ‘science' of politics articulated by Niccolò Machiavelli. Looking to Feyerabend, we …
Medieval Political Thought
Dante's Imperial Road Leads to ... Constantinople? The Internal Logic of the Monarchia
Dante's Monarchia has proven to be an enigmatic contribution to the corpus of medieval political theory. Although typically held up as the quintessential statement of the principles of universal imperial authority, the tract does not conform to many of the standard conventions of medieval Latin defences of the supremacy of the Roman Empire, eschewing, for instance, the theme of translatio imperii. In this article, I examine Dante's critique of th…
A History of Balance, 1250–1375
A History of Balance, 1250–1375: The Emergence of a New Model of Equilibrium and Its Impact on Medieval Thought. Joel Kaye. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. ix + 520 pp. $99. - Volume 68 Issue 3
Toleration in Conflict
Generally speaking, the scholarly literature concerning toleration (or tolerance—terms which will be employed here interchangeably) has been sharply divided between two approaches. The first may be termed philosophical: effort is directed toward parsing and analysing the conceptual elements of toleration in order to identify the salient feature(s) that comprise tolerant practices, as well as the conditions and limits thereof. This philosophical p…
Religion, Power, and Resistance from the Eleventh to the Sixteenth Centuries
Addressing the myriad ways in which heresy accusations could fulfill political aims during the Middle Ages, this collection shows acts of heresy were not just influenced by religion. Essays examine in
Political Thought in Early Fourteenth-Century England Treatises by Walter of Milemete, William of Pagula, and William of Ockham
These treatises offer important insight into such matters as the extent of the king's power in the fourteenth century and earlier, the relationship between church and state, and the particular duties of the ruler toward various of his subjects.
Property and Protest
It has become common to locate the origins of the modern notion of subjective rights theory in late medieval scholastic and juristic writings. But comparatively little effort has been made to connect medieval ideas of individual rights to some of the other key political ideas associated with it in early modern thought, such as consent, limited government, and resistance to illegitimate power. This article argues that a little-known work by the En…
Nature, Sin and the Origins of Society
The idea that man is by nature a social and political creature enjoyed a long and rich career during the Latin Middle Ages.1 Indeed, it is perhaps not too implausible to say that the naturalness of human association was one of the few doctrines to which virtually all medieval political thinkers would subscribe, in one or another version. A primary reason for this widespread agreement was an analogous near-unanimity on the part of the philosophica…
Amazing Grace
Amazing Grace: Fortune, God, and Free Will in Machiavelli's Thought Cary J. Nederman* Machiavelli and Religion Surely there is no political theorist about whom scholarly opinion is more divided than Niccolò Machiavelli. The subject of intense and continuous examination almost from the time of his death, Machiavelli has become if anything more enigmatic with the passage of time and the proliferation of interpretations. Although one might argue tha…
A Duty to Kill
This article examines the doctrine of tyrannicide in John of Salisbury's mid-twelfth century political treatise, thePolicraticus, in light of recent scholarly skepticism that John never meant to advocate a theoretical defense of slaying the tyrant. It is argued that John's conception of tyrannicide in fact possesses a philosophical foundation derived from his idea of the state as a political organism in which all the members cooperate actively in…
Freedom, Community and Function
The communitarian critique of liberal individualism is presently experiencing something of a decline. One of the reasons for the failure of communitarians to make a lasting impact on liberal theory may be the historical precedents to which communitarians have turned, such as Aristotle and civic republicanism. I argue that communitarian theory may more fruitfully draw upon a model of the relation between individual and community derived from the L…
The Puzzling Case of Christianity and Republicanism
Antony Black argues that Christian republicanism was one of the discourses at work in framing the history of Western republican thought. But he neglects to confront the theoretically unique character of the Christian approach to republican institutions. First, Christian republicanism derived from more general beliefs about the divinely ordained organic structure of the universe. Second, it evinced no necessary hostility toward monarchic rule; ind…
The Puzzle of the Political Animal
Several recent scholars have raised afresh the question of what Aristotle meant inPolitics1 by the statement that men are “by nature” political, that is, are political animals. This article addresses this quandary by reference to Aristotle's psychology and his notion of political education. It is argued that by concentrating on Aristotle's theory of human locomotion and its implications for moral choice, we may identify the relation he conceived …
Knowledge, Consent and the Critique of Political Representation in Marsiglio of Padua's Defensor Pacis
Marsiglio of Padua's Defensor Pacis contains a sustained critique of crucial features of the theory and practice of political representation. Citizens are deemed to be vested with a basic knowledge of the public interest and are bound, under the terms of their civic identity, to consent individually to any legislative proposal which the community seeks to impose upon itself. The existence of such a duty to consent reflects for Marsiglio the way i…
Nature, Justice, and Duty in the Defensor Pacis
In his magisterial study of Marsiglio of Padua's political thought, Alan Gewirth identified three primary philosophic for the secular doctrines of the Defensor Pacis: Aristotelianism, Augustinianism, and Averroism.' According to Gewirth, a full understanding of the Defensor requires that we fully acknowledge Marsiglio's debt to these three intellectual systems.' The scholarly literature generally agrees with Gewirth; attempts to trace the sources…
Toleration in a new key
This article challenges two dominant views of religious and cultural toleration, namely, that it is modern and that it is Western. It claims instead that both medieval Latin thought and many non-Western traditions embraced a position that coherently defends tolerance beliefs and practices. Specifically, the article identifies four approaches that clearly favour toleration: scepticism, functionalism, nationalism and mysticism
The Meaning of "Aristotelianism" in Medieval Moral and Political Thought
Journal of the History of Ideas - Volume 57, Number 4, October 1996
The union of wisdom and eloquence before the Renaissance
It is widely supposed among students of Renaissance humanism that one of the unique contributions of the humanists was their ‘rediscoversy’ of the classical, essentially Ciceronian, ideal of the orator as the man who employs both reason and eloquence in order to serve the common good. In turn, this conception of oratory in Cicero's thought is closely aligned with his teaching that human association arises from the awakening of an implicit human g…
Quentin Skinner's State
In contrast to recent commentators on Quentin Skinner's Foundations of Modern Political Thought, this work argues that Skinner's approach to the development of the modern theory of the state is strictly consistent with his earlier methodological proposals. But it is also established that Skinner's consistency ultimately leaves him without a “genuinely historical” basis for a unified state-tradition within late medieval and early modern Europe. Th…
King Stephen, the English church, and a female mystic
One of the central reasons for the disintegration of royal authority (sometimes called ‘the Anarchy’) during the reign of King Stephen of England is generally thought to have been his troubled relationship with the English church. The king was summoned to appear before the legate in England, Henry of Blois, bishop of Winchester (who was also Stephen's brother), at a church council called for Winchester on 29 August 1139, in order to show cause fo…
The mirror crack'd
(1998). The mirror crack'd: The speculum principum as political and social criticism in the late middle ages. The European Legacy: Vol. 3, No. 3, pp. 18-38
Tolerance and Community
Liberal political theory has claimed to be the unique advocate of religious toleration. But a theory of religious toleration is not solely a hallmark of liberalism. This is demonstrated as both a philosophical and a historical claim by appealing to the theory of "communal functionalism" which formed an important strain of political thought during the Latin Middle Ages. The defense of religious toleration proposed by the fourteenth century author …
Conciliarism and constitutionalism
(1990). Conciliarism and constitutionalism: Jean Gerson and medieval political thought. History of European Ideas: Vol. 12, No. 2, pp. 189-209
Private Will, Public Justice
One of the most significant developments in recent scholarship on the history of Western social and political philosophy has been the growth of interest in the theoretical significance of women, the family and, more broadly, the realm. Studies have begun to highlight the manner in which political theory as it emerged in the West relies upon an exclusionist approach to political experience (Clark and Lange 1979: vii-viii). Such an approach fixes s…
Bracton on Kingship First Visited
(1988). Bracton on Kingship First Visited: The Idea of Sovereignty and Bractonian Political Thought in Seventeenth-Century England. Political Science: Vol. 40, Theory in History: English Political Thought 1640-1832, pp. 49-66
Sovereignty, War and the Corporation
This article examines Hegel's use of elements of medieval social and political organization in his formulation of the theory of the modern state. The author argues that Hegel appropriated and integrated into his thought two concepts typical of the Middle Ages: the definition of sovereignity externally through warfare and the economic association of citizens through the corporation. Thus, while Hegel was no admirer of the medieval polity in its ow…
A Bibliography of Articles in Political Theory, 1974-1978
Three Concepts of Tyranny in Western Medieval Political Thought
During the Latin Middle Ages, as today, "tyranny" connotes the exercise of power arbitrarily, oppressively, and violently. Medieval thinkers generally followed in the footprints of early Christian theologians (e.g., Gregory the Great and Isidore of Seville) and ancient philosophers (especially Aristotle) regarding the tyrant as the very embodiment of evil rulership and thus as the polar opposite of the king, who governed for the good of his peopl…
Toleration in Conflict
Generally speaking, the scholarly literature concerning toleration (or tolerance—terms which will be employed here interchangeably) has been sharply divided between two approaches. The first may be termed philosophical: effort is directed toward parsing and analysing the conceptual elements of toleration in order to identify the salient feature(s) that comprise tolerant practices, as well as the conditions and limits thereof. This philosophical p…
The Logic of the History of Ideas and the Study of Comparative Political Theory
Mark Bevir's The Logic of the History of Ideas is highly influential in intellectual history circles. What intellectual historians may not realize is how much influence Logic has for other disciplines linked to intellectual history. Relying upon Bevir's arguments for the place of evidence, coherence, and non-methodological prescriptivism in the performance of intellectual history, in this symposium contribution I outline what comparative politica…
Divided By Faith
Benjamin J. Kaplan. Divided By Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007. viii + 415 pp. index. illus. map. bibl. $29.95. ISBN: 978–0–674–02430–4. - Volume 61 Issue 3
Chemical Filters for Narrow Band u.v. Irradiation Between 235 and 300 Nm
Six chemical filters are described. Bands of 10–20 nm half width are isolated at the following wavelengths: 235–240–252–260–277–294 nm. The filters transmit at the center of their band pass between 1.5 and 30 per cent of the incident radiation. Average photon fluence rates of 15–150 ergs mm ‐2 sec ‐1 (0.3 × 10 ‐3 to 3.5 × 10 ‐3 μE cm ‐2 sec ‐1 ) are obtained with a 500 W high pressure mercury arc focussed on a 10 cm ‐2 area. Under these condition…
The Foundations of Modern Political Thought. Volume One
Power and Imagination. City-States in Renaissance Italy
Religion, Law, and the Growth of Consitutional Thought, 1150-1650
The Age of Reform, 1250-1550
Examines the Protestant Reformation, its philosophical and theological issues, and the interaction of religious, social, and political changes
Recent Books in Political Theory
A Bibliography of Articles in Political Theory, 1974-1978
Jürgen Habermas
Recent Books in Political Theory
Popular Occultism and Critical Social Theory
In recent years, the purveyors of the popular occult have flooded the marketplace with a plethora of books, magazines, movies, games and similar commodities, perhaps the most common of which is the astrology column syndicated in most daily newspapers. By resuscitating Theodor Adorno's brilliant but neglected critique of astrology and the occult, this paper examines some popular manifestations of occultism in terms of their deviation from occultis…
Quentin Skinner's State
In contrast to recent commentators on Quentin Skinner's Foundations of Modern Political Thought, this work argues that Skinner's approach to the development of the modern theory of the state is strictly consistent with his earlier methodological proposals. But it is also established that Skinner's consistency ultimately leaves him without a “genuinely historical” basis for a unified state-tradition within late medieval and early modern Europe. Th…
The Knight in History
Royal Taxation and the English Church
In the summer of 1337, representatives of the English King Edward III and the German Emperor Ludwig of Bavaria concluded negotiations leading to the formation of an Anglo-imperial alliance. Edward, who was in the midst of preparations to pursue by force his dynastic claim to the French crown, received from Ludwig the title of imperial vicar-general per Alemanniam et Galliam , an act which conferred upon him sovereign rights over subjects and land…
Aristotle as authority
Sovereignty, War and the Corporation
This article examines Hegel's use of elements of medieval social and political organization in his formulation of the theory of the modern state. The author argues that Hegel appropriated and integrated into his thought two concepts typical of the Middle Ages: the definition of sovereignity externally through warfare and the economic association of citizens through the corporation. Thus, while Hegel was no admirer of the medieval polity in its ow…
Bracton on Kingship First Visited
(1988). Bracton on Kingship First Visited: The Idea of Sovereignty and Bractonian Political Thought in Seventeenth-Century England. Political Science: Vol. 40, Theory in History: English Political Thought 1640-1832, pp. 49-66
Nature, Sin and the Origins of Society
The idea that man is by nature a social and political creature enjoyed a long and rich career during the Latin Middle Ages.1 Indeed, it is perhaps not too implausible to say that the naturalness of human association was one of the few doctrines to which virtually all medieval political thinkers would subscribe, in one or another version. A primary reason for this widespread agreement was an analogous near-unanimity on the part of the philosophica…
A Duty to Kill
This article examines the doctrine of tyrannicide in John of Salisbury's mid-twelfth century political treatise, thePolicraticus, in light of recent scholarly skepticism that John never meant to advocate a theoretical defense of slaying the tyrant. It is argued that John's conception of tyrannicide in fact possesses a philosophical foundation derived from his idea of the state as a political organism in which all the members cooperate actively in…
Aristotelian Ethics before the Nicomachean Ethics
Aristotelian Ethics before the Nicomachean Ethics: Alternate Sources of Aristotle's Concept of Virtue in the Twelfth Century* I A m o n g the myriad of classicd influences exercised upon the intellecud life of the Latin Middle Ages, perhaps the most pronounced and dramatic impression was left by Aristotle.1 During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries dmost the entirety of the Aristotelian corpus returned to circulation in the West dter an absence…
John of Salisbury
John of Salisbury (c.1115–1180) was the foremost political theorist of his age. He was trained in scholastic theology and philosophy at Paris, and his writings are invaluable for summarising many of the metaphysical speculations of his time. The Policraticus is his main work, and is regarded as the first complete work of political theory to be written in the Latin Middle Ages. Cary Nederman's 1991 edition and translation is primarily aimed at und…
Policraticus
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Nature, Ethics, and the Doctrine of ‘Habitus’
Among the range of moral concepts that the Middle Ages derived from Aristotle, few exercised greater influence than the doctrine of habitus (a term ordinarily translated as ‘habit,’ but more properly meaning ‘state’ or ‘condition’). In the thirteenth century, such prominent thinkers as Thomas Aquinas, Godfrey of Fontaines, Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham placed habitus (derived from the Greek term ἅξις ) near the heart of their studies of ethi…
A history of private life, II
Conciliarism and constitutionalism
(1990). Conciliarism and constitutionalism: Jean Gerson and medieval political thought. History of European Ideas: Vol. 12, No. 2, pp. 189-209
Nature, Justice, and Duty in the Defensor Pacis
In his magisterial study of Marsiglio of Padua's political thought, Alan Gewirth identified three primary philosophic for the secular doctrines of the Defensor Pacis: Aristotelianism, Augustinianism, and Averroism.' According to Gewirth, a full understanding of the Defensor requires that we fully acknowledge Marsiglio's debt to these three intellectual systems.' The scholarly literature generally agrees with Gewirth; attempts to trace the sources…
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