Renaissance Civic Humanism: Reappraisals and Reflections (Ideas in Context, Series Number 57)

Ideas in Context

by James Hankins (Editor), Quentin Skinner (Editor), James H. Tully (Editor)

Civic Humanism has been one of the most influential concepts in the history of ideas ever since the pioneering work of Hans Baron and J. G. A. Pocock. This book reassesses Renaissance republican thinkers in relation to the medieval and early modern traditions of political thought and proposes new understandings of the evolution of important republican concepts. The distinguished team of American and European political theorists and historians together contribute a distinctive and significant addition to the study of republican political ideology.

Genres: History, Philosophy, Renaissance

332 pages, Paperback

First published June 22, 2000

About the author

James Hankins is an American intellectual historian specializing in the Italian Renaissance. He is the General Editor of the I Tatti Renaissance Library and the Associate Editor of the Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum. He is a professor in the History Department of Harvard University. In Spring 2018, he is a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture.
In 2012 he was honored with the Paul Oskar Kristeller Lifetime Achievement Award of the Renaissance Society of America.

Reviews

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good collection of essays to read alongside Hans Baron's Crisis Of The Early Italian Renaissance since they're largely oriented towards critiquing Baron's overall ideas. Your mileage may vary on individual essays, but I thought two were particularly good - John Najemy wrote an article that looks at the reality of republicanism in Florence by 1400 (freaked out by the Ciompi Revolt, a handful of upper class families controlled most of the power, with offices for everyone else being largely nominal) and Mikael Hornqvist wrote an interesting piece on Florentine 'imperialism' during the period. There's also some good work on Machiavelli near the end.

[Khitkhite Buri]

My slightly over the top reading on republicanism always gets me back here. I can't even diss medievalists anymore. Historians arguing over Hans Baron's love child and Pocock's socialism lol. Nederman and Najemy are my favourites from the collection, but this is the last book on florentine humanism for this year. (Lefties never get into this for some reason, except for Ellen Wood and C.Hill marginally. Microhistory digs it on the other hand.)

[Sarah Elizabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

Had to read this for my history presentation. It's basically a bunch of historians arguing, but it never gets nasty so it's a bit dull.