Andrzej BOROWSKI JUSTUS LIPSIUS AND THE CLASSICAL TRADITION IN POLAND It was actually the Romanticism that created — as elsewhere in Europe ...

La Constance est le seul traité philosophique de Juste Lipse. La constance y est comprise comme endurance face aux malheurs publics, fondée sur une théorie métaphysique de la nécessité de l'ordre du monde crée par un dieu bon et provident. Il s'agit d'une oeuvre majeure du courant néostoïcien.

In 17th-century intellectual life, the ideas of the Renaissance humanist Justus Lipsius (1547-1606) were omnipresent. The publication of his 'Politica' in 1589 had made Lipsius's name as an original and controversial political thinker. The sequel, the 'Monita et exempla politica' ('Admonitions'), published in 1605, was meant as an illustration of Lipsius's political thought as expounded in the 'Politica'. Its aim was to offer concrete models of behavior for rulers against the background of Habsburg politics. Lipsius's later (...) political treatise also forms an indispensable key to interpret the place and function of the 'Politica' in Lipsius's political discourse and in early modern political thought. The 'Political admonitions and examples' - widely read, edited and translated in the 17th and 18th centuries - show Lipsius's pivotal role in the genesis of modern political philosophy. (shrink)

Research made by Schuhmann and Bredekamp has pointed up the unsuspected links between Hobbes and one of the ancient traditions best loved by Renaissance philosophy: Hermeticism. Our goal will be to proceed further and to stress the Hermetic significance implicit in the formula "mortal God". If Asclepius can act as a source for the theme of the fabrication of gods, it does not fit in with the antithesis ("mortal god/immortal God") typical of the Leviathan. A proper source for this topic (...) can rather be found in treatise X ("Clavis") of the Corpus Hermeticum , well known to Ficino and to Iustus Lipsius. We must also stress one capital difference: whereas in the Hermetic texts man's apotheosis passes through gnosis and the exercise of the intellect, reserved in practice for a few selected people, in Leviathan on the contrary it is the holder of sovereignty who acquires the features of the "mortal god". Divinisation passes through politics, with the delicate artificial process of "generating the state"; knowledge only provides the tools for the rational technique needed to elaborate sovereignty, through stipulating pacts and the convention of impersonation. The "artificial man" as a mortal God is the apotheosis of the common man who enters into the founding pact with his ordinary intellectual and motivational faculties. (shrink)

Navigating the tension between moral virtue and realism in a ruler’s effort to preserve power, Justus Lipsius’ Politicorum libri sex (1589) was a foundational text in Catholic reason of state, but its ambiguous form and content leave it open for interpretation. The present article shows how in his Italian translation, the Ferrarese secretary and scholar Ercole Cato offers an individual reading of the Politica, transforming it to underline its usefulness and enhance its orthodoxy. Through a creative use of examples (...) from ancient and modern history, Cato presented Lipsius’ political prudence as one that rejected political calculation without virtue, and placed in direct dialogue with contemporary political events. This article argues that in reshaping and expanding the Politica, Cato presented his own intervention in the debate on Catholic reason of state, and it suggests that translators like Cato should be taken seriously as active and inventive participants in early modern political languages. (shrink)

Summary This article focuses on the Tacitist thought shared by Justus Lipsius and Hugo Grotius. Contrary to what his later works might suggest, in the years before the Dutch political crisis of 1618, Grotius appears willing to look at history and contemporary politics in terms of the Tacitist and reason-of-state-based categories defined in Lipsius's political works. A specific Lipsian inspiration seems present in Grotius's Amsterdam address of 1616, and his analysis of the early Dutch Revolt in the Annales (...) et Historiae is determined by categories of thought which at the time were identified with Lipsius's intellectual legacy. (shrink)