The Individual in Political Theory and Practice (The ^AOrigins of the Modern State in Europe, 13th to 18th Centuries) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 019820549X ISBN 13: 9780198205494

Publisher: Clarendon Press, 1996

Synopsis

In this major study, a team of leading European scholars explores ways in which the concept of the individual developed in various areas of political and social life. The story concerns the changing nature of individual identity, community interest and corporate groups, as they were gradually redefined by common western European experiences of universal Catholicism, feudalism, civic republicanism and absolutism, Reformation and Counter-Reformation, commerce and capitalism. As European societies evolved into increasingly centralized national states, there emerged a range of religious and secular discourses which expressed the autonomy of individual agents not only as political subjects but also as private selves.

About this title

About the Author

Janet Coleman is a Professor of Government at London School of Economics and Political Science.

From the Back Cover

The 'Origins of the Modern State in Europe' series arises from an important international research programme sponsored by the European Science Foundation. The aim of the series, which comprises seven volumes, is to bring together specialists from different countries, who reinterpret from a comparative European perspective different aspects of the formation of the state over the long period from the beginning of the thirteenth to the end of the eighteenth century. One of the main achievements of the research programme has been to overcome the long-established historiographical tendency to regard states mainly from the viewpoint of their twentieth-century borders. In this major study, a team of leading European scholars explores the development of the concept of the individual in social and political life. The story concerns the changing nature of individual identity, community interest, and corporate groups as they were gradually redefined by common western European experiences of universal catholicism, feudalism, civic republicanism and absolutism, Reformation and Counter Reformation, commerce and capitalism. As European societies evolved into increasingly centralized national states, there emerged a range of religious and secular discourses which expressed the autonomy of individual agents not only as political subjects but also as private selves.

Edition details

• Publisher: Clarendon Press
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 019820549X
• ISBN 13: 9780198205494
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 424
• Editor: Coleman Janet