showing 5 related works from this author
Evil lords, benign historians: strongman politics in medieval India and Renaissance Florence
2019
Recent developments in Europe and the United States (US) attest to an increasing fascination with and nostalgia for the strong leaders of the past – especially those that emerged in the aftermath o...
The Body Politic from Medieval Lombardy to the Dutch Republic: An Introduction
2020
Marsilius of Padua and Isaac Abravanel on kingship : the medieval precedents of modern republicanism revisited
2020
Abstract This article offers a comparative investigation of Marsilius of Padua’s and Isaac Abravanel’s ideas on kingship. It looks at how these thinkers transform the “canonical” sources of their respective traditions of political theorizing, i.e., Aristotle’s Politics and the Bible, to articulate the notion that ultimate authority rests with the citizens/people. It also examines how these two writers’ positions on kingship relate to the political realities that prevailed in late medieval Italy. Finally, it illuminates the medieval precedents of modern republicanism in the Christian and Jewish political traditions.
Ancient greek philosophy and the islamic tradition: the origins of social life, diversity, and political authority
2020
The interplay between a naturalistic understanding of social origins and the vision of the ruler as God’s representative on earth is a major aspect of medieval and early modern Islamic political discourse. The ancient Greek tradition had a formative influence on Islamic meditation regarding the origins of human society, the role of government, justice, and the qualities of the good ruler. The aim of this article is to revisit the impact of the Greek legacy on various theories about the emergence of human society and political authority that were propounded medieval Islamic authors. In the first section of this article, I review the reception of ancient Greek sources in the Islamic world and…
Religious toleration and the limits of liberal secularism: The case of India
2019
In recent years there has been a resurgence of public discourse about the role of tolerance as one of the key elements of the Western philosophical heritage. The fact that Western societies remain ...