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1. Fundamentals The early modern idea that the state, constitution, and socio-economic order had to be based on a legal agreement according to the mutual benefit of the parties involved arose in the 17th century and became widespread in the latter half of the 18th century. It built upon a complex process of the fusion, differentiation, and transformation of earlier Christian notions of unions and alliances, Roman legal principles, and humanistic religious approaches.At the heart of the Christian tradition stood the biblical idea of God's covenant with his chosen p…

The meaning of the term Polizeiwissenschaft (or Policeywissenschaft) varies. Historically, it denoted in a general sense the totality of all early modern academic concerns with  Policey (policing, public order; Police [political order]). In the narrower sense, it denotes a subject instituted and taught between the mid-18th and mid-19th centuries exclusively in German and Austrian universities; the intent was to systematically and academically combine the constitutional, administrative, and economic aspects included at that time under Policey or considered most impor…

1. Concept and genres Beginning with the first ancient examples, prince’s mirrors were didactic, exhortatory, or reflective political texts concerned with the norms and forms of correct princely conduct (Authority; Monarchy). Titles variously focused on genre in reference to the mirror metaphor of medieval didacticism (e.g.  Speculum principis/regis/regale, “Mirror of the Prince”), on function (e.g.  De educatione/institutione principis, “On the Education of the Prince”) or on subject matter (e.g.  De officio principis, “On the Obligations of the Prince”; De regimine pri…

1. Introduction The theory of forms of government is that portion of political and constitutional philosophy  that seeks to classify the empirical and theoretical forms of political systems, in order to determine through comparative analysis which model is relatively or absolutely best. Its emergence and development in the early modern period therefore essentially followed political theory. The conceptual foundation was laid by the relevant passages from the political works of Aristotle (Aristotel…

Historians specializing in the 16th and 17th century use  Lipsianism for the movement within Late Humanism that was founded by the Dutch scholar Justus Lipsius (1547–1606). Various disciplines use the term for different aspects of the multifaceted work of Lipsius and his followers.In philology and historical linguistics, the term is used for Lipsius’ Latin style, which was not standard but un-Ciceronian, laconic, bricolagic, and aphoristic – judged to be no long “golden” but only “silver” [4. 204–255]; it frequently triggered displeasure and resistance among the Jes…

1. DefinitionThe term state publications (German  Staatsschriften) was coined during the German political and constitutional debates of the second half of the 17th century [1]. It was an umbrella term covering all genres of publications by means of which governments sought to win the support of the increasingly important political public sphere, especially with respect to the beginning of wars (see War; War, declaration of) and making peace (see Peace; Peace treaty; see also 2. below) [7]. In the late 18th century, the term migrated into the classification of …

The specialist term Reichspublizistik is the German form of the Latin ius publicum Imperii, introduced around 1600 to denote the public law of the Holy Roman Empire as an academic subject; today it is also used to denote all contemporary writings that deal with the Empire’s constitution and politics.The emergence of scholarly reflection on imperial law as distinct from other branches of law, including the rights of holders of imperial offices and the legal relationships of the imperial institutions among themselves, goes back to the late Middle Ages [5]. It was initiated by …

1. IntroductionPerception (Latin perceptio, “taking”, “perception”, from  percipere, “to gather”) is the term for the process of receiving information from one’s surroundings. In the modern sense, this takes place exclusively through the human senses (classically vision, hearing, smell, taste, touch; since the mid-19th century also senses of temperature, equilibrium, and pain). According to an idea already developed in Greco-Roman antiquity, perception is a twofold process, comprising the physical and …

The term “monarchomachs” (from the Greek, “fighters against kings”) was coined in 1600, in the Latin treatise De regno et regali potestate, adversus Buchananum, Brutum, Boucherium et reliquos monarchomachos libri sex (“Six books on the Monarchy and Royal Authority, against Buchanan, Brutus, Boucher, and the Other Monarchomachs”) by the Scottish monarchist William Barclay. The term was intended to denounce all contemporary political theorists who argued for constraints on the power of the monarchy and declared resistance – u…

1. Definition Raison d’état (French “reason of state”; German  Staatsräson) was the maxim that arose in conjunction with the emergence of the early modern state and that made the securing of the state’s existence the priority, especially in critical situations (Necessitas). This applied not only to politics  per se, but also to norms of religion and law and ethics. State interests, then, were whatever the state declared them to be. The maxim can also be applied by extension to other institutions, such as the church ( raison d’église).Where “state” is understood not as an ins…

1. IntroductionThe term “politics” (French  politique; German Politik, etc.) and its related adjective carry two meanings today: (1) in terms of systems, the totality (or specific elements defined by qualification) of the attributes, processes, and structures that go to make up the state or relate to the state, and (2) in terms of action, the efforts expended (not only in government) to achieve particular political goals [18]. Political science has developed a conceptual triad, subdividing the field into policy (the content of political activity), polity …

1. TerminologyThe political term republicanism was coined toward the end of the 17th century in England “as a catchword used to disparage anti-monarchic attitudes bent on establishing a republic” [9. 57]. It was first used in this sense in 18th-century France, until in the second half of the century it took on a positive meaning in the context of the American Revolution and the French Revolution (1789). Today it is employed as a collective term for all ideas and efforts that pursue individual freedom and participatory dem…

The term “despotism” (from Greek despóteia, “the power of a master [over a slave]”), derived from ancient political theory, in the early modern period came to denote in relation to the constitution the deficient form of monarchy, distinguished both from the “good” form of authority and from the unequivocally bad form, tyranny. Despotism was the self-aggrandizing form of governance over subjects either unwilling or unable to participate in the political process, where the primary concern was the interests of the ruler, taking precedence over the common good.The term was curr…

Althusianism is the name modern scholars give to the complex political theory, conceived by Johannes Althusius/Althaus (1557-1638) the Calvinist jurist, rector of the Herborn Academy, and from 1604 city syndic of Emden, in his work Politica methodice digesta (1603, 1610, 1614, 1654; repr. 1617, 1625). Althusianism was received and developed further until around 1650, especially in the Holy Roman Empire [4], the Netherlands, and England and Scotland [1. 291–314]; [5. 157–230]; [6]. Following Ramist methodology (Ramism), Althusius’ work set the new contemporary …

1. BasicsThe emergence of the civil service (Civil servant) in the early modern era was accompanied by a multitude of oral and written discussions of the tasks and qualifications of this new, secondary ruling elite as well as its sociopolitical status. Where the expansion and development of the administration (Government) was especially advanced, by the second half of the 16th century at the latest it gave birth to a formal theory of civil service; beginning in the 18th century, it was informed substantially by juristic issues, to a lesser extent by public economic issues as well.This t…

1. Definition The term aristocracy (literally “rule of the best”), which originated in Ancient Greek political theory, has had three meanings since the Late Middle Ages: (1) from Aristotelian theory of forms of government, it denoted legitimate and just rule (Authority) in pursuit of the common good by a minority considered outstanding through a claim to virtue - this was in contrast to monarchy and democracy and, at least in self-presentation, to oligarchy, being minority rule concerned only with…

1. Literatur 1.1. Begriff und BestimmungDie lit. Gattung der U. (nzl. Kunstwort von griech. ou-tópos, »Nicht-Ort«) hat ihren Ursprung in der 1516 erschienenen neulat. Utopia des engl. Humanisten Thomas More (Morus). Als Prototyp der lit. U. prägte dieses Werk nicht nur ihren Namen, sondern auch die darauf bezogenen späteren Texte, welche im Rückblick die Gattung konstituieren. Definitorisch können diese als von Reise- oder anderen Rahmenerzählungen abhängige, fiktionale Entwürfe vorbildlicher, vernünftiger Gesellschaftsordnungen ohne Anspruch auf Verwirklichung be…

1. Literature 1.1. Concept and definition The literary genre of the utopia (early modern neologism from the Greek ou-tópos, “not-place”) has its origins in the Neo-Latin Utopia  by the English Humanist Thomas More, which was first published in 1516. As the prototype of the literary utopia, this work not only gave the genre its name, but also informed the texts that came in its wake, defining the genre in retrospect. That definition might be expressed as follows: fictional presentations – through travel or other fra…