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1. Concept 1.1. Renaissance as the rebirth of classical antiquity“Renaissance” (Italian  rinascità,  rinascimento, “rebirth”) developed in the 15th century into a general term for the reception of classical antiquity (Antiquity, reception of) in Humanism. The Latin verb renasci (to be born again) is found as early as 1430 in the context of rhetoric in the work of the French Petrarch scholar Nicholas of Clémanges. The Italian rinascere then came into use around 1450 in reference to sculpture in Lorenzo Ghiberti (see below, 9.2.), and in 1460/64 for archit…

1. Background: Antiquity and Middle AgesIn ancient Greece,  tyrannís was initially a neutral noun denoting a body politic ruled by a king; its ruler was a  týrannos. Beginning in the 6th century BCE, primarily in the context of the Persian Wars, the meaning became negative: a violent dictatorship acting contrary to the laws of the polis. In the 4th century BCE, in light of this  de facto semantic shift, Aristotle provided what became the standard definition by distinguishing systematically between good or true forms of government – kingship, aristocracy, and…

1. DefinitionIn political philosophy, the right of resistance (Latin  ius resistendi, French  droit de résistance, German  Widerstandsrecht) is the right to employ individual or collective force against an unjust order of the government (Sovereign power); it represents the highest form of political disobedience [5. 92–95]. In this sense, it was already recognized in antiquity, although it was not yet understood as a fully formed legal institution. We can distinguish between an implicit right of resistance and an explicit right. The for…