Teresa Bejan - Equality and hierarchy in the thought of Mary Astell
Lectures in Intellectual History
Release Date: 10/31/2019
Christopher de Bellaigue - "Suleyman the Magnificent and the 16th-century race for empire"
Lectures in Intellectual History
This lecture was delivered at the University of St Andrews on 31 January 2024.
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Ariane Fichtl - “Overcoming the biopolitical dynamic of enslavement to achieve Immediate Emancipation”
Lectures in Intellectual History
This lecture was delivered at the University of St Andrews on 24 January 2024.
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Tim Stuart-Buttle - "Behind the Curtain: Hobbes and the politics of recognition"
Lectures in Intellectual History
This lecture was delivered at the University of St Andrews on 17 January 2024.
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Richard Whatmore - "The End of Enlightenment (book launch)"
Lectures in Intellectual History
This talk was given at Toppings in St Andrews on December 7, 2023.
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Jesse Norman - "Ambition, revenge, truth, fiction - The Winding Stair"
Lectures in Intellectual History
The barely known story of the 30-year rivalry between Francis Bacon and Edward Coke is a fascinating case study in late-Elizabethan-Jacobean court politics. But it can also be a means by which to explore the limits of historical truth, and the uses of fiction. Jesse Norman is a Visiting Research Fellow at St Andrews, a Fellow of All Souls and a Member of Parliament (UK). This lecture was given on the 17th of November 2023 at the University of St Andrews.
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Vassilios Paipais - "Between Pacifism and Just War: Oikonomia and Eastern Orthodox Political Theology"
Lectures in Intellectual History
This lecture was given at the University of St Andrews on 15 November 2023.
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Adam Sisman - "The Perils of Biography"
Lectures in Intellectual History
Adam Sisman in conversation with Richard Whatmore. Recorded on 8 November 2023.
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Alan Kahan - "Three Pillars and Four Fears: A History of Liberalisms
Lectures in Intellectual History
This lecture was delivered on 11 October 2023 at the University of St Andrews.
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James Harris - “Hobbes and Rousseau on ‘the act by which a people is a people’”
Lectures in Intellectual History
This lecture was delivered on 5 April 2023 at the University of St Andrews.
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Brian Young - "Utilitarianism and the universities in Victorian England: the brothers Grote in nineteenth-century thought"
Lectures in Intellectual History
This lecture was delivered at the University of St andrews on March 15, 2023.
info_outlineEver since Mary Astell was introduced as the "First English Feminist" in 1986, scholars have been perplexed by her dual commitments to natural equality and social, political, and ecclesiastical hierarchy. But any supposed "paradox" in her though is the product of a modernist conceit that treats equality and hierarchy as antonyms, assuming the former must be prior, normative, and hostile to the latter. Seeing this, two other crucial features of Astell's thought emerge: her ethics of ascent and the psychology of superiority. These, in turn, illuminate her lifelong fascination with ambition as a feminine virtue, as well as her curious embrace of Machiavelli. Astell's politics and ethics are thus doubly worthy of recovery, both as the product of a singularly brilliant early modern mind and as a fascinating but forgotten vision of "equality before egalitarianism" that sheds light on the persistent complexities of equality and hierarchy to this day.