Philosophy

In the second instalment of a two part article, Roger Eatwell chooses between rival definitions of a slippery word

In the first instalment of a two-part article, Roger Eatwell looks at rival definitions of a slippery word.

Gordon Miller looks at the 18th-century American philosopher, who influenced the transcendentalists and other 'green prophets'.

Valery Rees surveys the life of the ruler who put 15th-century Hungary on the map, both culturally and geographically, but whose efforts may have put an intolerable strain on the body politic.

François Hartog on how urban living has coincided with the advocacy of popular rule from Plato through to Machiavelli, Rousseau and 20th-century sociologists.

Hugh Brogan nominates Alexis de Tocqueville rather than Karl Marx as a useful guide to the new world order of history in the 90s.

Charlemagne may have been the first Holy Roman Emperor but what did he do to dispel the 'Dark Ages'? Mary Alberi looks at the work of his leading court intellectual, Alcuin, and how his hopes for a 'New Athens' in the Aachen palace school promoted the Carolingian Renaissance.

Kevin Sharpe reassesses the role that ideology, rhetoric and intellectual discussion played in the upheavals of seventeenth-century England.