Louis XIV, also known as Louis the Great or the Sun King, was King of France from 1643 until his death in 1715. His verified reign of 72 years and 110 days is the longest of any sovereign. Although Louis XIV's France was emblematic of the Age of Absolutism in Europe, the King surrounded himself with a variety of significant political, military, and cultural figures, such as Bossuet, Colbert, Louvois, Le Brun, Le Nôtre, Lully, Mazarin, Molière, Racine, Turenne, Condé, and Vauban.
Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli was a Florentine diplomat, author, philosopher and historian who lived during the Renaissance. He is best known for his political treatise The Prince, written around 1513 but not published until 1532, five years after his death. He has often been called the father of modern political philosophy and political science.
Jean-Baptiste Colbert was a French statesman who served as First Minister of State from 1661 until his death in 1683 under the rule of King Louis XIV. His lasting impact on the organization of the country's politics and markets, known as Colbertism, a doctrine often characterized as a variant of mercantilism, earned him the nickname le Grand Colbert.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1706.
Jacques Martin Barzun was a French-born American historian known for his studies of the history of ideas and cultural history. He wrote about a wide range of subjects, including baseball, mystery novels, and classical music, and was also known as a philosopher of education. In the book Teacher in America (1945), Barzun influenced the training of schoolteachers in the United States.
The Counter-Enlightenment refers to a loose collection of intellectual stances that arose during the European Enlightenment in opposition to its mainstream attitudes and ideals. The Counter-Enlightenment is generally seen to have continued from the 18th century into the early 19th century, especially with the rise of Romanticism. Its thinkers did not necessarily agree to a set of counter-doctrines but instead each challenged specific elements of Enlightenment thinking, such as the belief in progress, the rationality of all humans, liberal democracy, and the increasing secularisation of society.
Scipione Ammirato was an Italian author, philosopher and historian who lived during the Renaissance. He is regarded as an important figure in the history of political thought.
Paul de Beauvilliers, count and later (1679) 2nd duc de Saint-Aignan (1648–1714), often referred to as the duc de Beauvilliers, was a French government official under King Louis XIV.
Classical republicanism, also known as civic republicanism or civic humanism, is a form of republicanism developed in the Renaissance inspired by the governmental forms and writings of classical antiquity, especially such classical writers as Aristotle, Polybius, and Cicero. Classical republicanism is built around concepts such as liberty as non-domination, self-government, rule of law, property-based personality, anti-corruption, abolition of monarchy, civics, civil society, common good, civic virtue, popular sovereignty, patriotism and mixed government.
Arnaud d'Ossat was a French diplomat and writer and a Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church, whose personal tact and diplomatic skill steered the perilous course of French diplomacy with the papacy in the reign of Henry IV of France.
Nicolas Desmaretz, marquis de Maillebois was a Controller-General of Finances during the reign of Louis XIV of France. Desmaretz was a nephew of Jean-Baptiste Colbert. Taken out of school at age 15 to work in his uncle's offices as Controller-General of Finances, he rose to become an intendant of finances in 1678 and his uncle's principal assistant in 1683. He was exiled in December 1683 shortly after Colbert's death, however, after being accused of taking bribes and kickbacks in a government contract to mint money. After returning to Paris in 1686, Desmaretz wrote a series of memoranda for his family members who were still in the government recommending new tax policies in the face of the deplorable economic situation of France.
Abraham Nicolas Amelot de la Houssaye (1634–1706) was a French historian and political critic.
Thomas Belasyse, 1st Earl Fauconberg PC was an English peer. He supported the Parliamentary cause in the English Civil War, becoming close to Oliver Cromwell and marrying Cromwell's third daughter, Mary. After the Restoration of the monarchy he became a member of the Privy Council to Charles II and was elevated to an earldom by William III.
Urie Bronfenbrenner was a Russian-born American psychologist best known for using a contextual framework to better understand human development. This framework, broadly referred to as 'ecological systems theory', was formalized in an article published in American Psychologist, articulated in a series of propositions and hypotheses in his most cited book, The Ecology of Human Development and further developed in The Bioecological Model of Human Development and later writings. He argued that natural experiments and applied developmental interventions provide valuable scientific opportunities. These beliefs were exemplified in his involvement in developing the US Head Start program in 1965. Bronfenbrenner's writings about the limitations of understanding child development solely from experimental laboratory research and the potential for using contextual variability to provide insight into developmental processes was important in changing the focus of developmental psychology.
Jean Baptiste Colbert, Marquis of Torcy, generally called Colbert de Torcy, was a French diplomat, who negotiated some of the most important treaties towards the end of Louis XIV's reign, notably the treaty (1700) that occasioned the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714), in which the dying Charles II of Spain named Louis XIV's grandson, Philippe of France, Duke of Anjou, heir to the Spanish throne, eventually founding the line of Bourbons of Spain.
Alan James Ryan is a British philosopher. He was Professor of Politics at the University of Oxford. He was also Warden of New College, Oxford, from 1996 to 2009. He retired as Professor Emeritus in September 2015 and lives in Summertown, Oxford.
The history of political thought encompasses the chronology and the substantive and methodological changes of human political thought. The study of the history of political thought represents an intersection of various academic disciplines, such as philosophy, law, history and political science.
Matthew Winthrop Barzun is an American businessman, diplomat and political fundraiser who served as the United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom. He is a business executive who is known for his work with CNET Networks and for his fundraising work on Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. He served as United States Ambassador to Sweden from 2009 to 2011. He was selected by President Barack Obama as National Finance Chair for the president's 2012 re-election campaign. He is author of The Power of Giving Away Power from Optimism Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House.
John Corwin Rule, was a widely respected historian of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French history at Ohio State University from 1958 to 1995.
The School of Philosophy is an academic division in the Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences at University of Southern California. It is one of the largest centres for the study of philosophy in the United States.
