Browse Items (202 total)

One of the key parts of the Spanish economy in the New World following its conquest was the use of indigenous labor. This system was termed the encomienda system. One of the loudest voices against this system was Bartolomé de las Casas, a former…

A court physician, ethical thinker, and political player, John Locke’s ideas figured prominently in the mainstream Enlightenment. His Essay Concerning Human Understanding put forth his thoughts on the origin of human knowledge. He wrote that everyone…

In John Locke’s “Two Treatises of Government,” he breaks-down and refutes the argument of rival political philosopher Robert Filmer and establishes the framework for contract theory in civil society and the government. Specifically, in his second…

In Chapter 6 of Locke’s Two Treatises of Government about paternal power, he mentioned that the phrase “paternal power” seems to “place the power of parents over their children wholly in the father, as though the mother had no share in it; whereas…

John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government reflect the anti-absolutist sentiments woven throughout England’s political fabric. He outlined the Law of Nature and how it granted each person the right to life, liberty, health, and property, maintaining…

The image selected is an engraving of two scenes from John Foxe's Book of Martyrs. The book was originally printed via woodcut, a method of printmaking in which blocks of wood were engraved to depict a certain scene, covered with ink, and then…

The drawing is a visual representation of the Leiden Anatomical Theater in Leiden, Netherlands. In 1597, Dutch professor Petrus put the anatomical theater into permanent use.

Anatomical theaters of universities are regarded as one of the symbols…

“The male is male only at certain moments; the female is female her whole life… everything constantly recalls her sex to her, and to fulfill its functions, an appropriate physical constitution is necessary to her… she needs a soft sedentary life to…

In Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s “Social Contract,” he draws influence from conservative theorists, such as Hobbes, and liberal theorists, such as Locke, alike when mapping out how what a well-functioning socio-political state would look like in the…

Here we have the frontispiece, or illustration facing the title page, of Thomas Hobbes’s De Cive, commonly translated as “On the citizen.” I have chosen this work as illustrative of the general trends in philosophical writings of the time that…

The tale that Jean de Coras recounts in his Arrest Memorable is the story of perhaps one of the most famous 16th century French peasants, a man named Martin Guerre. The story itself is remarkable. A man named Martin Guerre disappears for many years,…

The interest in botany and accurate renderings of plant life permeated all of Europe, not just in England. In France, Jean Fusée Aublet boasts a collection of almost 400 copperplate engravings showing the Histoire des Plantes de la Guiane françoise…