Eric MacPhail
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View article: Is Critias a Sophist?
Is Critias a Sophist? Open
The coherence and indeed the reality of the sophists as a philosophical school or movement has been contested and debated in modern scholarship, with inconclusive results. While their collective identity, not to mention their exemplarity, …
View article: Peri Theon: The Renaissance Confronts the Gods
Peri Theon: The Renaissance Confronts the Gods Open
This essay traces the legacy of the ancient Greek sophists in the European Renaissance with particular attention to the study of religion as a human institution. Vernacular writers such as Niccolò Machiavelli and Michel de Montaigne follow…
View article: Jean Bodin and the Praise of Superstition
Jean Bodin and the Praise of Superstition Open
This essay situates the political thought of the French Renaissance prose writer Jean Bodin within the dual tradition of political theory and epideictic rhetoric. Bodin’s pragmatic reappraisal of superstition, as a bulwark against atheism …
View article: Jean Bodin and the Praise of Superstition
Jean Bodin and the Praise of Superstition Open
This essay situates the political thought of the French Renaissance prose writer Jean Bodin within the dual tradition of political theory and epideictic rhetoric. Bodin's pragmatic reappraisal of superstition, as a bulwark against atheism …