In 17th-century intellectual life, the ideas of the Renaissance humanist Justus Lipsius (1547–1606) were omnipresent. The publication of his Politica in 1589 had made Lipsius' name as an original and controversial political thinker. The sequel, the Monita et exempla politica (Political admonitions and examples), published in 1605, was meant as an illustration of Lipsius political thought as expounded in the Politica. Its aim was to offer concrete models of behavior for rulers against the background of Habsburg politics. Lipsius' later political treatise also forms an indispensable key to interpret the place and function of the Politica in Lipsius’ political discourse and in early modern political thought. The Political admonitions and examples – widely read, edited, and translated in the 17th and 18th centuries – show Lipsius’ pivotal role in the genesis of modern political philosophy.

Starting from Justus Lipsius's Monita et exempla politica (1605), this book offers a collection of essays dealing with the disputed Macchiavellian, Tacitean or Neostoic character of Lipsius's political thought, and its impact on the dynamics of political discourse in Early Modern Europe.

The Renaissance, known primarily for the art and literature that it produced, was also a period in which philosophical thought flourished. This two-volume anthology contains 40 new translations of important works on moral and political philosophy written during the Renaissance and hitherto unavailable in English. The anthology is designed to be used in conjunction with The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, in which all of these texts are discussed. The works, originally written in Latin, Italian, French, Spanish, and Greek, cover such topics as: concepts of man, Aristotelian, Platonic, Stoic, and Epicurean ethics, scholastic political philosophy, theories of princely and republican government in Italy and northern European political thought. Each text is supplied with an introduction and a guide to further reading.

If Justus Lipsius’s Politica of 1589 and its importance to the history of political thought needs no introduction, Lipsius's Monita et exempla politica (1605), conceived as a sequel to the Politica, has been overlooked time and again despite the fact that it is a unique key to understand the precise character of Lipsius's political thought. For, is his widely read political dialogue a Neostoic discourse or is it Tacitean, Machiavellian, or even anti-Machiavellian in nature? Did the work play such a pivotal role in the genesis of the modern, centrally governed nation state, as some scholars tend to believe? This book collects essays by scholars from different disciplines and backgrounds. All of them endeavour to solve this apparent deadlock in scholarly research on Lipsius’s political thought. All of them offer new and fascinating insights in the genesis and developments of the nature and impact of political discourses in Early Modern Europe.