Description: James Hankins offers the first full-length study of Francesco Patrizi's life and thought. A key but largely forgotten Renaissance thinker, Patrizi wrote influentially on "virtue politics," with the goal of nurturing citizens' character and education so societies could effectively balance demands of liberty, equality, and merit-based leadership.
Brief description: James Hankins is Professor of Humanities at the Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida and founding General Editor of the I Tatti Renaissance Library. He is the author of Virtue Politics: Soulcraft and Statecraft in Renaissance Italy, winner of the Marraro Prize and a Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year; Political Meritocracy in Renaissance Italy: The Virtuous Republic of Francesco Patrizi of Siena; and Plato in the Italian Renaissance; and editor of The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Philosophy. Widely regarded as one of the world's leading authorities on Renaissance philosophy and political thought, he is a Corresponding Member of the British Academy.
Review Quotes: Through meticulous scholarship and forceful argumentation, James Hankins restores Francesco Patrizi to his rightful place among leading Italian humanists such as Petrarch and Machiavelli, and also among giants of pan-European humanists such as Thomas More. A tour de force in intellectual history and political theory.--John P. McCormick, author of Reading Machiavelli