Doctor of Philosophy / The main issue to be articulated in this thesis is the proposition that Leibniz’s mature philosophy is best, or preferably, presented as a double-aspect ontology. All the arguments to be furnished herein support this case; however, their intrinsic weight and extent far exceeds that of the principal contention, so that the whole of Leibniz’s natural philosophy and metaphysics will be seen to be involved and to undergo some measure of re-orientation away from more traditional interpretive concerns. Part I follows Leibniz in his emendation of Aristotelian-Scholastic notions as a result of his need for a “higher, metaphysical principle” to remedy the defects of the ‘modern’ account of motion. From this flowed his new conception of substance. The fundamental premise of Leibniz’s metaphysics is that spirit and body lie in series. The cosmos presents itself as aspects of an unbroken continuum. Ineluctably our conclusions as to the ‘whole’ is therefore an intellectual reconstruction of the perspectives delivered to us by these aspects. This emerges most clearly from the phenomenotaxis which has been collated in this part of the thesis – apparently the first such exercise in the scholarly literature. All this involves a separation of domains which require appropriate levels of description to explain their autonomous features. A double-aspect theory seems indispensable to account for the one world to which these levels nonetheless refer. In Part II we engage with Leibniz’s conception of substance as a unit of force. From this protean idea (aka monad) the whole material and spiritual cosmos is derived. The basis of this theory is that to act is to be. Accordingly we arrive at an ontology of agency. The nature of a monad is to exert Daseinstreben, the equivalent of individuation. Included in its definition is an absolute freedom to act. God’s “concession” of existence therefore refers to the autonomous collectivisation of monads into universes eligible for actualisation. Accordingly Leibniz arrives at a theory of a self-constructing universe. Post-Arnauld, Leibniz discarded the complete concept, having realised that contingency breaks open the system of determinism. Accordingly Leibniz replaced the ‘sum of predicates’ doctrine with the law of the series. In this conception monads collect the asymmetrical and irreversible information relevant to their internal states; for it transpires that freely executed choices guarantee avoidance of indiscernibles. The section therefore presents a schema of the ten main issues entangled in the conception of agency as well as an analytical chart of the structure of monads. In Part III, the “Labyrinth of the Continuum” resolves the perspectives on the world. Leibniz declares his colours unambiguously – realism concerns the world of facts, idealism the realm of foun-dations. The Principle of Continuity covers a vast range of indeterminate parts which serve as the foundations of real parts. We investigate some case studies, e.g. petites perceptions and especially the Pacidius, in which the conception of an agent-in-motion is studied in depth to reveal Leibniz’s extraordinary conclusions on change. We also consider Shapes, Limits and Boundaries which are relevant to the theory of the self-constructing universe (infolding and unfolding order); and finally his models of self-similarity and scale invariance. PART IV is concerned with grounding existents from the principle of sufficient reason. The virtue claimed here for the double-aspect theory is the possibility of penetrating into the thought of an exceptionally complex thinker through more than one portal. It yields a greater variety of facets, an inner coherence and a much richer texture of thought than the traditional insistence on just one primary aspect reveals.

Even to contemporaries Louis XIII was an enigma, for he seemed to be the very embodiment of opposites. For example, when he overthrew his mother's Regency government in 1617, he claimed she had treated him as a child not as a son, yet the moment his 'coup' was successful he did not attempt to consolidate his authority, but sat on the floor "playing the child" he now claimed his mother had never allowed him to be. Further, he demanded the obedience of his nobility, yet continued to do things which elicited their scorn rather than their respect. After all, he fawned over court favorites, spoke with a stutter and seemed to enjoy his toy canons as much as he did the royal army he now ostensibly controlled. The purpose of this work is to show not only that Louis was a King without majesty, even though he was addressed as 'Your Majesty', but how he gradually came to acquire that majesty under the tutelage of Cardinal Richelieu. It does this first by drawing on the thought of Jean Bodin, the sixteenth century jurist, who showed that majesty flowed from sovereignty, and sovereignty meant that a ruler must not be subject to another in anything. Second, it applies this definition of sovereignty and majesty to Louis XIII, showing in detail how he did not even have control over his own life, much less over his court, country and coasts. It was Richelieu who gave him this control, making his rule unquestioned both in practice and in theory, separating him even from the scrutiny of the Catholic Church by making that Church subordinate to the state. Even more, Richelieu taught Louis how to carry himself like a King. Most of all, however, he taught Louis that the essence of majesty did not lie in demanding obedience but in exuding an authority that commanded it.

This thesis examines the everyday resistance, and its interaction with cultural hybridity, of the Saami population in the administrative unit of Torne lappmark during the period 1639–1732. To do this, the thesis uses theoretical concept of everday resistance as it has been described by JamesC. Scott and the theories of cultural hybridity as they have been described by Peter Burke. Primary source material used in this thesis consists of the court records from Torne lappmark, specifically from the courts at Jukkasjärvi and Enontekis.The results of this thesis present a picture of the everyday resistance in early modern Torne lappmark. The states control was most prominent at the annual markets and court proceedings. The everyday resistance of the Saamis became more subtle when the supervision by the Swedish state became more significant, for example by cutting off pieces from the reindeer hides that they sold or taxed with. Further away from the courts the Saamis could use more drastic options, for example fleeing to Norway. The Swedish state did not want to implement hard punishments on the Saamis because the mining operations in the lappmarks were dependent on Saamis and reindeers to carry ore, wood and food in order to keep the mines operational. This is used by the Saamis as an argument against material domination. The insults and rumours concerning state officials that can be found in the source material often concern abuse of power. The lack of control outside the yearly court proceedings also led to harassments of state and church officials.The Swedish state had political reasons to present the Saamis as chris- tian subjects while trying to exterminate the Saami religion. The Saamis therefore learned a sufficient amount of christianity to make interaction with the state easier and to use as a tool in court proceedings to avoid punishment. This normalised and legitimised the states use of power. The fact that Saamis carried christian ideas and could reproduce them when they needed also led to a cultural hybridisation. They also adapted these ideas in accordance to their own worldview. Some Saamis also hybridised the two religions in different religious practises.The use of these theoretical models offers a new perspective on the interaction between the Swedish state and the Saamis. It also gives a new perspective on the power relationships in Torne lappmark during the early modern period. Keywords: Saami history, everyday resistance, cultural hybridity, 17th century, 18th century

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Léonard Lessius was a Flemish Jesuit whose published works engaged in the most pressing economic, theological, and philosophical debates of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth-centuries. Highly-respected for both his profound intellect and his exemplary integrity and virtue, Lessius, also known as "The Prince of Philosophers" was venerated even in death. Despite his remarkable fame and influence in his own day, Lessius' philosophical contributions and legacy have been largely forgotten by modern historians. This striking lacuna in the historiography illuminates the narrow categories and concerns as well as the serious limitations of modern philosophy and the history of philosophy in particular. This report narrows in on one of these lost philosophical fields and treatises in particular, Lessius's study on diet and health, Hygiasticon (Antwerp, 1613). It uniquely, and quite literally, gets at the heart and soul of early modern philosophy: what is natural, what is the relationship between body, mind and soul, and what is necessary for health, wealth, spiritual- and self-improvement. / text

Marie de Gournay (1565-1645) was bold. Following a profound, epiphanic experience while reading Montaigne's Essais, she would turn the despair of a young woman, ambitiously seeking her own voice, into literary performances as part of a continuous exercise of staging herself. Indeed, she would fabricate for herself a mythic persona, a Virgo nobilis, in order to control her own destiny as an author, and as a literary, political and social commentator. She also had some very powerful friends and supporters. Following a prominent fifty-year career, though, she would virtually disappear from the French literary world. Shortly after her death, Gournay's work was erased behind the ridicule, parodies and mystification that had targeted her during her lifetime. Gournay would become counter-fashioned, her own myths turned against her. My intent in this study of Gournay's persona is to provide an example of the dynamics at work in subversive creations, specifically how the construct of Gournay evolved into what humanist Justus Lipsius had presaged as a novum monstrum.I propose to analyze the fabrication of her persona from two different perspectives: first of all, from the point of view of her own self-fashioning, how she appears as both author and character of her own creation, putting into flux the notions of copy - original and imitation - invention. Critical theories on reception, self-fashioning, mystification, originality and feminism will be used within the context of the development of politesse and the honnête homme, in early modern France. Close study of the works of fiction in which her persona appears, only to be mocked, and an analysis of texts which praised her will then reveal how and why Gournay continues to suffer from the binds constructed during the seventeenth century after which she, and many other women writers, were no longer read. She was either scornfully dismissed, or simplified to the point of distortion out of the need to classify and explain a woman whose positions and actions rendered her a phenomenon in a patriarchal society where women were excluded from creating meaning for themselves.

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