Tempering the Grandi's appetite to oppress : the dedication and intention of Machiavelli's Discourses / John P. McCormick -- Difficult engagements : private passion and public service in Montaigne's Essais / Timothy Hampton -- The bachelor state : philosophy and sovereignty in Bacon's New Atlantis / John Guillory -- Hobbes' revolution / Daniela Coli -- Happy tears : baroque politics in Descartes' Passions de l'âme / Victoria Kahn -- The desire to live : Spinoza's Ethics under pressure / Judith Butler -- A mind for passion : Locke and Hutcheson on desire / Nancy Armstrong and Leonard Tennenhouse -- Rousseau's quarrel with gratitude / Patrick Coleman -- Parting with prejudice : Hume, identity, and aesthetic universality / Neil Saccamano -- Vico, "tenderness," and "barbarism" / Riccardo Caporali -- Kant and the relegation of the passions / Howard Caygill -- Beliefs and emotions (from Stanley Fish to Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill) / Frances Ferguson.