At the dawn of early modern Europe, political philosophy had been largely shaped by the categories and language of Aristotelian thought as integrated into the Christian Scholastic framework during the preceding two centuries. According to Christian Aristotelians, political "science" constituted the highest form of practical knowledge, but ultimately was subordinate to the still higher forms of theoretical excellence and transcendent truth to be found in the pursuit of philosophical and theological wisdom. Scholastic political philosophy thus promoted government that comported with the virtue and salvation (and thus happiness) of members of the community. The Latin recovery of the main social writings of Aristotle (the Nicomachean Ethics and Politics as well as the Economics of Pseudo-Aristotle) in the mid-thirteenth century provided the framework within which medieval Christian political ideas were ultimately crystallized and systematized.
The history of political philosophy during the fifteenth and subsequent centuries should be recounted against this Scholastic backdrop, negatively as well as positively. Despite a renewal of Scholastic energy in the midst of the Counter-Reformation fervor of the sixteenth century, the political ideas associated with Christian Aristotelianism served as targets of widespread attack throughout the early modern era. Yet at the same time, themes familiar to readers of medieval Scholastic writings recurred and refused to disappear entirely.
Humanism
Repudiation of Scholasticism commenced with the Italian Renaissance. The republican doctrines commonly associated with the so-called civic humanists of the Renaissance (especially in Italy) were not inherently antagonistic to Aristotle. Indeed, Latin translations of the Politics and the Economics produced by one of the pillars of Renaissance humanism, Leonardo Bruni (c. 1370–1444), converted Aristotle into an intellectual figure amenable to civic humanist values. Yet the humanists consciously rejected the methods of the Scholastics as well as the general perception of their civic disengagement. Without disputing or denigrating the Christian aim of salvation, the civic humanists stressed sacrifice for the sake of one's fellow citizens and city as the fullest expression of a virtuous earthly life. Many famous humanists of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries themselves served as secretaries and diplomats in the service of Italian cities, so that their glorification of citizenship reflected their own civic commitments. Drawing upon the rhetorical style of the ancients, they praised urban life in general as well as the mores and physical assets of their own cities in particular. The humanists realized that the quality of civic life depended heavily upon the wealth generated by trade, commerce, and other economic activities. Hence, they lauded the enterprise of merchants and manufacturers, to the extent that Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini (1380–1459) contended that industriousness and self-acquired possessions constituted the foundation of morality and the greatness of the city.
There has been a tendency for scholars to equate Italian humanist political thought almost entirely with the civic version of humanism. Yet many leading humanists showed a notable preference for monarchy and even universal empire. Thus, Bartolomeo Sacchi, known as Platina (1421–1481), and Giovanni Pontano (1426–1503), among others, wrote treatises de principum (of principle) that praised kingship and advised rulers how to conduct themselves and display their majesty. Like-wise, Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini (1405–1464), who became the humanist pope Pius II (reigned 1458–1464), composed a defense of Roman imperial authority that nonetheless borrowed directly from the political concepts and categories familiar to humanism. It would be disingenuous to claim that such writings were somehow less authentically representative of humanist thought than tracts reflecting the urban ethos.
The migration of humanism over the Alps during the course of the sixteenth century underscores the adaptability of humanist learning to political affairs. The so-called northern humanists concentrated (sometimes critically) on the issues shaping the courtly life of the monarchies that ruled the emergent national territorial states of early modern Europe. In his pursuit of a spiritually revitalized Christian commonwealth, Desiderius Erasmus (1466?–1536) offered advice about the education of the Christian prince. Sir Thomas More (1478–1535) imagined a New World utopia where the ills of his modern, supposedly "civilized" society—war, greed, abuse of power—were unknown and human beings lived communally without conflict arising from political and economic inequality. Jean Bodin (1530–1596) proposed a definition of sovereignty as absolute and indivisible, so that the ruling power possessed sole final authority over the legislative, judicial, administrative, and military functions associated with the state. In formulating this conception of sovereignty, Bodin explicitly challenged many of the central tenets of Aristotle's political science, such as the distinction between the governance of the family and the rulership of the state.
It is noteworthy that northern humanism spoke with a decidedly legal accent. A large number of the most prominent of the northern humanists received education in the law and often served as members of university law faculties. This legal inflection rendered humanist doctrines considerably more applicable to the political practices of the northern monarchies, which were organized around systems of royal courts and, increasingly, of legislative pronouncements. The emerging character of state power in sixteenth-century Europe may also help to account for the diffusion of the "Machiavellian" doctrine of ragione di stato or raison d'état (reason of state). From soon after the death of Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) until the era of the French Revolution, Machiavellism formed a central feature of political theory, as well as of literary culture more generally.
Whether Machiavelli would have recognized himself in the Machiavellism of later times is an open question. The historical Machiavelli seems to have been a dedicated republican whose civic humanism, although tinged with the realism of a career politician, remained grounded in the values and principles espoused by the literature of Florentine political thought that preceded him. His Discorsi sopra la Prima Deca di Tito Livio (1514?–1518?) and other political writings testify to this consistent streak of republicanism. However, it was Il Principe (1513–1514), a short work that he seems to have composed in great haste, that earned him his later reputation. In it, Machiavelli overturns many of the standard conventions about the personal qualities necessary for rulers to conduct themselves effectively. He argues that politics is principally guided by considerations of self-interest. Hence, political success requires the capacity to use violence against one's enemies, to engage in systematic deception, and to violate the tenets of religion—in sum, to do whatever is required to "maintain one's state." While he by no means rejects the practice of virtue in its ordinary sense when this does not interfere with the prince's goals, Machiavelli insists that the ruler can only be assured of his supremacy when he possesses virtú, construed as the ability to adapt to political circumstances rapidly and without reference to moral standards or religious pieties.
The Primacy of Power
Machiavelli's emphasis on political success as the only standard for politicians appeared to substitute power for civic virtue as the decisive issue of public life. The political justification of violent acts, even those such as murder that are clearly criminal, became synonymous with his name. Subsequent authors who wrote in this intellectual vein were often called Machiavellians, but they generally rejected the label in preference to the phrase "reason of state." This nomenclature seems to have crystallized by 1589, when Giovanni Botero (1540–1617) published Della Ragione di Stato. "Reason of state" was primarily applied to international relations, which supposedly constituted a special sphere of human conduct. Advocates of "reason of state" hold that appeals to justice or other moral values in dealings between states have no efficacy. Rather, force, treachery, deception, and similar uses of power, regardless of moral worth, are considered legitimate in gaining the upper hand in intrastate rivalries. The appeal to the primacy of power fundamentally transformed political discourse in early modern Europe and paved the way for many forms of so-called political realism, seemingly devoid of moral content.
A clear example of this interest in power is found in the writings of Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), especially his masterpiece, the Leviathan (1651). An avowed opponent of Aristotelianism and the Scholastic approach in natural philosophy as in political affairs, Hobbes proposed to create an entirely "scientific" and "mathematical" foundation for the study of human nature and of government. According to Hobbes, all human motivation may be reduced to the twin principles that people desire self-preservation and that they fear pain and especially violent death. Thus, he insists that our moral concepts and our political institutions are correctly arranged only when they are strictly derived from this postulate with Euclidean precision. The Leviathan itself purports to offer such a derivation.
Like Bodin, Hobbes insisted that the only justifiable form of sovereign authority is absolute and indivisible. Hobbes ascribed to human beings natural liberty and equality, which license them to undertake any actions necessary in order to preserve themselves and to avoid pain. He believed that the pursuit of self-preservation by free and equal creatures left to their own devices (the "state of nature") logically leads to unceasing conflict and unremitting fear. Frustrated in their realization of their basic desires, human beings voluntarily exchange their chaotic natural freedom for peace and order by means of a social contract, the terms of which call upon the parties to renounce all liberties and rights they possess by nature (with the exception of self-preservation itself). Any contract that permits the retention of some rights and thus a limitation on the sovereign's absolute authority will fail to achieve the peace sought and will eventually slip its members back into the state of nature. Power thereby replaces virtue as the central concern of the "science of politics."
Hobbes also identifies religion as an especially fertile source of political conflict. To remedy the divisive consequences of religion, he offers the rather extreme solution in the second half of Leviathan of strictly limiting the autonomy of ecclesiastical officials and offices and reinterpreting Christian theology in a manner consonant with his conceptions of human nature and sovereignty. While Hobbes's Erastian proposals were highly unusual, his comments about the corrosive effects of religion on public order were widely echoed among other early modern philosophers. The success of Protestant reformers during the early sixteenth century in challenging the Roman Church's monopoly over the interpretation of Christian doctrine and the maintenance of clerical obedience generated waves of violent persecution and suppression of religious dissent as well as forceful resistance by the oppressed confessions. Catholic princes and cities burned reformers of all stripes; Protestant rulers and communities did the same to Catholics as well as to members of other reforming sects. The state as an agent of confessional enforcement only reinforced the impression that effective use of coercion and violence (even if in the name of the salvation of souls) were the real qualifications for political leadership.
The controversial role of religion in public life in turn spawned major contributions to political philosophy. Authors began to argue for toleration of differences of conviction and rite. Sébastien Castellion (1515–1563) argued that coercion is an inappropriate tool for effecting a change of religious views since Christian belief must be held with sincere conviction. Hence, clerics and magistrates must refrain from persecution of convinced Christians who cling to doctrines that do not coincide with official teachings. Many important European philosophers came to the support of some principle of religious toleration. Without doubt, the most famous advocate of tolerance proved to be John Locke (1632–1704), who proposed to extend respect for liberty of conscience and worship to many Christian (and perhaps some non-Christian) confessions in his Epistola de Tolerantia (1689; A letter concerning toleration). Locke proposed that the magistrate should not concern himself with caring for the condition of human souls. Rather, political authority ought to be confined to the maintenance of public tranquility and the defense of individual rights. Locke was not, however, the first (or even the most extreme) defender of toleration during the seventeenth century. In the writings of Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677), the right to liberty of thought and belief without interference from a sovereign power or a church was enunciated. According to Spinoza, no such "external" authority enjoyed the prerogative of determining the truth or falsity of one's ideas. Similarly, Pierre Bayle (1647–1706) condemned the persecution of religious diversity, claiming that it encouraged hypocrisy and eroded social order. Bayle maintained that an erring conscience, if it be held in good faith, merited protection just as surely as a correct one. He even extended this principle to atheists, a view that Locke adamantly rejected.
Theory of Resistance
Locke also stood at the culmination of another important line of early modern thought concerning the rights of populations to refuse obedience to tyrannical rulers, especially in matters of religion. Reforming Christians of a Calvinist persuasion led the way in articulating a theory of resistance to illegitimate applications of power. Initially, John Knox (c. 1513–1572) and other British exiles propounded the view that government has a responsibility to God to eliminate all forms of idolatry (the cipher for Catholicism). If the ruler refuses to act on this duty, then lesser magistrates and even the common people must step in to suppress idolaters and their sympathizers, that is, Catholic priests and their royal protectors. The Huguenot reformers of France developed this basic insight into a general account of resistance to an oppressive regime that aids, abets, and even guides the violent persecution of religious minorities. Authors including François Hotman (1524–1590) and Théodore de Bèze (1519–1605) produced a sizable literature combining traditional Christian prohibitions against popular rebellion with the view that so-called "intermediary" magistrates, officials in service to a prince, are obliged to repel and contravene commands by their superiors that require religious persecution.
In his Second Treatise of Government (published in 1689), Locke in many ways extended the application of Calvinist resistance theory. Arguing that a ruler who systematically violates the natural rights of subjects to life, liberty, and estate violates the bond of trust that authorizes his office, Locke insists that no one is obligated to obey his commands. If the magistrate attempts to coerce their obedience, members of civil society may legitimately use force against him, just as they would in the case of robbery or assault. Locke's argument is framed carefully so as to remain consistent with the general Christian view that active revolt against duly constituted authorities violates divine law. For Locke, it is the ruler who breaches the public trust, not the disobedient subjects.
The political philosophy of the eighteenth century witnessed the extension of the themes of constitutional limitation of power and the protection of individual freedom that had been pioneered in earlier centuries. In his De l'esprit des lois (1748; The spirit of the laws), Charles-Louis de Secondat, marquis de Montesquieu (1689–1755), examined issues surrounding the distribution of authority that had been previously left aside, including the separation of powers and the nature of political representation. Montesquieu thereby supplied many of the missing pieces of the puzzle of how power might be constrained.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) raised more fundamental questions about the project in which modern political philosophy had been engaged. Reversing the standard view that civilized society had led to the enhancement of human liberties and capacities, Rousseau pointed out how humanity had in fact become enslaved by political, cultural, legal, and economic practices and institutions. Only the creation of a communal life, and an attendant system of law and government, consonant with the general will of all citizens, could rectify the oppressive character of modern civilization. Hence, Rousseau pioneered a synthesis between individualistic and republican conceptions of political power and its purposes, which pointed toward to the extension of democratic rights that would occur in succeeding centuries.
Bibliography
Primary Sources
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Kohl, Benjamin G., and Ronald G. Witt, eds. The Earthly Republic: Italian Humanists on Government and Society. Manchester, U.K., 1978.
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—CARY J. NEDERMAN
