The Machiavellian Moment

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. G. A. Pocock ◽  
Richard Whatmore
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Social Consciousness ◽  
Civic Humanism ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Renaissance Italy ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Century Thought ◽  
The Ideal

Originally published in 1975, this book remains a landmark of historical and political thought. The book looks at the consequences for modern historical and social consciousness arising from the ideal of the classical republic revived by Machiavelli and other thinkers of Renaissance Italy. It shows that Machiavelli’s prime emphasis was on the moment in which the republic confronts the problem of its own instability in time, which the book calls the “Machiavellian moment.” After examining this problem in the works of Machiavelli, Guicciardini, and Giannotti, the book turns to the revival of republican ideology in Puritan England and in Revolutionary and Federalist America. It argues that the American Revolution can be considered the last great act of civic humanism of the Renaissance and it relates the origins of modern historicism to the clash between civic, Christian, and commercial values in eighteenth-century thought.

Civic Humanism

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig Kallendorf
Keyword(s):  
American Revolution ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Italian Renaissance ◽  
The Political ◽  
Civic Humanism ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
Renaissance Studies ◽  
Classical Models ◽  
The Republic

Civic humanism is one of the more interesting and important concepts in Renaissance studies, in part because of its unusually long afterlife, and in part because almost everything pertaining to it is controversial. There is general agreement that it involves a commitment to the active political life under the influence of classical models, but from that point on, scholarship divides. Are its origins in the political life of Florence at the turn of the 15th century or in the political thought of the 14th century? Does civic humanism predicate a commitment to the republic as we understand the term today, or only to active political engagement in general? When did it end: In Italy, in the 16th century? In England, in the 17th century? In the ideological debates of the American revolution? Or later? Since large blocks of postwar scholarship on the Italian Renaissance are a reaction to civic humanism, either directly or indirectly, any selection from among this much material becomes at least somewhat arbitrary, but the bibliography that follows should provide a basic orientation to the major issues involved, with an emphasis on how ideas about civic humanism have evolved rather than on restatements of earlier positions.

Religion and the Limits of Limited Government

1988 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 682-703
Author(s):  
Ralph C. Hancock
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Limited Government ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Religious Liberalism ◽  
Full Rationality ◽  
Universal Truth ◽  
The Ideal

A reflection on the meaning of limited government illuminates both its theoretical limits or boundaries and its practical limitations. The full rationality of the Lockean argument for narrowing the scope of politics to bodily self-interest may be questioned from two apparently opposite standpoints: because of its aggressive materialism or because it seems to rest upon a distinctly Christian dichotomy between spiritual and secular concerns. This paradox is further represented in the religious liberalism of the American Revolution, and a consideration of Calvin's theology suggests that this spiritual secularism is not simply an eighteenth-century confusion, but may derive from a radicalization of the Christian idea of transcendence. Thus both religious and secular sources of the ideal of limited government rest on unlimited claims for the unity of private self-preservation and universal Truth. This faith does not, however, exhaust the meaning of the Founding.

Hume and the Scottish Enlightenment

1978 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 94-109
Author(s):  
Duncan Forbes
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Technical Term ◽  
Civic Humanism ◽  
Century Thought

The term ‘Scottish Enlightenment’ annoys some Scottish historians, because to them it seems to suggest that a state of unenlightenment prevailed in Scotland before the mideighteenth century, but ‘enlightenment’ when used by the historian of ideas is simply a technical term to describe certain aspects of eighteenth-century thought. The trouble is in defining precisely what aspects of eighteenth-century thought it is meant to describe. Different people study the eighteenth century Scottish thinkers for different reasons; for Professor Pocock, for example, they belong to the tradition of ‘civic humanism’ and constitute one of his Machiavellian moments. But they are more widely known nowadays for the modernity and sophistication of their social theory.

Civic Humanism and Parliamentary Reform: The Case of the Society of the Friends of the People

1979 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 70-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iain Hampsher-Monk
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political Stability ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Civic Humanism ◽  
The People ◽  
Parliamentary Reform ◽  
Political Problem ◽  
Renaissance Italy ◽  
Modes Of Thought

The tradition of thought known as civic humanism has recently occupied the attention of a number of commentators. Not only has it been examined in the place of its birth, Renaissance Italy, and more especially Florence, but in a recent work J. G. A. Pocock has traced the influence of the tradition in seventeenth and eighteenth-century England, and finally in the New World. The question considered here is the particular use to which civic modes of thought and argument were put by a group of moderate reformers in the debates on parliamentary reform in the last two decades of the eighteenth century. Although this period has received attention from social and constitutional historians, it has not been discussed by historians of ideas.Civic humanism is both an analysis of a political problem and a range of recommendations as to how the problem is best to be solved. The problem is defined in terms of the deleterious effects of time on political organization. Human organizations rely on the ordered and rule-governed behavior of individuals. Such behavior exhibits, over time, a constant tendency to disintegrate into selfish action. Political and legal institutions provide the immediate incentives to prevent this happening. Yet how can these institutions themselves be safeguarded or rendered self-regulating?The solution to the problem of achieving political stability through time is seen essentially as a moral solution, that is to say it is seen to lie in the creation of a particular set of attitudes towards political life amongst the citizens of the polity.

scholarly journals THE DUBLIN SOCIETY IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY IRISH POLITICAL THOUGHT

2004 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 615-640 ◽  
Author(s):  
JAMES LIVESEY
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
British Isles ◽  
Pursuit Of Happiness ◽  
National Life ◽  
New Form ◽  
Cultural Origins ◽  
The Ideal

Through an analysis of the debate between Charles Davenant in England, and Arthur Dobbs, Thomas Prior, and Samuel Madden in Ireland, it establishes that the founders saw the society as a response to Ireland's dependent status in the emerging British empire. The Dublin Society distinguished itself from other improving societies in the British Isles because it explicitly represented a new principle of sociality. The article describes the cultural origins of that principle arguing that a diverse set of groups converged on the ideal of association as a new form of order. The article concludes with a consideration of Madden's understanding, derived from his commitment to improving associations, that Irish national life was best understood as the pursuit of happiness rather than justice or virtue.

Hume and the Scottish Enlightenment

1978 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 94-109
Author(s):  
Duncan Forbes
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Technical Term ◽  
Civic Humanism ◽  
Century Thought

The term ‘Scottish Enlightenment’ annoys some Scottish historians, because to them it seems to suggest that a state of unenlightenment prevailed in Scotland before the mideighteenth century, but ‘enlightenment’ when used by the historian of ideas is simply a technical term to describe certain aspects of eighteenth-century thought. The trouble is in defining precisely what aspects of eighteenth-century thought it is meant to describe. Different people study the eighteenth century Scottish thinkers for different reasons; for Professor Pocock, for example, they belong to the tradition of ‘civic humanism’ and constitute one of his Machiavellian moments. But they are more widely known nowadays for the modernity and sophistication of their social theory.

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