Don Isaac Abravanel and Leonardo Bruni: A Literary and Philosophical Confrontation

Abstract

Don Isaac Abravanel (1437–1508) was one of the first Jewish thinkers to express republican positions, yet very little is known about his knowledge of humanistic republican conceptions. Had he read Leonardo Bruni’s republican writings? Had he even heard of them? In this essay I attempt to address this philological gap by comparing Abravanel’s republican commentary on 1 Samuel 8 with Bruni’s Laudatio florentinae Urbis, especially the motif of the plea to God to authorize a political regime. This comparison is particularly useful for illuminating their respective positions on republicanism, their shared interests and conceptions, as well as their divergent attitudes to their own political and historical environment. This divergence, I argue, sheds light on the early modern Christian and Jewish receptions of ancient republicanism.     

英国革命时期共和主义者对“自由”的理解

目前,共和主义已成为学术界的重要研究内容,文章将对英国革命时期的共和主义,特别是共和主义者对"自由"概念的理解进行初步的探讨,以期深化对共和主义思想的研究。回顾英国革命时期这些共和主义者对自由的表述,以及对思想家霍布斯理论的批评,可以看到霍布斯的那种"不受阻碍"的"消极自由"和共和派"避免依从"的"第三种自由"这样两种不同自由观的对立,而不同的自由观又导致了对不同政治体制的设计。因此,对于实现和保障我们的自由而言,回顾发生在英国革命时期的这场辩论就显得特别有意义。它激发起我们重新思考建立什么样的国家或者政治体制才能使人们避免受到强制和奴役,才能切实保障其自由和权利。     

Baudelaire's literary criticism

In the current debate on republicanism the relationship between republicanism and democracy is an aspect whose historical dimension has thus far hardly been investigated. It offers instead also the chance to clear up ambiguities on the opposition between republicanism and liberalism. In this sense, recent research on the radical Enlightenment, on the link between economics and politics, by a new reading of physiocracy as political discourse, and on the foundations of political representation represent some of the most important advances made by historical research over the last few years. This essay wishes to trace these results back to a long line of research on a modern republicanism that had already been investigated many decades ago by a historian of the Enlightenment interested in republican tradition, Franco Venturi, the author of Settecento riformatore and of Utopia and Reform in the Enlightenment, to which John Pocock dedicated the first volume of his recent Barbarism and Religion. By means of a successful integration of three recent essays by John Israel on the uniqueness of Dutch republican discourse, by Richard Whatmore on the economic roots of French republicanism and by Nadia Urbinati on the foundations of representative democracy in Condorcet, it is possible to isolate the characteristics of a democratic republicanism. Among the various threads that have been followed up, the theme of equality has surfaced in various ways in the search for the characteristics of modern republicanism. These highlight the idea of the emergence in the early modern age of an European political culture and of a democratic and egalitarian republicanism that was encouraged by the contribution from various national situations within which it forged its identity, against the model of an Atlantic republicanism.     

Rethinking the Political Thought of James Harrington: Royalism,Republicanism and Democracy

Traditional accounts of seventeenth-century English republicanism have usually presented it as inherently anti-monarchical and anti-democratic. This article seeks to challenge and complicate this picture by exploring James Harrington's views on royalism, republicanism and democracy. Building on recent assertions about Harrington's distinctiveness as a republican thinker, the article suggests that the focus on Harrington's republicanism has served to obscure the subtlety and complexity of his moral and political philosophy. Focusing on the year 1659, and the pamphlet war that Harrington and his supporters waged against their fellow republicans, it seeks to re-emphasise important but neglected elements of Harrington's thought. It suggests that the depth and extent of Harrington's sympathy with royalists and royalism has been underplayed, while too little attention has been paid to the fundamental differences between his ideas and those adopted by other republican thinkers at the time. In addition it brings to light, for the first time, Harrington's innovative endorsement of both the term and the concept of ‘democracy’ and draws attention to his intellectual and personal affinities with the Levellers. Finally it outlines some implications of these findings for understandings of English republicanism and the republican tradition more generally.     

The Polybian Moment: The Transformation of Republican Thought from Ptolemy of Lucca to Machiavelli

Recent research has emphasized the continuities in European republican political thought from the late Middle Ages until well into the Renaissance and even beyond. Two of the central figures in the story of the persistence of republicanism are Ptolemy of Lucca, who is commonly viewed as the quintessential late medieval republican, and Niccolò Machiavelli, whose work is generally regarded as the classic statement of early modern republicanism. We argue that these two remain conceptually at considerable remove from one another, a claim we illustrate by analyzing the impact of the reception, Latin translation and transmission of the Histories of Polybius, and especially the theory of constitutional change proposed in Book 6. The unavailability of the Histories to Ptolemy and its rather ample use by Machiavelli at the beginning of the Discourses signal an important divergence in the theoretical principles underlying the defense of republican institutions. In turn, this variation captures one facet of the distinct qualities of republican thought that separated the intellectual terrain of the early fourteenth century from that of the sixteenth century.     

Kant and the Two Principles of Publicity

ABSTRACT

The aim of this article is to argue that the principle of “publicity” constitutes a fundamental idea in Kant’s political thought. Publicity provides a central insight that binds together various strands of Kant’s political writings (on issues as diverse as the question of Enlightenment, the right of revolution, historical teleology, reflective judgment, cosmopolitan citizenship, democratic peace, and republican government), and moreover, it offers a much-needed cornerstone for a systematic exposition of his nonexistent political philosophy. Apart from some eminent examples, publicity has been a rather neglected topic in the ever-expanding literature on Kant’s political ideas. Revisiting this notion will make us more attentive to his evocation of the “spirit of republicanism” over and above the letter of the law, and might prompt us to reconsider Kant’s reputation as a classical representative of liberal political thought. Indeed, it should inspire us to situate Kant’s appeal for the “public use of reason” in the vicinity of the republican ideal of political liberty.     

The New Republicanism Without Religion?

The past decades have witnessed a harvest of new books and articles exploring the modern republican tradition and its relevance for contemporary political theory. Members of this movement present the tradition as an alternative to both political liberalism and communitarianism and offer its unique conception of liberty (“freedom from domination”) as a distinct third option beyond the “positive” and “negative” varieties famously identified by Isaiah Berlin. Yet in recovering this view of liberty, civic republicans have neglected the essential role that religion plays in the modern republican tradition. This omission represents not only a serious deviation from the tradition, but, what is more, it fundamentally weakens civic republicanism’s capacity for theorizing and achieving political liberty at the level of institutional life. In the modern republican tradition, religion has been understood to undergird republican liberty both in terms of shaping the morals, customs, and habits of citizens and in providing normative authority for the value of liberty over domination. In this essay, I offer a counter-narration of the modern republican tradition that gives religion its due and challenges civic republicans to recognize the central role that religion has played, and should continue to play, in theorizing and promoting republican liberty.     

Working-Class Women and Republicanism in the French Revolution of 1848

Abstract

Following the February Revolution in 1848, working-class women as well as men attempted to hold the government to its promise of the right to work, through street demonstrations, individual and collective demands for work, and participation in the national workshops that had been established in an attempt to address the problem of unemployment in the capital. In the process, these activists articulated what scholars have labelled as a democratic socialist vision of republicanism. In June of 1848, women participated in the insurrection that sought to defend the vision of a social republic. While the republicanism of working-class men and bourgeois women such as George Sand has been examined, studies of working-class women in the first half of the nineteenth century have to this point focused on the romantic socialist influences that shaped their activities, in particular the Saint-Simonian movement. Drawing primarily on individual letters, police interrogations and newspaper reports, a vision of republicanism emerges that includes the ability for women to sustain their families through waged as well as household labour. This concept of republican virtue based itself not in suffrage but in women's capacity to act as both producers and consumers under just and equitable conditions.     

Introduction: Liberalism in the Early Nineteenth-century Iberian World

Summary

This essay is an introduction to a special issue on ‘Liberalism in the Early Nineteenth-century Iberian World’. The essay reviews why Iberian intellectual history, particularly liberal political thought, has been neglected in English-language scholarship. It offers suggestions for the incorporation of Portuguese and Spanish language texts into the broader canon. The essay then outlines persistent debates common to the study of liberalism in both Iberian and other national contexts, in an effort to instigate a dialogue between intellectual historians of Spain and Portugal and their counterparts elsewhere. It concludes with a consideration of the geopolitical forces, cultural trends, and social conditions that encouraged the forging of transnational liberalism in the early nineteenth century.     

Republican Political Theory and Irish Nationalism

Republicanism has enjoyed something of a revival in recent times among political theorists. This article examines the way in which republican strains of democratic political philosophy impacted political thinkers and leaders in the case of modern Ireland. Although the Republic of Ireland was officially established in 1949, the question of its origins was a source of contention throughout the first part of the twentieth century. I argue that the intellectual origins of Irish republicanism lay in the impact of French revolutionary thought on Irish nationalist leaders in the 1790s, and then trace these republican ideas through the public debates and tracts that marked the major stages in the development of the Irish Republic. In particular, I focus on the principles informing the 1916 Declaration of the Provisional Government of the Irish Republic, as well as the central arguments employed in the debates surrounding the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 and the Republic of Ireland Act of 1948. My aim is to demonstrate that republican ideas affected nationalism to such an extent that in Ireland republicanism and nationalism became, and in some respects still are, practically synonymous.     

Northern Ireland and the Far Left,c. 1965 – 1975

ABSTRACT

The far left, defined as those to the left of orthodox communism, with few but important exceptions defined the Northern Ireland Troubles in essentially republican terms as a struggle to complete Irish national self-determination. Despite this lack of independent orientation, far left ideas fertilised both republicanism and loyalism in the 1970s. They are an important element in understanding the dynamics of ideological conflict in the period.     

Citizens,Subjects or Tyrants? Relocating the People in Pocock's The Machiavellian Moment

SUMMARY

J.G.A. Pocock’s The Machiavellian Moment played a pivotal role in inaugurating the important turn toward the classical republican tradition in the history of political thought. In this revival of republicanism, the people are primarily presented as integral to combining active political participation and military prowess in the context of a common defence of liberty against foreign and domestic tyranny. In this essay we wish to revisit the role of the people in Pocock's interpretation of Machiavelli's republican thought. In doing so, we wish to bring Pocock's contentions relative to the governo popolare one step further by introducing and analysing Machiavelli's expositions of popular behaviour in the context of the Florentine Histories. Contrary to Pocock's assumptions, the Florentine Histories shows how Machiavelli became substantively more critical of the people as a sound political agent. We demonstrate this by reconstructing important shifts in the presentation of the people apparent in this later work, suggesting a number of important elaborations to Machiavelli's understanding of both the people and citizenship.     

Printing,Publishing, and Book Culture in Premodern China

Abstract

After a lull in scholarship on the history of the Chinese book during the mid-twentieth century, there has been a reemerging surge of scholarly interest since the 1980s. This article accesses the expanding field of Chinese book history by focusing on two recently published volumes, which represent the newest approaches to the study of Chinese printing in the first significant phase of its development from the tenth to the fourteenth century and its long-term role in Chinese social and intellectual history after 1800, respectively. Placing them in the broader historical context, it further seeks to flesh out recent research trends and future prospects in the field, in particular the changing social and intellectual engagement with printed texts, the increasing impact of printing and publishing on cultural production, and the dynamic interaction between print and other media.     

The role of the Church of England in the liberalising of criminal legislation of the 1960s

ABSTRACT

This paper describes the rather neglected role played by committees of the Church of England in rewording and promoting a set of arguments that facilitated the reform of a number of repressive laws in mid-twentieth century England and Wales. It is in part a comment on the manner in which the Church provided a clear-eyed understanding of some of the major moral upheavals of the time, drawing on classic utilitarian principles. It is also a comment on our propensity to lose sight of interesting and influential passages in the history of criminal justice.     

Nudging Bentham: indirect legislation and (neo-)liberal politics

SUMMARY

The debates over Sunstein and Thaler’s Nudge oppose libertarianism and paternalism, or defend the authors’ proposed manipulation of individuals’ ‘choice architectures’ as a consistent system of libertarian paternalism. My essay looks beyond the terms of this debate and revisits Bentham’s ‘Indirect Legislation’ in order to excavate the issues raised by the deployment of technologies of behavioural economics in schemes of government. On the one hand, nudging is nothing other than a mild and carefully considered mode of indirect legislation, and the authors are right to join Bentham in pointing out that the landscape they seek to improve is always with us; we are always already governed and governing others, and we might as well govern and be governed better than we do/are. On the other hand, nudge-like innovations reveal the extent to which Bentham’s insights have been captured by a disciplinary orientation that removes its subjects from political space. Put differently, the issue with this kind of government is not that it interferes with our liberty so much as that it presumes our lack of political orientation and efficacy. Bentham’s liberal subjects inhabit a public and even republican space that Sunstein and Thaler’s neo-liberal subjects have long since abandoned.     

Hobbes et le Républicanisme

Hobbes criticizes the theory of mixed government without presenting this mixed government as republican. For him criticizing republicanism means criticizing the definition of freedom as the participation of citizens in the debate on matters concerning them all. We can find the main points of this criticism in theElements of law natural and politic and in theDe cive. InLeviathan Hobbes summarizes this criticism and makes it more dogmatic, while developing in a new way the idea that in all regimes there is an identity of essence in sovereignty. This idea is at variance with the republican thesis stating a difference of nature between free regimes and those that are not and makes it possible to take the Roman republic or the Athenian democracy as models.     

Rousseau's argument for property

Camille Desmoulins's Le Vieux Cordelier is one of the best known newspapers of the French Revolution. Yet, despite this, there has long been uncertainty over the intellectual content of the newspaper and, in particular, over Desmoulins's use of Tacitean passages to support his views. This article seeks to shed light on this important newspaper by setting it not just in the context of the debates of the winter of 1793–1794, but also in that of the ideas and arguments of the Cordelier Club. The article demonstrates that in drawing on English republican ideas in Le Vieux Cordelier, to assert classical democratic republicanism against the views upheld by the Hébertists and the Revolutionary Government, Desmoulins was writing firmly in the tradition of the Cordelier Club.     

On the edge: A tale of skaters and urban governance

The 'problem' of skating has been conflated with a 'problem' with young people in public spaces, reflecting a rise in fear of crime from the mid-twentieth century and referencing more general questions about public space and citizenship. My task in this paper is to highlight some of the tensions between skating and urban governance in Franklin Square, Hobart, the capital city of Tasmania in Australia. This task is indebted to ideas about governance and citizenship advanced by Nikolas Rose; about the proper city as conceived by Michel de Certeau; and about fortress strategies and species of spaces promulgated by Stephen Flusty. Franklin Square functions in two ways in this work. First, its examination encourages consideration of local cases. Second, it can be deployed as a heuristic device through which to explore the edges of public space and citizenship. The essay is intended to make two contributions to social and cultural geography, one enlarging on some well-rehearsed debates about situated and contested socio-spatial relations in what I hope are innovative ways, the other unsettling particular strategies that place skaters 'on the edge' and yet draw them into particular domains of citizenship via specific practices of urban governance.     

The Republican Discourse on Religious Liberty during the Exclusion Crisis

Summary

Much recent historiography assumes that republican calls for religious liberty in seventeenth-century England were limited to Protestant dissenters. Nevertheless there is evidence that some radical voices during the Civil War and Interregnum period were willing to extend this toleration even to ‘false religions’, including Catholicism, provided their members promised loyalty and allegiance to the government. Using the case study of the republican Henry Neville, this article will argue that toleration for Catholics was still an option during the Exclusion Crisis of the late seventeenth century despite new fears of a growth of ‘popery and arbitrary government’. Neville's tolerationist approach, it will be shown, was driven by his Civil War and Interregnum experience, as well as by political pragmatism and very personal circumstances which shaped his attitude towards Catholics in his own country and abroad.     

Transforming the Dutch Republic into the Kingdom of Holland: the Netherlands between Republicanism and Monarchy (1795–1815)1

In 1806 more than two centuries of the republican form of government in the Northern Netherlands came to an end. For a long time, historiography had it that the Dutch were indifferent to the end of the Republic and the establishment of the Kingdom of Holland. The transformation was, however, a much more dynamic process than has been portrayed. King Louis Bonaparte had the difficult task of acquainting a republican people with monarchy. Even though republicanism had lost much of its appeal by 1806, and the usefulness of democratic institutions was put into question, many Batavians nourished anti-monarchism. The Dutch state was one of many European client states that began to experience tensions between the gains of the revolution and the Napoleonic Realpolitik that was geared towards limiting popular sovereignty and expanding the French Empire. Louis Bonaparte, and later the Restoration monarchs, tried to reconcile popular sovereignty and monarchic authority by propagating the constitutional monarchy as the ideal juste milieu (middle way) between extremes.