Against Throne and Altar
Machiavelli and Political Theory Under the English Republic

Examines the political thinking of four men - John Milton, Marchamont Nedham, James Harrington, and Thomas Hobbes.

Paul A. Rahe (Author)

9780521883900, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 14 April 2008

436 pages
23.4 x 15.6 x 2.4 cm, 0.79 kg

'This erudite work presents a novel interpretation of Machiavelli's republicanism, and then seeks to trace its influence on the thought of several seventeenth-century English writers. … Rahe's book surveys an enormous swath of intellectual history and political thought … and relates much of it in novel, complex and challenging ways. … a seminal contribution' The Journal of the Review of Politics

Modern republicanism - distinguished from its classical counterpart by its commercial character and jealous distrust of those in power, by its use of representative institutions, and by its employment of a separation of powers and a system of checks and balances - owes an immense debt to the republican experiment conducted in England between 1649, when Charles I was executed, and 1660, when Charles II was crowned. Though abortive, this experiment left a legacy in the political science articulated both by its champions, John Milton, Marchamont Nedham, and James Harrington, and by its sometime opponent and ultimate supporter, Thomas Hobbes. This volume examines these four thinkers, situates them with regard to the novel species of republicanism first championed in the early 1500s by Niccolò Machiavelli, and examines the debt that he and they owed the Epicurean tradition in philosophy and the political science crafted by the Arab philosophers Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroës.

Prologue: Machiavelli in the English Revolution
Part I. Machiavelli's New Republicanism: 1. Machiavelli's populist turn
2. The ravages of an ambitious idleness
Part II. Revolutionary Aristotelianism: 3. The classical republicanism of John Milton
4. The liberation of captive mind
Part III. Machiavellian Republicanism Anglicized: 5. Marchamont Nedham and the regicide republic
6. Servant of the rump
7. The good old cause
Part IV. Thomas Hobbes and The New Republicanism: 8. Thomas Hobbes' republican youth
9. The making of a modern monarchist
10. The very model of a modern moralist
11. The Hobbesian Republicanism of James Harrington
Epilogue.

Subject Areas: Political science & theory [JPA], History of ideas [JFCX], Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH], Early history: c 500 to c 1450/1500 [HBLC]