Grotius and Selden

This major work of academic reference provides a comprehensive overview of the development of western political thought during the European Enlightenment. Written by a distinguished team of international contributors, this Cambridge History is the latest in a sequence of volumes that is now firmly established as the principal reference source for the history of political thought. Every major theme in eighteenth-century political thought is covered in a series of essays at once scholarly and accessible, and the essays are complemented by extensive guides for further reading, and brief biographical notes of the major characters in the text, including Rousseau, Montesquieu and David Hume. Of interest and relevance to students and scholars of politics and history at all levels from beginning undergraduate upwards, this volume chronicles one of the most exciting and rewarding of all periods in the development of western thinking about politics, man (and increasingly woman), and society.

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The Cambridge history of eighteenth-century political thought

The middle of the fifteenth century was a turning point in the relations between the Italian states, and the relative stability which Italy enjoyed until the Neapolitan expedition of Charles VIII in 1494 forms part of the background to the history of its political thought during that period. The peace of Lodi had put an end, in 1454, to a succession of wars which had begun in the 1420s. It had been followed by the conclusion of an Italian league, aimed at safeguarding the integrity of the Italian states as well as peace among them; in fact, wars were chiefly prevented or contained by triple and dual alliances between the five greater powers which were its members, Milan, Venice, Florence, the papacy, and Naples. To the relative stability and equilibrium in inter-state relations, threatened primarily by the expansionist policies of Venice and the papacy, there corresponded a similar stability in the internal conditions of the Italian states, although it too could be temporarily threatened. Domestic crises occurred in Milan in 1476 with the assassination of Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza; in Florence in 1478 with the Pazzi conspiracy, but these were of short duration; far more serious and lasting was the revolt of the Neapolitan barons against Ferrante of Aragon in 1485. The lesser princes, such as the Malatesta at Rimini and the Este at Ferrara, were more vulnerable; a judicious policy of placing themselves under the protection of one or more of the greater powers, as well as serving them as condottieri , could help them to achieve security and dynastic survival.

Italian political thought, 1450–1530

Reason of state The historian Friedrich Meinecke, a bold climber of what he liked to call the ‘mountain-peaks’ in the history of ideas, once wrote despairingly of the literature on reason of state that ‘There are real catacombs here of forgotten literature by mediocrities’ (Meinecke 1957, p. 67n). All the same, these catacombs are well worth the effort of exploration to any historian concerned with the history of arguments, attitudes, and mentalities as well as with the achievements of outstanding individuals. Shifts in political attitudes are generally marked, sooner or later, by the coinage of new terms, as the traditional vocabulary comes to appear increasingly inadequate to express the new insights. In the later sixteenth century, an important new ‘keyword’ was ‘reason of state’. To be exact, the Italian phrase ragione degli stati had been employed, around the year 1547, by Giovanni della Casa – the archbishop best known for his courtesy book – in an oration to the emperor Charles V, but it was only in 1580s or thereabouts that the new coinage passed into general currency. By the time Giovanni Botero published his Ragione di Stato (1589), the first of a whole shelf of books bearing that sort of title, it was, as he noted in the dedication, a ‘constant subject of discussion’ in some courts. The claim is plausible enough, since Botero's book went through at least five more Italian editions by 1606, while the phrase ragion di stato appears in the titles of at least eight more Italian treatises on politics by the year 1635.

Tacitism, scepticism, and reason of state

Scholarship and power: a problematic partnership In 1599 the Habsburg archduke and his Infanta came to the university of Louvain to hear a humanist teach. The outstanding local scholar Justus Lipsius proved more than equal to this challenging task, as he explained to a friend in a characteristically immodest letter: I had to perform in the School of Theology, after what they call a theological ‘Actus’. So I stood up and began to speak… after an extemporaneous introduction I explained a short text from Seneca's De clementia , beginning: ‘The prince's greatness is firmly founded if all know that he is at once above them and on their side etc’. I explained the text from Seneca, I say, and in it the task of princes, and finally I added a reflection on the happy result that would stem from this, that is that we Belgians would feel towards them the benevolence and loyalty we had always felt for our rulers. That's it. They heard me with such sympathy that the prince never took his eyes off me; he inclined towards me not just mentally but bodily. So did the other nobles present, and they in turn received the favour of the ambassador of the king of Spain, a scholar, and one who favours me, as you should know. The Infanta was there too. I leave you to imagine what – or if – she understood. Now you know what went on here – the unusual, or possibly unique, event of a female prince coming to these exercises. I, and other prudent men, may begin to cherish better hopes for the republic, since the princes are openly beginning to show themselves favourably disposed to their Belgians and their ways. (Lipsius 1637, II. 454)

Humanism and political theory

Richard Cumberland and Natural Law

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