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

by Paul A. Rahe

• ISBN13: 9780521883900
• ISBN10: 0521883903
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-04-14
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

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 Nehdham, 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 more than a century before by Niccolo 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 Averroes.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Abbreviations and Brief Titles	p. xi
Introduction	p. 1
Prologue: Machiavelli in the English Revolution	p. 4
Machiavelli's new Republicanism
Machiavelli's Populist Turn	p. 22
The Ravages of an Ambitious Idleness	p. 56
Revolutionary Aristotelianism
The Classical Republicanism of John Milton	p. 104
The Liberation of Captive Minds	p. 139
Machiavellian Republicanism Anglicized
Marchamont Nedham and the Regicide Republic	p. 179
Servant of the Rump	p. 197
The Good Old Cause	p. 219
Thomas Hobbes and the New Republicanism
Thomas Hobbes's Republican Youth	p. 249
The Making of a Modern Monarchist	p. 273
The Very Model of a Modern Moralist	p. 291
The Hobbesian Republicanism of James Harrington	p. 321
Epilogue	p. 347
Index	p. 357
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