The Languages of Political Theory in Early-Modern Europe (Ideas in Context)

374 Pages·1990·6.34 MB·English

by  Anthony Pagden (ed.)

IDEAS IN CONTEXT
THE LANGUAGES OF
POLITICAL THEORY IN
EARLY-MODERN EUROPE
IDEAS IN CONTEXT
Edited by Richard Rorty, J. B. Schneewind, Quentin Skinner
and Wolf Lepenies
The books in this series will discuss the emergence of intellectual traditions
and of related new disciplines. The procedures, aims and vocabularies that
were generated will be set in the context of the alternatives available within
the contemporary frameworks of ideas and institutions. Through detailed
studies of the evolution of such traditions, and their modification by
different audiences, it is hoped that a new picture will form of the develop-
ment of ideas in their concrete contexts. By this means, artificial distinc-
tions between the history of philosophy, of the various sciences, of society
and politics, and of literature, may be seen to dissolve.
For a list of titles in this series, please see end of book.
Ideas in Context is published with the support of the Exxon Education
Foundation.
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THE LANGUAGES OF
POLITICAL THEORY IN
EARLY-MODERN EUROPE
D>
EDITED BY
ANTHONY PAGDEN
The right of the
University of Cambridge
to print and sell
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CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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Published by the Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge
The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 1RP
40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011, USA
10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia
© Cambridge University Press 1987
First published 1987
First paperback edition 1990
Printed in Great Britain at the University Press, Cambridge
British Library cataloguing in publication data
Pagden, A. R.
The Languages of political theory in early-modern Europe.
(Ideas in context)
1. Sociolinguistics 2. Europe - politics and government
I. Title II. Series
320'.094 JN5
Library of Congress cataloguing in publication data
The Languages of political theory in early-modern Europe.
(Ideas in context)
'Earlier versions of seven of these essays . . . were originally
delivered at a conference on political languages held at the
European University Institute in Florence in September 1983'
- Acknowledgments.
Includes index.
1. Political science - Europe - History.
I. Pagden, Anthony. II. Series.
JA84.E9L36 1986 320',094 86-14714
ISBN 0 521 32087 9 hard covers
ISBN 0 521 38666 7 paperback
BO
For Geoffrey Hawthorn

CONTENTS
Notes on contributors page ix
Acknowledgements xii
ANTHONY PAGDEN Introduction 1
1 j. G. A. POCOCK The concept of a language and the metier 19
d'historien: some considerations on practice
PART I
2 NICOLAI RUBINSTEIN The history of the word politicus in 41
early-modern Europe
3 DONALD KELLEY Civil science in the Renaissance: the 57
problem of interpretation
4 ANTHONY PAGDEN Dispossessing the barbarian: the 79
language of Spanish Thomism and the debate over the
property rights of the American Indians
5 RICHARD TUCK The 'modern' theory of natural law 99
PART II
6 QUENTIN SKINNER Sir Thomas More's Utopia and the 123
language of Renaissance humanism
7 MAURIZIO VIROLI The concept of ordre and the language of 159
classical republicanism in Jean-Jacques Rousseau
8 ECO HAITSMA MULIER The language of seventeenth- 179
century republicanism in the United Provinces: Dutch
or European?
9 MARK GOLDIE The civil religion of James Harrington 197
vii
viii CONTENTS
PART III
10 M. M. GOLDSMITH Liberty, luxury and the pursuit of 225
happiness
11 ISTVAN HONT The language of sociability and commerce: 25 3
Samuel Pufendorf and the theoretical foundations of
the 'Four-Stages Theory'
12 RICHARD BELLAMY 'Da metafisico a mercatante': Antonio 277
Genovesi and the development of a new language of
commerce in eighteenth-century Naples
PART IV
13 GIGLIOLA ROSSINI The criticism of rhetorical histori- 303
ography and the ideal of scientific method: history,
nature and science in the political language of Thomas
Hobbes
14 ROBERT WOKLER Saint-Simon and the passage from 325
political to social science
15 JUDITH N. SHKLAR Alexander Hamilton and the language 339
of political science
Index 356
CONTRIBUTORS
ANTHONY PAGDEN is a Lecturer in History at the University of
Cambridge and a Fellow of King's College. He is the author of
Hernan Cortes: Letters from Mexico (2nd edn, 1986), The Fall of
Natural Man (2nd edn, 1986), Spanish Imperialism and the Political
Imagination (1990) and co-editor (with Nicholas Canny) of An Identity
in the Atlantic Colonial World (1987). He is currently working on a
history of the human sciences in the early-modern world.
j. G. A. POCOCK is Harry C. Black Professor of History at the Johns
Hopkins University. He has published The Ancient Constitution and the
Feudal Law (1957; reissued 1986), Politics, Language and Time (1971),
The Machiavellian Moment (Cambridge, 1975), The Political Works of
James Harrington (1977) and Virtue, Commerce and History (1985). He is
currently at work on studies of Burke and Gibbon.
NICOLAI RUBINSTEIN is Emeritus Professor of History at the
University of London. His works include The Government of Florence
under the Medici, 1434-1494 (1966) and numerous articles on the
history of political thought, a collected volume of which is
forthcoming from the Cambridge University Press. He is also
general editor of the Letters of Lorenzo de Medici.
DONALD KELLEY is Wilson Professor of History at the University of
Rochester. He is the editor of The Journal of the History of Ideas and the
author of The Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship (1970),
Francois Hotman: A Revolutionary's Ordeal (1973), The Beginning of
Ideology (1981), Historians and the Law in Postrevolutionary France (1984)
and History, Law and the Human Sciences (1984).
RICHARD TUCK is a University Lecturer in History at the University
of Cambridge and Fellow and Director of Studies in History at Jesus
College. He is the author of Natural Rights Theories (1979).
IX
X CONTRIBUTORS
QUENTIN SKINNER is Professor of Political Science at the University
of Cambridge and a Fellow of Christ's College. His publications
include The Foundations of Modern Political Thought (1978) and
Machiavelli (1981).
MAURIZIO VIROLI is Assistant Professor of Politics at Princeton
University. He is the author of Jean Jacques Rousseau and the 'Well-
Ordered Society', L'etica laica di Erminio Juvalta and co-editor of
Machiavelli and Republicanism, forthcoming from Cambridge Univer-
sity Press.
ECO HAITSMA MULIER is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of
History of the University of Amsterdam. His publications include
The Myth of Venice and Dutch Republican Thought in the Seventeenth
Century (1980) and numerous articles on the historiography of early-
modern Europe. A Dictionary of Dutch Historians(1500-1800), written
in collaboration with G. A. C. van der Lem, is forthcoming with the
Nederlands Historisch Genootschap.
MARK GOLDIE is a Fellow and Lecturer in History at Churchill
College, Cambridge. He has published several articles on the political
and intellectual history of later Stuart England, and has a book, Tory
Ideology: Politics, Religion and Ideas in Restoration England forthcoming
from the Cambridge University Press.
M. M. GOLDSMITH , sometime Professor of Political Theory at the
University of Exeter, is Honorary Fellow of Victoria University,
Wellington, New Zealand. He is the author of Hobbes's Science of
Politics (1966), Private Vices and Public Benefits: Bernard Mandeville's
Social and Political Thought (1985) and a number of articles on
contemporary political philosophy as well as on seventeenth- and
eighteenth-century political thought.
ISTVAN HONT a former Assistant Professor of Politics at Columbia
University, is University Assistant Lecturer in History at the Univer-
sity of Cambridge and a Fellow of King's College. He is the editor
(with Michael Ignatieff) of Wealth and Virtue: The Shaping of Political
Economy in the Scottish Enlightenment (1983) and the author of several
articles on the history of Political Economy and of Marxism.
RICHARD BELLAMY is Lecturer in Political Theory at the University
of Edinburgh. His publications include Modern Italian Social Theory
(1986), and (as editor) Victorian Liberalism: Nineteenth-Century Political