The Machiavellian Moment
ISBN 0-691-11472-2 | |
The Machiavellian Moment is a work of intellectual history by J. G. A. Pocock (Princeton University Press, 1975). It posits a connection between republican thought in early 16th century Florence, English-Civil War Britain, and the American Revolution.
A "Machiavellian moment" is that moment when a new republic first confronts the problem of maintaining the stability of its ideals and institutions. Machiavellian thought was a response to a series of crises facing early 16th century Florence in which a seemingly virtuous state was on the cusp of destruction. In response, Machiavelli sought to revive classical republican ideals. Works like The Prince and those of some pre-English Civil War thinkers and a group of American Revolutionary personalities all faced similar such moments and offered related sets of answers.[1][2]
Background
In 1965, J.G.A. Pocock published "Machiavelli, Harrington, and English Political Ideologies in the Eighteenth Century" in the
Of course, during the
Pocock wished to further research and elaborate on this project: "...what I propose to do is investigate the significance in the eighteenth century of a current of ideas that stems mainly from James Harrington, but can be traced additionally to the seventeenth-century theorists studied some years ago by Z. S. Fink under the name of the 'classical republicans'...[Caroline Robbins' The Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthman illustrated] how regularly recourse was made, throughout the century, to a group of writers essentially the same as Fink's Venetian theorists."
The remainder of
The "neo-Harringtonians," extant dissidents against the "mercantile court" and "coffeehouse intellectuals living by their wit," began to deride "standing army" excursions against the landed gentry in their remonstrances, ostensibly "to win support from country gentlemen discontented with the progress of court government."[11] The "neo-Harringtonians" demanded the replacement of this "instrument of corruption" with "an ancient institution known as the militia...where Harrington contrasted the republic of armed proprietors with the feudal combination of monarchy and aristocracy, the neo-Harringtonians contrasted it with the professional army maintained by the executive power."[12] Pocock concluded that "if the armed force of the nation is embodied only in this form [a militia], there can be no threat to public liberty or the public purse; and the proprietor's liberty is guaranteed as much by his right to be the sole fighter in his own defense as by his ultimate right to cast a vote in his own government...it was a well-watered soil on which the ideas of Montesquieu fell, and out of which some of them grew."[13]
Summary/content
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J.G.A. Pocock divided the book into three sections:
- Particularity and Time
- The Republic and its Fortune
- Value and History in the Prerevolutionary Atlantic
Particularity and Time
The Republic and its Fortune
Value and History in the Prerevolutionary Atlantic
References
- ^ Suchowlansky, Mauricio, and Kiran Banerjee. "Foreword: The Machiavellian Moment Turns Forty." History of European Ideas 43.2 (2017): 125-128.
- ^ Sullivan, Vickie B. "Machiavelli's momentary 'Machiavellian moment': A reconsideration of Pocock's treatment of the Discourses." Political Theory 20.2 (1992): 309–18.
- JSTOR 1922910.
- ^ Fink, Zera S. (1945). The Classical Republicans: An Essay on the Recovery of a Pattern of Thought in Seventeenth-Century England (1 ed.). Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. pp. 10–16 and 53.
- ^ Fink, Z.S. (September 1942). "The Theory of the Mixed State and the Development of Milton's Political Thought". PMLA. 57 (3): 705–736.
- JSTOR 1922910.
- JSTOR 1922910.
- S2CID 247009465.
- JSTOR 1922910.
- JSTOR 1922910.
- JSTOR 1922910.
- JSTOR 1922910.
- JSTOR 1922910.
Further reading
- Banerjee, Kiran, and Mauricio Suchowlansky. "Citizens, Subjects or Tyrants? Relocating the People in Pocock's The Machiavellian Moment." History of European Ideas 43.2 (2017): 184–197.
- Pocock, J. G. A. The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition. Princeton University Press, 1975.
- Pocock, J. G. A. "Afterword: The Machiavellian Moment: A Very Short Retrospect and Re-Introduction." History of European Ideas 43.2 (2017): 215–221.
- Pocock, John GA. "Theory in History Problems of Context and Narrative." The Oxford Handbook of Political Science 2006. online
- Simmons, Dana. "The Weight of the Moment: JGA Pocock's Politics of History." History of European ideas 38.2 (2012): 288–306.
- Suchowlansky, Mauricio, and Kiran Banerjee. "Foreword: The Machiavellian Moment Turns Forty." History of European Ideas 43.2 (2017): 125–128.
- Sullivan, Vickie B. "Machiavelli's momentary 'Machiavellian moment': A reconsideration of Pocock's treatment of the Discourses." Political Theory 20.2 (1992): 309–18.
- Ward, Stuart. "Machiavellian Moments and the Exigencies of Leaving." Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques 47.2 (2021): 49–64.