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Момент Макиавелли. Политическая мысль Флоренции и атлантическая республиканская традиция
Монография Дж.Г.А. Покока «Момент Макиавелли» принадлежит к числу наиболее авторитетных и цитируемых исследований в общественных науках за последние пятьдесят лет. Яркий представитель Кембриджской школы изучения политической мысли, Покок предложил новую концепцию истории западной политической философии Нового времени: место либерального канона от Локка до Смита заняла республиканская традиция. Книга описывает историю республиканского языка политического мышления, которая включает сочинения Аристотеля, Полибия, Цицерона, Макиавелли, Гвиччардини, Харрингтона, Мэдисона и Джефферсона. Автор прослеживает эволюцию этого типа политического языка от споров гражданских гуманистов ренессансной Флоренции до полемики британских мыслителей в XVII и XVIII веке и дискуссий о характере новой республики в США в конце XVIII столетия. Ключевая тема исследования — роль активного гражданства и его добродетелей в эволюции западноевропейской политической мысли. Идеи Покока не теряют актуальности и сегодня, особенно в России, переживающей собственный «момент Макиавелли», — время столкновения молодой республики с кризисом провозглашенных ею ценностей и институтов.
888 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1975
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961 people want to read
About the author
J.G.A. Pocock
37 books37 followersJohn Greville Agard Pocock was a historian of political thought, best known for his studies of republicanism in the early modern period (mostly in Europe, Britain, and America), his work on the history of English common law, his treatment of Edward Gibbon and other Enlightenment historians, and, in historical method, for his contributions to the history of political discourse. Pocock taught at Washington University in St. Louis from 1966 until 1975, and at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore from 1975 until 2011.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
August 12, 2008
Were I placed in charge of the administration of purgatory, I would institute a rule for the purification of scholars: they must revise their entire published oeuvre and resubmit it as a brochure.
After all, that's pretty much what they make us students do. Here is my first, informal attempt to do that for J.G.A. Pocock.
The Machiavellian Moment argues that a distinct thread of political thought ran from medieval Florence through Stuart and Hanoverian England to nineteenth-century America. This thread, which we may call "civic republicanism," emerged in Italy as the Renaissance humanists (a) revived knowledge of classical civilization and (b) realized that societies are located in time and thus are subject to change. As a result of this awakening, the humanists theorized that individuals must take up active civic life -- must exercise civic virtue -- in order to take charge of the course of history and prevent the decay of their state.
The key thinker in this Italian milieu was Niccolò Machiavelli, who went further than anyone else in secularizing politics by recognizing the destructive power of fortune in human history. Because fortune was so powerful (and God suddenly so absent), Machiavelli's conception of virtù called for a new degree of assertiveness on the part of citizens. At an extreme -- that moment when the polis broke down entirely under the strain of fortune -- virtù could take the form of audacity exercised by Machiavelli's infamous Prince. At all times, however, it was inextricably linked with the good of the state. "Private virtue" would be a contradiction in terms according to republican thought.
Other Italians such as Francesco Guicciardini emphasized aspects of classical politics that called for "prudence" and "mixed government." Government by a combination of different orders, they argued, was necessary in order to balance the distinctive virtues and wisdom of different segments of society.
In seventeenth-century England, republicanism got off to an odd start. It emerged in politics when the traditional English combination of activist conservatism (based on customary liberties and political consultation) and apocalyptic religious nationalism (stemming from the Reformation) finally broke down under the weight of the monarch's obstinacy. The people had to take over as citizens in order to achieve their transcendent ideals in real time. However, the English remained relatively conservative, and their actual republic did not last long. They did, however, produce a new republican theorist, James Harrington, who Anglicized the thought of Machiavelli.
Harrington connected, more tightly than anyone before had, the bearing of arms and the ownership of land. The citizen, in Machiavellian thought, had to bear arms to defend the state; for Harrington, then, property ownership was a fundamental characteristic of the citizen. But patterns of land ownership and arms-bearing were changing, as the next generation of English republicans -- the "neo-Harringtonians" -- pointed out. A nation of "armed proprietors" no longer existed in either the Commons or the Lords. Britain was becoming a global power with a professional military force, which it maintained through abstract credit and taxes on commerce rather than through real property. The threat of corruption, i.e., the loss of popular virtue, was extreme in such a situation. Now Machiavelli's fortune had a much clearer political face -- it was the face of the professional soldier, the stock-jobber, the banker, the MP dependent on someone else's money -- the corrupt man.
Debates over public corruption dominated eighteenth-century British politics. For the most part, however, the complexity of Britain's situation kept the political pot at a high simmer rather than a boil. But in the American colonies, the republicans had fewer distractions. In a supreme act of virtù, they withdrew from their corrupt empire and established a new polity for themselves. In their new nation, republican language dominated political debates well into the next century, if not beyond. Americans were, above all, concerned with maintaining a polity in which individuals would act as virtuous citizens.
In other words, the American founding was not a Lockean liberal enterprise. This is Pocock's key claim, really. Instead of trying to free themselves from coercion so that they could pursue their individual happinesses -- the traditional view, probably -- the Americans were trying to free themselves from corruption so that they could collectively pursue the public happiness.
-----
I have at least two big problems with Pocock's big book.
First, the choice of Machiavelli as the paradigmatic republican thinker still mystifies me. I've read Pocock and I've read Quentin Skinner, and this still doesn't make much sense. There were far too many alternative figures, even in Renaissance Italy, both before and after Machiavelli. The only solid reason I can see for the choice is that Machiavelli was a more secular thinker than his peers. This, however, is a tendentious rationale. Mainstream medieval Christian thought was far more conducive to republicanism than Pocock lets on. And religious thought has been conducive to republican experiments far too often to justify Pocock's identification of the republican with the secular.
Second, and relatedly, I object to the catholicity of Pocock's republicanism. At the end of this book, I was left with the impression that we can immediately identify as "republican" all of the following: apocalypticism or secularism; imperialism or anti-imperialism; agrarianism or modern political economy; classicism or aggressive innovation; submission to the public will or defiance of it; and aristocracy or egalitarianism. At the end of the book, the only British or American thinker since 1649 who doesn't seem to count as a "republican" is John Locke. I know enough about John Locke's actual politics to find this result suspect.
After all, that's pretty much what they make us students do. Here is my first, informal attempt to do that for J.G.A. Pocock.
The Machiavellian Moment argues that a distinct thread of political thought ran from medieval Florence through Stuart and Hanoverian England to nineteenth-century America. This thread, which we may call "civic republicanism," emerged in Italy as the Renaissance humanists (a) revived knowledge of classical civilization and (b) realized that societies are located in time and thus are subject to change. As a result of this awakening, the humanists theorized that individuals must take up active civic life -- must exercise civic virtue -- in order to take charge of the course of history and prevent the decay of their state.
The key thinker in this Italian milieu was Niccolò Machiavelli, who went further than anyone else in secularizing politics by recognizing the destructive power of fortune in human history. Because fortune was so powerful (and God suddenly so absent), Machiavelli's conception of virtù called for a new degree of assertiveness on the part of citizens. At an extreme -- that moment when the polis broke down entirely under the strain of fortune -- virtù could take the form of audacity exercised by Machiavelli's infamous Prince. At all times, however, it was inextricably linked with the good of the state. "Private virtue" would be a contradiction in terms according to republican thought.
Other Italians such as Francesco Guicciardini emphasized aspects of classical politics that called for "prudence" and "mixed government." Government by a combination of different orders, they argued, was necessary in order to balance the distinctive virtues and wisdom of different segments of society.
In seventeenth-century England, republicanism got off to an odd start. It emerged in politics when the traditional English combination of activist conservatism (based on customary liberties and political consultation) and apocalyptic religious nationalism (stemming from the Reformation) finally broke down under the weight of the monarch's obstinacy. The people had to take over as citizens in order to achieve their transcendent ideals in real time. However, the English remained relatively conservative, and their actual republic did not last long. They did, however, produce a new republican theorist, James Harrington, who Anglicized the thought of Machiavelli.
Harrington connected, more tightly than anyone before had, the bearing of arms and the ownership of land. The citizen, in Machiavellian thought, had to bear arms to defend the state; for Harrington, then, property ownership was a fundamental characteristic of the citizen. But patterns of land ownership and arms-bearing were changing, as the next generation of English republicans -- the "neo-Harringtonians" -- pointed out. A nation of "armed proprietors" no longer existed in either the Commons or the Lords. Britain was becoming a global power with a professional military force, which it maintained through abstract credit and taxes on commerce rather than through real property. The threat of corruption, i.e., the loss of popular virtue, was extreme in such a situation. Now Machiavelli's fortune had a much clearer political face -- it was the face of the professional soldier, the stock-jobber, the banker, the MP dependent on someone else's money -- the corrupt man.
Debates over public corruption dominated eighteenth-century British politics. For the most part, however, the complexity of Britain's situation kept the political pot at a high simmer rather than a boil. But in the American colonies, the republicans had fewer distractions. In a supreme act of virtù, they withdrew from their corrupt empire and established a new polity for themselves. In their new nation, republican language dominated political debates well into the next century, if not beyond. Americans were, above all, concerned with maintaining a polity in which individuals would act as virtuous citizens.
In other words, the American founding was not a Lockean liberal enterprise. This is Pocock's key claim, really. Instead of trying to free themselves from coercion so that they could pursue their individual happinesses -- the traditional view, probably -- the Americans were trying to free themselves from corruption so that they could collectively pursue the public happiness.
-----
I have at least two big problems with Pocock's big book.
First, the choice of Machiavelli as the paradigmatic republican thinker still mystifies me. I've read Pocock and I've read Quentin Skinner, and this still doesn't make much sense. There were far too many alternative figures, even in Renaissance Italy, both before and after Machiavelli. The only solid reason I can see for the choice is that Machiavelli was a more secular thinker than his peers. This, however, is a tendentious rationale. Mainstream medieval Christian thought was far more conducive to republicanism than Pocock lets on. And religious thought has been conducive to republican experiments far too often to justify Pocock's identification of the republican with the secular.
Second, and relatedly, I object to the catholicity of Pocock's republicanism. At the end of this book, I was left with the impression that we can immediately identify as "republican" all of the following: apocalypticism or secularism; imperialism or anti-imperialism; agrarianism or modern political economy; classicism or aggressive innovation; submission to the public will or defiance of it; and aristocracy or egalitarianism. At the end of the book, the only British or American thinker since 1649 who doesn't seem to count as a "republican" is John Locke. I know enough about John Locke's actual politics to find this result suspect.
May 23, 2021
Honestly, very dense and not easy reading, but ultimately stimulating and rewarding.
In one sentence, this is an intellectual history in which Pocock traces a line of thought from the Ancient Greeks (especially Aristotle and Polybius) to the Renaissance humanists to Machiavelli (although I agree with other reviewers that this could easily be titled The Guicciardinian Moment) to Enlightenment thinkers (particularly those in England) and on to the U.S. founding fathers.
The development of the idea of a citizen prompted the question of how a community of citizens (e.g., a republic) can make public decisions. Such a system introduces individuality and particularity - and instability through time - in contrast to timeless eternals, Such a system requires dependence on one's fellow citizens' ability and willingness to pursue the common good: dereliction of one citizen reduces the others' chances of attaining and maintaining virtue. Similarly, the sustaining the virtue of the self and the polis required controlling external events (e.g., foreign invasion, but could be any exogenous threat). In The Prince, Machiavelli redefines virtue (rendered by Pocock as virtù to contrast with other uses) as the ability of a ruler to manage these internal and external sources of instability. Internally, Machiavelli was concerned with social means of transforming men's natures so they were capable of citizenship; externally, he noted the transformation of Rome from republic into empire as the process of controlling external events.
Another thread Pocock picks up is the development of constitutional structure from Aristotelian one-few-many to the Renaissance study of the Venetian constitution. I found Gianotti's distinctions between consultazione (activity of proposing alternative courses of actions), deliberazione (the activity of choosing between those alternatives), and esecuzione interesting. Per Gianotti, if consultazione was left to the few, rationality is ensured; if deliberazione is left to the many, liberty will be secured. Clearly still relevant today, although it's difficult to see those distinctions being reflected in formal constitutional structures.
Pocock traces the thread to England in the lead up to the English Civil War, and the ways the ideas were adapted to English institutions and the particularities of the English political environment. I found it helpful to see the context of the Civil War underlined in the discussion of Hobbes: "The individual, assailed by civil war and seeking to reconstitute his allegiance...may visualize himself as forced back into a prepolitical and premoral situation, seeking that in himself which will reestablish order." The real English Machiavelli was James Harrington, not Hobbes or Locke (Pocock diminishes Locke's contributions, more in the sense that Locke was swimming in different intellectual streams than that he was totally unimportant). The parts I found very fascinating was the links between the medieval concept of fortuna to the invention of credit and finance in Chapter 8. I was also intrigued by the characterization of how luxury was thought of as a corrupting influence: "The danger of luxury...is not that it produces effeminacy of taste or even mutability of fashion, so much as it leads to choice and consequently to specialization. The Gothic warrior had nothing much to do but till his soil, bear his arms, and assert his freedom; the refined man of the Renaissance might pursue knowledge of luxury, pleasure or fashion, and so lost interest in defending himself." This section reminded me of Mark Elliott's The Manchu Way - would be interesting to see a comparative study of this linkage between luxury and corruption.
A lot to chew on and revisit!
In one sentence, this is an intellectual history in which Pocock traces a line of thought from the Ancient Greeks (especially Aristotle and Polybius) to the Renaissance humanists to Machiavelli (although I agree with other reviewers that this could easily be titled The Guicciardinian Moment) to Enlightenment thinkers (particularly those in England) and on to the U.S. founding fathers.
The development of the idea of a citizen prompted the question of how a community of citizens (e.g., a republic) can make public decisions. Such a system introduces individuality and particularity - and instability through time - in contrast to timeless eternals, Such a system requires dependence on one's fellow citizens' ability and willingness to pursue the common good: dereliction of one citizen reduces the others' chances of attaining and maintaining virtue. Similarly, the sustaining the virtue of the self and the polis required controlling external events (e.g., foreign invasion, but could be any exogenous threat). In The Prince, Machiavelli redefines virtue (rendered by Pocock as virtù to contrast with other uses) as the ability of a ruler to manage these internal and external sources of instability. Internally, Machiavelli was concerned with social means of transforming men's natures so they were capable of citizenship; externally, he noted the transformation of Rome from republic into empire as the process of controlling external events.
Another thread Pocock picks up is the development of constitutional structure from Aristotelian one-few-many to the Renaissance study of the Venetian constitution. I found Gianotti's distinctions between consultazione (activity of proposing alternative courses of actions), deliberazione (the activity of choosing between those alternatives), and esecuzione interesting. Per Gianotti, if consultazione was left to the few, rationality is ensured; if deliberazione is left to the many, liberty will be secured. Clearly still relevant today, although it's difficult to see those distinctions being reflected in formal constitutional structures.
Pocock traces the thread to England in the lead up to the English Civil War, and the ways the ideas were adapted to English institutions and the particularities of the English political environment. I found it helpful to see the context of the Civil War underlined in the discussion of Hobbes: "The individual, assailed by civil war and seeking to reconstitute his allegiance...may visualize himself as forced back into a prepolitical and premoral situation, seeking that in himself which will reestablish order." The real English Machiavelli was James Harrington, not Hobbes or Locke (Pocock diminishes Locke's contributions, more in the sense that Locke was swimming in different intellectual streams than that he was totally unimportant). The parts I found very fascinating was the links between the medieval concept of fortuna to the invention of credit and finance in Chapter 8. I was also intrigued by the characterization of how luxury was thought of as a corrupting influence: "The danger of luxury...is not that it produces effeminacy of taste or even mutability of fashion, so much as it leads to choice and consequently to specialization. The Gothic warrior had nothing much to do but till his soil, bear his arms, and assert his freedom; the refined man of the Renaissance might pursue knowledge of luxury, pleasure or fashion, and so lost interest in defending himself." This section reminded me of Mark Elliott's The Manchu Way - would be interesting to see a comparative study of this linkage between luxury and corruption.
A lot to chew on and revisit!
January 5, 2023
A modern classic thought a bit hard to follow at points because of Pocock's writing style though. Still an absolutely essential read to understand the ideology at the foundation of the American Republic supplement with the work of J.C.D. Clark.
February 6, 2023
Paul A. Rahe (possibly paraphrased): "No one ever accused Pocock of being a good writer."
Also, I think he is wrong about Machiavelli (pretty big deal since that is the topic of the book). At the same time, he is clearly quite learned.
Also, I think he is wrong about Machiavelli (pretty big deal since that is the topic of the book). At the same time, he is clearly quite learned.
November 9, 2021
A laser-focused survey on several classical ideals which seem to envelop republican debates across time. Very fascinating to see Pocock weave philosophy, political theory, and history in his work to develop his thesis, completing several rich portraits of civilizations where civic virtues were constructed differently from one another but also naturally connected. The section on the English Interregnum and American Revolution were far more readable personally than the Italian city-states, but each chapter was illuminating in their own respects. A very dense but satisfiying read
Rating : 4/5, closer to 3.5 maybe
Rating : 4/5, closer to 3.5 maybe
January 12, 2023
I remember that two big concepts were in vogue in the times of Machiavelli: virtu and fortuna, virtute and luck. Based on these concepts, the Anglo Saxons, starting with James Harrington with his "Oceana", have created a new republican tradition in politics which still looms a lot of influence today.
October 16, 2017
I know too much about how disputed this is now, and it's ridiculously blind about its own conservatism. Draws a tradition. Forgets property. Forgets Locke etc. But the first part of the book was goo-ood.
December 27, 2019
More like "Gucciardinian moment" but old Pocock still does a good job.
September 15, 2021
Obviously the scholarship here is immense; but what use is scholarship when its fruits are nigh-on unreadable?
January 12, 2011
I must say that after reading The Machiavellian Moment I better understand Gibbon (and why Mr. P. is so obsessed with him now) and my vision of American politics is all the more acute. J. H. Hexter and Caroline Robbins et al. declared the book full of "jargon," yet the conceptual language is as useful as the language he attempts to demonstrate at work in the writings of Machiavelli, Guicciardini, King Charles I and his counselors (yeah, that's right), Harrington, Defoe, Davenant, on down to Hamilton and Jefferson.
Despite my admiration for what this Kiwi hath wrought, I will say at times the "Machiavellism" seemed a little strained, more gimmick than apt description. Yet, this results from a misapprehension of what Pocock is really about. Languages rather than discrete ideas are at work here. Language after the fashion of Joan Scott: a symbolic system of conveying meaning. The dichotomy of virtue and fortune, articulated for medieval consumption by Boethius, is inflected through successive centuries of discourse whilst retaining its fundamental character as a clash between man's desire to rule himself and the irrational stream of events that roars and threatens to destroy his fragile creation, the republic. It's not that a concept became hegemonic, but that a language persisted and was used sometimes to express notions quite different than what we might term republican. The Court and the Country spoke in roughly the same language, but drew different conclusions.
The problem is perhaps that Pocock had no idea of "discourse" available to him in 1975 and I am judging him in a context alien to his work. His method was informed by Kuhn's paradigms which explains why so many seemingly unrelated concepts e.g. apocalypse and grace could appear in a treatment of republican thinking. These were models available in the republican paradigm as a collection, or in a favorite term of his, a "constellation" of concepts.
Despite my admiration for what this Kiwi hath wrought, I will say at times the "Machiavellism" seemed a little strained, more gimmick than apt description. Yet, this results from a misapprehension of what Pocock is really about. Languages rather than discrete ideas are at work here. Language after the fashion of Joan Scott: a symbolic system of conveying meaning. The dichotomy of virtue and fortune, articulated for medieval consumption by Boethius, is inflected through successive centuries of discourse whilst retaining its fundamental character as a clash between man's desire to rule himself and the irrational stream of events that roars and threatens to destroy his fragile creation, the republic. It's not that a concept became hegemonic, but that a language persisted and was used sometimes to express notions quite different than what we might term republican. The Court and the Country spoke in roughly the same language, but drew different conclusions.
The problem is perhaps that Pocock had no idea of "discourse" available to him in 1975 and I am judging him in a context alien to his work. His method was informed by Kuhn's paradigms which explains why so many seemingly unrelated concepts e.g. apocalypse and grace could appear in a treatment of republican thinking. These were models available in the republican paradigm as a collection, or in a favorite term of his, a "constellation" of concepts.
April 18, 2012
Covers a certain thread of political thought (Man as zoon politicon; people doing politics in the polis, virtuously interacting, but always endangered by corruption; the whole thing tracing back to Aristotle and beyond) from it's (re-)emergence in the Renaissance, to how it re-surfaced in England in the 17th century, and finally contributed to shaping the constitution of the U.S.
I learned a lot, but a tough read!
I learned a lot, but a tough read!
to-keep-reference
October 18, 2016Historiadores contemporáneos, como J. G. A. Pocock, que enlazan el desarrollo de la Constitución de Estados Unidos y su noción de soberanía política con la tradición Maquiavélica, recorren un largo camino para comprender esta desviación del concepto de soberanía moderna.
Imperio Pág.124
Imperio Pág.124
February 22, 2016
This is not an easy book to read. but if you are interested in the transformation of civic responsibility and Republican theory then this is a classic. The chapters on the English and American civil war and Revolution respectively are dated though there afterword addresses this to a certain extent. I did get a better understanding and appreciation for Machiavelli after reading this.
Read
May 23, 2012If you think this is ponderous you should read his now five volume 'biography' of edward gibbon.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews