Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Rousseau

322 Pages·2012·1.45 MB·English

by  John Plamenatz, Mark Philp, Zbigniew Pelczynski

Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Rousseau
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Machiavelli, Hobbes,
and Rousseau
John Plamenatz
EDITED BY
Mark Philp
and Z. A. Pelczynski
1
3
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Plamenatz,J.P.(JohnPetrov)
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1. Politicalscience—Philosophy. 2. Machiavelli,Niccol?,1469–1527—Politicalandsocial
views. 3. Hobbes,Thomas,1588–1679—Politicalandsocialviews. 4. Rousseau,Jean-Jacques,
1712–1778—Politicalandsocialviews. I. Philp,Mark. II. Pelczynski,Z.A. III. Title.
JA71.P5692012
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Contents
Anoteonthetextandacknowledgements vi
IntroductionbyMarkPhilp ix
Machiavelli,Hobbes,andRousseau:IntroductoryLecture 1
Part One. Machiavelli
1. TheMorallyNeutralPoliticalScientist 17
2. VirtueandtheDoubleStandard 29
3. RepublicsandFreedom 41
4. Machiavelli:anEgalitarian? 54
5. TheLeader,theLegislator,thePrince,andthePatriot 66
Part Two. Hobbes
6. AGeneralAssessmentofHobbes’sPoliticalPhilosophy 83
7. Obligation,Law,andCovenantI 99
8. Obligation,Law,andCovenantII 115
9. SovereignAuthorityandtheRightofResistanceI 130
10. SovereignAuthorityandtheRightofResistanceII 146
Part Three. Rousseau
11. Rousseau’sPlaceintheHistoryofPoliticalThought 163
12. Rousseau’sConceptionofFreedom 178
13. Inequality:ItsOriginsandEffects 192
14. Man’sNaturalGoodnessandhisCorruptionbySociety 208
15. Reason,Freedom,andJustice 222
16. TheSovereignPeople,theLaw,andtheCitizen 243
17. TheCommunityandtheCitizen 262
TextCitationsIndex 275
SubjectIndex 277
A note on the text and acknowledgements
The basis for this work is a manuscript for a set of lectures to be delivered at the
University of Cambridge in 1975. Plamenatz was invited to deliver the lectures in
1973–4tofillaneedcreatedbythesabbaticalabsenceofQuentinSkinner.Plamenatz
wroteoutthelecturesandthencorrectedthembyhand,completingtheprocessbythe
endof1974.InDecemberofthatyearhesufferedamajorstrokeandCambridgewas
informed that he would be unable to deliver the lectures. Although he had made a
substantial recovery by the spring of 1975 he subsequently suffered a further, fatal
stroke. When he died, the lectures and other manuscript material were passed to his
wife.SheworkedcloselywithRobertWokler(whomPlamenatzhadknownwhileat
Nuffield College) on a second, expanded edition of Plamenatz’s Man and Society
(1992). On Marjorie Plamenatz’s death, the papers were put up for sale and were
rescuedatauctiononlybythetimelyinterventionofRobertWokler,whopreserved
thearchiveandbegantheprocessofsortingandcataloguingit,andwhowouldhave
editedtheselectureswithZ.A.Pelczynskibutforhistragicdeath.Thepaperspassedto
his sister Ms Ann Wochiler who is the current holder of the archive. The text was
transcribed by Mrs Julia Wigg, in close collaboration with Z. A. Pelczynski. It was
subsequentlycorrectedandlightlyeditedwiththeassistanceofJoePhilpandLaurens
van Apeldoorn, who also contributed extensively to the annotation of the text. The
workofallthreewasfundedbyaBritishAcademyGrant(No:SG50794)awardedto
Z.A.Pelczynski,andlinkedwithwiderworkonthearchiveofJohnPlamenatz.The
editorial work was drawn together and completed by Mark Philp, who accordingly
takes responsibilities for remaining errors and infelicities. Zbigniew Pelczynski and
MarkPhilpwouldliketothanktheBritishAcademyforitssupport,andMrsWigg,Joe
Philp, and Laurens van Apeldoorn for their work on the project. Mark Philp would
also additionally like to thankLaurens for comments on the Introduction and for his
participation with Daniel Asher, Graham McManus, Daniel Thevenon, and Caleb
YonginareadinggrouponthetextofthelecturesinMichaelmas2010.
In editing the text we have sought to retain the character of the lectures, while
removing occasional redundancies. We have identified Plamenatz’s sources in the
notes and have also suggested where readers may follow up central issues in
subsequentscholarship.TheIntroductionsetssomeofthemostimportantelements
ofPlamenatz’sdiscussioninthecontextofrecentworkontheinterpretationofthe
threethinkers.
A NOTE ON THE TEXT AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii
Referencing
ThereferencestothemajorauthorsandothersinthecanonthatPlamenatzmakesare
footnoted so as to cite the text and the section of that text, including standard
distinctionsbetweenvolume,book,chapter,and(whereavailable)originalpagination.
Theaimistoallowthereadertoconsultmosteditionsoftheseworks.Inaddition,for
eachofthemajortextswehavealsocitedthepagereferenceforthestandardstudent
textorstandardedition.
Majorsourcesarecitedasfollows:
Machiavelli
Gilbert:Machiavelli,theChiefWorksandOthers,ed.AlanGilbert(Durham,NC,Duke
UniversityPress,1958),3volumes.Citedas:ChiefWorks:Gilbert,p.(paginationis
continuousacrossthethreevolumes).ThisisPlamenatz’sprimarysource.
Skinner and Price: The Prince, ed. Quentin Skinner and Russell Price (Cambridge,
CambridgeUniversityPress,1988).CitedasThePrince:Skinner,p.
Crick: The Discourses, ed. Bernard Crick (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1970). Cited as
Discourses:Crick,p.
Hobbes
Tuck: Leviathan, ed. Richard Tuck (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991).
CitedasLeviathan,chapternumberinRomancaps[originalpagenumber],Tuck,p.
Tuck and Silverthorne: De Cive, Hobbes’s English Works, Vol. II, ed. Sir William
Molesworth); On the Citizen ed. Tuck and Silverthorne (Cambridge, Cambridge
UniversityPress,1998). CitedasDeCive,chapternumber,Hobbes’sEnglishWorks,
Vol.II,p.;OntheCitizen(TuckandSilverthorne,p.).
Rousseau
ReferencesaregiventothemajortextsbyTitle,Book,and(whereapplicable)chapter
(andparagraph)numbers.Pagereferencesarethengiventothemajoreditions.
Bloom:AllanBloom,ed.,Emile(NewYork,1979).
Cole: G. D. H. Cole, The Social Contract and Discourses (London, Dent, revised ed.,
1973).Englishtranslationsaretakenfromthiseditionasitisalikelycontemporary
sourceforPlamenatz.
Cohen:J.M.Cohen,ed.,TheConfessions(Harmondsworth,Penguin,1953).
Foxley:BarbaraFoxley,ed.,Emile(London,Dent,1974).
viii A NOTE ON THE TEXT AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Gourevitch I: Victor Gourevitch, ed., The Discourses and other Early Political Writings
(Cambridge,CambridgeUniversityPress,1997).
GourevichII:VictorGourevitch,ed.,TheSocialContractandotherLaterPoliticalWritings
(Cambridge,CambridgeUniversityPress,1997).
Vaughan: C. E. Vaughan, The Political Writings of Jean Jacques Rousseau, 2 volumes
(Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1962). Cited as Vaughan I/II and page number. This is
Plamenatz’sprimarysource.TranslationsarePlamenatz’sown.
Watkins: Frederick Watkins, Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Political Writings (Madison,
Wiso,UniversityofWisconsinPress,1987).
Introduction
I
Context
These chapters were written as aseriesof lectures that John Plamenatz, the Chichele
Professor of Social and Political Thought at Oxford, agreed to give in Cambridge in
1975.Thereisacertainironyinhishavingundertakenthistask.Cambridgewasinthe
processofbecomingassociatedwiththemethodologicalinsightsofQuentinSkinner,
John Dunn, and J. G. A. Pocock, and it has became a centre for research on the
contextual understanding of canonical (and not so canonical) texts in the history of
politicalthoughtwhichhastransformedthediscipline,atleastinBritain.Skinnerand
Dunn’smethodological papers hadalreadysketchedoutagooddealof theterrain of
dispute between them and others working in the history of ideas, although the
keystone publication, Skinner’s magisterial two-volume study, The Foundations of
Modern Political Thought, appeared only in 1978. These papers had directed a certain
amountoffireagainstPlamenatzandhismajorcontributiontothehistoryofpolitical
thought, Man and Society: A Critical Examination of Some Important Social and Political
TheoriesfromMachiavellitoMarx(1963).In‘MeaningandUnderstandingintheHistory
of Ideas’ Skinner rejected Plamenatz’s view that Machiavelli’s great omission was to
ignorethesocialbasisofpoliticalpower,herepudiatedhisuseoftheterm‘liberal’to
describeLocke,andhecommentedthat‘itishardtoseehowanyamountofreading
thetext“overandoveragain”,asweareexhortedtodo[byPlamenatz],couldpossibly
serve as the means to...understand what strategies have been voluntarily adopted to
conveytheirmeaningwithdeliberateobliqueness.’1Similarly,JohnDunn’sessayson
‘ConsentinthePoliticsofJohnLocke’andon‘TheIdentity oftheHistoryofIdeas’
tookPlamenatztotaskforcertainaspectsofhisreadingofLocke.2Forboth,Plamenatz
wastobefaultedforanachronism(importingmoderncategoriesandconcernsintothe
interpretation of classic texts), and for failing to give due weight to the linguistic and
textualcontextwithinwhichparticularwriterswereworking,whichinevitablyshaped
whatitwaspossibleforthemtoargue.
The irony of Plamenatz writing these lectures for Cambridge is not, however,
limited to the fact that there were prominent voices there who took serious issue
withhowheunderstoodthetaskofthehistorianofpoliticalthought.Theinvitationto
1 QuentinSkinner,‘MeaningandUnderstandingintheHistoryofIdeas’,HistoryandTheory8(1),1969,
pp.15,24,and33.
2 SubsequentlycollectedinJohnDunn,PoliticalObligationinitsHistoricalContext(Cambridge,1980).