Political Thought

Mark Knights

Lecture plan

• Is the term political thought a useful one?

• What are the key themes of political thought in the period?

• Case study of Thomas More’s Utopia to show– European nature of debate– The importance of context

What is ‘thought’ and who thinks it?

• Could study ‘great thinkers’ and examine their ideas; they are indeed part of the story but

• Ideas don’t change in isolation from events and movements around them

• Ideas aren’t just the preserve of ‘intellectuals’ but are inherent in everyday actions, conflicts and beliefs

• ‘political discourse’ [John Pocock, Quentin Skinner]

What is politics?

• Religion affected politics • Relations between church

and state are certainly key – the two are closely intertwined

• Impact of the Protestant and Catholic Reformations on internal and external power relations

The related problems of C16th French wars of religion (1562-1598), the revolt of the

United Provinces (1568-1609) and C17th revolutionary Britain

Key themes:– Religious pluralism – Fundamental

rethinking of the grounds of obedience,

– forms of government (republicanism)

– and the right to resist

Religious pluralism• Catholic vs Protestant, protestant

against protestant

• The destruction of religious unity

• What is the correct response by church and state?– Toleration/freedom of conscience?

Solution adopted in United Provinces, France 1598, England 1689. Recognition of diversity and plurality.

– Represssion, enforced uniformity? Solution adopted for much of the C16th and C17th; France after 1685.

The Edict of Nantes, guaranteeing religious toleration in France

How to justify freedom of conscience?

• Dutch Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677, of Portuguese-Jewish background), whose Theological-Political Treatise (1670) argued for freedom of thought and conscience

• or Locke’s Letters on Toleration (early 1690s)

• or the Huguenots and protestant sects

• Arguments used

Hostility to freedom of conscience• Duty to avoid heresy and

prevent subjects falling into error that will lead them to damnation; without guidance they will not achieve salvation and will fall into superstition, irreligion and immorality. National churches are therefore necessary.

• Freedom of conscience is only a cover for political sedition and the two go hand in hand.

Resistance theory

Why should you obey a secular authority that persecutes or proscribes your religion? or which

cannot provide you with security?

• The orthodox answer:– The king is divinely appointed; he is empowered by

God; God requires obedience; disobedience is sinful; – The king is sovereign and all powerful; he does not

share power with the people; people certainly have no right to hold the king to account (God alone will judge him), and even less right to resist him; the king’s will is law

– Monarchy is the most natural form of government

Re-thinking the grounds of obedience and authority

• There were several ways in which that view was challenged

–By appeal to an ancient constitution; legal scholarship; immemorial customs; idealisation of ancient liberty and even of popular sovereignty

• E.g. Francois Hotman’s Francogallica (1573) ; Sir Edward Coke in England in early C17th; Pietor de Gregorio in Sicily; Francois Vranck in Netherlands (Corte Vertooninghe, 1587)

–Calvinism: private individuals cannot resist, but there may be institutions that can; developed by his followers; Beza (1519-1605) and the need to follow God’s law not man’s.

A radical Protestant theory• Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos or

Defence of Liberty against Tyrants (1579)

• Possibly by Philippe Duplessis Mornay. He escaped 1572 massacre and fled to England, returning to France to aid Henri de Navarre (Henry IV); an active philosopher.

• State of nature [NB influence of overseas exploration and colonisation; Locke ‘in the beginning all the world was America’], natural freedom and equality

Catholic resistance theory

Catholic League needed arguments to favour the rejection of a protestant monarch, such as Henri de Navarre (who was excommunicated in 1585); but also other succession crises in Scotland and England.

• Dominican and Jesuit. Francisco de Vitoria (1485-1546), Cardinal Bellarmine (1542-1611) and Francisco Suarez (1548-1617); Robert Persons in England (1580s); Juan de Mariana (1599)

• Ideas: man not irredeemably evil; Suarez: law of nature ‘written in our minds by the hand of god’; discernible by reason; political society as artificial and man-made not god-given; therefore rested on consent of community; man by nature free and equal.

Contract• Legal and Commercial

rather than spiritual

• consent as basis for civil society; popular sovereignty; right of resistance

• Locke was a revolutionary who placed law above everything

Two versions of contract theory

• Thomas Hobbes (1651) an authoritarian version of this contract; the individual transfers all power to the sovereign

• John Locke (1690) a liberal version of this contract; the individual entrusts power to an executive but retains both natural rights and a power to judge when the government is dissolved by tyranny; force against force

What is role of state in relation to the Economy

• Should the state restrain consumption of luxuries?

• Should the state impose trade tariffs? The rise of the ‘mercantile system’

Thomas More’s Utopia (1516)

• Describes an ideal society

• European Renaissance humanism; by 1650 translated into 6 languages

• An intellectual game with Erasmus (1466- 1536)

• Written in Latin

The importance of context

• The role of the adviser

• Equality and community – ‘commonwealth’ (respublica)

• Critique of his society• Critique of

Machiavelli’s rejection of idealism

• Afterlives of texts: contexts can change meanings

• 1551 English translation • 1639 as The

Commonwealth of Utopia

A 1647 tract about the civil wars

Palmanova, near Venice, founded 1593

Campanella’s City of the Sun (1623)City of the Sun

Andreae’s Republic of Christianopolis (1619)

Literature and visual culture as a vehicle for the

discussion of political ideas

• Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels (1726)

Metaphors matter

Conclusion

• Political Thought is only a shorthand for discourse about affairs of the state: in relation to the church, the people, trade and commerce, and the best form of government

• If we focus on the works of ‘great white men’ thinkers we need to contextualise them and their ideas – including the cultural dimensions.