Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Rousseau This page intentionally left blank Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Rousseau John Plamenatz EDITED BY Mark Philp and Z. A. Pelczynski 1 3 GreatClarendonStreet,Oxford,OX26DP, UnitedKingdom OxfordUniversityPressisadepartmentoftheUniversityofOxford. ItfurtherstheUniversity’sobjectiveofexcellenceinresearch,scholarship, andeducationbypublishingworldwide.Oxfordisaregisteredtrademarkof OxfordUniversityPressintheUKandincertainothercountries #theestateofJohnPlamenatz2012;Introductionandeditorialmaterial#MarkPhilp2012 Themoralrightsoftheauthorshavebeenasserted FirstEditionpublishedin2012 Impression:1 Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthispublicationmaybereproduced,storedin aretrievalsystem,ortransmitted,inanyformorbyanymeans,withoutthe priorpermissioninwritingofOxfordUniversityPress,orasexpresslypermitted bylaw,bylicenceorundertermsagreedwiththeappropriatereprographics rightsorganization.Enquiriesconcerningreproductionoutsidethescopeofthe aboveshouldbesenttotheRightsDepartment,OxfordUniversityPress,atthe addressabove Youmustnotcirculatethisworkinanyotherform andyoumustimposethissameconditiononanyacquirer BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData Dataavailable LibraryofCongressCataloginginPublicationData Plamenatz,J.P.(JohnPetrov) Machiavelli,Hobbes,andRousseau/JohnPlamenatz;editedbyMarkPhilpandZbigniewPelczynski. p.cm. 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 320.092'2—dc23 2012006931 ISBN978–0–19–964506–0(hardback) PrintedinGreatBritainby MPGBooksGroup,BodminandKing’sLynn LinkstothirdpartywebsitesareprovidedbyOxfordingoodfaithand forinformationonly.Oxforddisclaimsanyresponsibilityforthematerials containedinanythirdpartywebsitereferencedinthiswork. 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).