The Greek Tradition in Republican Thought

The author’s copy of Eric Nelson’s book. Image Rachel Hammersley.

I am currently co-teaching a module on 'The Scientific Revolution'. Consequently, Isaac Newton's famous comment to Robert Boyle about 'standing on the shoulders of giants' was already in my mind on 15th February when I attended a symposium at St Andrews. This was organised by Ariane Fichtl to discuss Eric Nelson's important book The Greek Tradition in Republican Thought, which was first published 20 years ago. In his remarks Eric commented that he had wondered beforehand what he would like to hear from those who were gathered to discuss his book. He quickly realised that, while being told 'you were right' would be flattering, it would also be rather disappointing. What he was hoping for, then, was for his book to have provoked thought and discussion and that the conversations inspired by it were still ongoing.

Of course, as Eric would be the first to note, he was himself standing on the shoulders of giants. This point was made explicitly in Quentin Skinner's opening paper in which he presented a useful typology of scholars. There are, he argued, supporters (who champion the work of those who have gone before) and challengers. The challengers can then be divided into contradictors (who insist that those who have come before have got it wrong) and supplementers (who praise past work, while suggesting that something important has been missed). The Greek Tradition in Republican Thought, Quentin suggested, is a good example of this last approach.

Quentin Skinner speaking at the symposium. Image courtesy of Lightbox St Andrews.

Prior to the publication of Eric's book, work on republicanism - including that of Quentin Skinner himself - had tended to emphasise the Roman origins of early modern republican thought. On this account, the ultimate purpose of life was to attain honour or glory. Crucial to this pursuit was a view of liberty as independence, which was grounded in the fundamental Roman distinction between a free person and a slave. What characterised a free person was that they were not dependent on the will of anyone else. This entailed living under the rule of law (not the arbitrary will of a sovereign) and having influence over the making of those laws (whether directly or via representatives). Moreover, those laws ought to protect the life, liberty, and property of the citizens, so that the understanding of justice at the heart of this Roman conception of republican rule involved 'giving each their due'.

What Eric had noticed was that while this Roman version of republicanism was certainly influential in early modern Europe, it was not the only one. Alongside it there developed an alternative understanding of republican rule that was more indebted to Greek sources. Here the aim was not for citizens to attain honour and glory, but rather to achieve happiness. Consequently, the emphasis was more on the contemplative than the active life. Liberty on this account involved not being enslaved to passion, but being ruled by reason and therefore by individuals who were themselves rational and virtuous. Yet authors in this tradition noted that a threat was posed to this ideal when individuals were able to accumulate wealth, creating a significant gap between rich and poor. Under these circumstances wealth would tend to be valued above virtue, causing corruption. Consequently these authors insisted not on the protection of private property, but rather accepted some measure of redistribution in order to maintain the balance required to ensure the rule of reason and virtue. On the Greek account this balance, or right ordering of the system, was what constituted justice.

Francesco Patrizi. Image taken from Wikimedia Commons.

In his book, Eric identified Thomas More, James Harrington, the baron de Montesquieu and others as exemplifying - and developing - this Greek tradition. As Eric himself noted, one way in which the conversation he initiated has been continued is through additions to the tradition. Several papers adopted this approach, proposing figures who did not appear in The Greek Tradition for inclusion. In other words, there was further supplementation.

James Hankins put the case for Francesco Patrizi of Siena. Patrizi drew on recently translated Greek material and adopted a Greek view of private property in line with the model set out in The Greek Tradition. According to Hankins, Patrizi drew a clear distinction between the social hierarchy, where wealth and ancestry were key, and the political order - which should be organised according to virtue and merit.

The grounds for including Patrizi within the Greek tradition seem relatively straightforward. Filippo Marchetti and I made the case for figures whose inclusion is less so, but who nonetheless pose interesting questions for the tradition. Filippo's paper focused on Alberto Radicati of Passeran. He explored the intertwining of republicanism and deism in Radicati's thought, arguing that he had an ethical preference for democracy. In my paper I considered the late eighteenth-century radical Thomas Spence. Spence was directly inspired by Thomas More and James Harrington, and like them he proposed restrictions on landed property to secure a fairer government and society.

A sketch of Thomas Spence's profile from the Hedley Papers at the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society. Reproduced with permission.

Adding new individuals to traditions often highlights new dimensions. The discussion generated by these and other papers emphasised the importance of education, religion, and democracy

In his discussion of Patrizi, James Hankins noted Patrizi's belief that virtue and merit could be stimulated by education in the classics. A similar claim was made by Isabelle Avci in her paper on Thomas More's biography of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. Noting that Pico was a controversial figure, and therefore a curious choice for More, she argued that he helped More to address the question of how an individual could maintain virtue while pursuing a political career. For More, as for Pico, education - and, in particular, reading - facilitated the cultivation of virtue through access to the divine. This offered More a means of combining the active and the contemplative life - treating them as complementary - rather than facing a strict choice between the two. Eric had already noted the importance of education in his book and it was crucial to Spence too. In contrast to Patrizi, however, who insisted that all citizens should be taught Latin to break the monopoly of the rich on a classical education and therefore on virtue, Spence and his associates sought instead to render a classical education unnecessary by ensuring that individuals could learn to read, speak, and write just as effectively without this form of learning.

This rejection of the classics could be a reason to exclude Spence from the Greek tradition, along with his democratic bent. As Eric explained, while the Greek tradition does involve the deployment of radical means - in the form of state redistribution of property - it does so in the pursuit of hierarchical ends - namely the rule of those with reason and virtue. Consequently, democracy, despite its Greek roots, was not central to Eric's book - only featuring towards the end in the discussion of a late adaptation of the Greek tradition in Alexis de Tocqueville's reflections on America.

Eric Nelson speaking at the symposium. Image courtesy of Lightbox St Andrews.

Yet several contributors to the symposium explored the theme of democracy, suggesting that it perhaps has more to contribute to the Greek tradition than might initially be thought. In part this is because two types of democracy emerge from the Greek sources. Extreme democracy, which was the focus of Eero Samuel Arum's paper, builds on Aristotle's account of democracy in Book 4 of the Politics, and describes a society in which the multitude has control over the laws. By contrast, restricted democracy draws on Aristotle's notion of politeia. Here sovereignty lies with the people, but virtuous magistrates are chosen by them to rule. The paper demonstrated that Jean Bodin's theory of sovereignty is indebted to this idea. It was also, as Markku Peltonen showed, much discussed by political scientists working in the Holy Roman Empire in the early modern period. Most accepted it as a viable form of government (in contrast to extreme democracy, which they firmly rejected) and some even saw it as the best form. What this tells us, as Markku highlighted, is that representative democracy did not - as was conventionally claimed - emerge fully formed in the age of the democratic revolution, but had its foundations in this tradition. Interestingly, this is also a topic that Eric himself explored in more detail in his Seeley Lectures delivered at the University of Cambridge in 2024.

Mary Wollstonecraft by John Opie, c. 1797. National Portrait Gallery, NPG 1237. Reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence.

Building on this democratic theme, several papers considered how Greek ideas could be deployed to justify a widening of the political nation. Hannah Dawson argued that while the Greek tradition looks on the surface to be hostile to women, some early modern feminists quickly found a loophole that they could exploit to argue their case for inclusion. While the notion that the intellectually and morally superior should rule was widely used to exclude women from politics, figures like Mary Astell and Mary Wollstonecraft questioned whether those men who currently hold power are entirely rational and, therefore, fit to rule. Conversely, on this account, rational women should be equally capable of political participation. Hannah also noted that the Greek idea of the contemplative life also offered something to women who could see their minds as free even when constrained under a patriarchal system.

Eran Shalev also touched on the opening up of politics and education to women in his paper on the democratisation of the American Republic in the nineteenth century. His main point, though, and one which was also emphasised in Becca Palmer's paper on debates in colonial American newspapers in the period 1765-1775, was that Greek ideas - and especially the example of Athens - offered a model for democratisation and empowerment.

Ariane Fichtl speaking at the symposium. Image courtesy of Lightbox St Andrews.

Finally three papers looked more explicitly at how the Greek tradition provided practical tools for use in different times and places. Mishael Knight argued that the enclosure commissioner Sir John Hales used Appian's account of ancient agrarian laws to inspire and justify sixteenth-century English agrarian policy. Hales explicitly rejected the Roman notion that justice required giving each their own, insisting instead that redistribution was justified in order to prevent a great distinction between rich and poor. In her closing keynote, Ariane Fichtl showed how the Greek tradition also offered a tool for abolitionists in their development of strong philosophical arguments against slavery. Aristotle's ambiguity on slavery made it possible for abolitionists to use his notion of legal slavery in the Nicomachean Ethics to condemn slavery as tyranny while firmly rejecting his argument in the Politics about the existence of natural slaves. Moreover, unlike its Roman equivalent, the Greek tradition did not insist on an absolute division between dependence and independence, opening the way for the powerful idea of interdependence. Finally Marijn Nolmans's paper suggested that the Greek tradition might offer an alternative to Rawlsian liberalism today. He argued that a combination of the neo-Roman idea of political liberty, Aristotle's notion of human flourishing, perfectionism, and justice understood as the fair distribution of resources, could produce an ideal political society that would not only be free and just, but could also facilitate the flourishing of citizens and encourage excellence in a wide variety of domains.

As can be seen from this, Eric can be assured that conversations sparked by The Greek Tradition have not been exhausted yet

Some of the speakers from the symposium. Image courtesy of Lightbox St Andrews.

Political Engagement: Utopias and Political Texts

In the last few weeks I have engaged in two public-facing events in which I have shared my research with non-academic audiences. Participants at both raised interesting questions and comments prompting me to think more deeply about the topics I am currently researching. In this blog I reflect on what I have learned from this engagement.

The first event was 'The Quest for Utopia', organised by the Liverpool Salon and held at the wonderful Athenaeum in Liverpool's City Centre. The Salon has been hosting public conversations on philosophical, political, and cultural topics on Merseyside for more than seven years, providing valuable opportunities for 'critical discussion'. The event in which I participated (a recording of which can be accessed here) was the first of a series exploring the theme of utopia. In his opening talk Ronnie Hughes, who presents himself as 'an occasional and formerly enthusiastic utopian practitioner', raised the provocation that the term 'utopia' has been misunderstood ever since it was first coined by Thomas More in 1516. More's aim, Ronnie insisted, had not been to create a 'perfect' society, but merely a 'better' one. I developed this point in my own introduction on James Harrington's The Commonwealth of Oceana, emphasising that when thinking about improving society we need to follow Harrington in taking human beings as they are rather than proposing plans that require super-human virtue or self-sacrifice. Moreover, given the constant dynamism of human life, deliberately leaving some things for future generations to work on (as Ronnie and his team did with the Granby Four Streets project) provides hope and opportunity for the future.

The Reading Room at the Liverpool Athenaeum. Image by Rachel Hammersley.

The emphasis on perfectionism may be one reason why, as participants lamented, utopianism is in short supply today. In our discussion we spent some time thinking about how to rekindle utopianism in the present and future. One obstacle is undoubtedly a pessimistic tendency - 'doom and gloom' as one person put it. It is easy to get so caught up in complaining about how bad things are, that we talk ourselves out of being able to do anything about it. Here too Ronnie had some wise words for us, identifying as a 'utopian moment' the point in his discussions with the Granby Four Streets residents when he told them they could have five more minutes of moaning, but then had to start talking positively about what they wanted. That shift is crucial if we are to have any hope of making things better. I was not the only participant reminded of Gerrard Winstanley and his comment that 'action is the life of all, and if thou dost not act, thou dost nothing' (Gerrard Winstanley, A Watch-Word to the City of London and the Armie, London, 1649). The first key to moving forward, then, is to turn from the negative to the positive; and to take action to move from how things have been, to how they could be.

Another important point that arose from our discussions was that scale is crucial. Grand visions can be impressive and inspiring, but they are also difficult to implement, and it can be hard to know where to start. Perhaps, then, instead of thinking big we need to take smaller steps initially to bring about concrete change. This might mean working locally rather than nationally or internationally. The Granby Four Streets project was local, as were the town projects arising out of the Garden City movement of the twentieth century. Such projects might not change the world fundamentally or bring about perfection, but they can and do make a difference to people's lives. Growing up in Milton Keynes, I was conscious that despite it often being the butt of jokes, there were many positive features of my home town (such as an extensive and well-lit cycle network) which I have missed in other places I have lived. Moreover, even small projects can have a big impact. After all, the Granby Four Streets project won the Turner Prize in 2015.

The Liverpool Athenaeum’s copy of Thomas More’s Utopia. Image by Rachel Hammersley and courtesy of the Library of the Liverpool Athenaeum - with particular thanks to Robert Huxley.

This leads to my third point: the importance of utopian thinking being grounded in place. The etymology of utopia means 'no place' and, as Robert Huxley demonstrated in his talk, a lot of utopian thinking of the Renaissance and early modern period was inspired by voyages of exploration that brought Europeans into contact with previously unknown places. But Vanessa Pupavac emphasised in her introduction that utopias work best when they are 'some place' connected to an actual location and its history. Believing, as some early explorers did, that we can impose our utopia or 'civilisation' on others - or, conversely, that we can import the Tahitian dream back to Europe - is a misconception that has repeatedly resulted in misery and disaster. We cannot remake the world divorced from the realities of climate, geography, culture, or human nature. Our utopias, then, must not only be positive and realistic, but also grounded in a particular time and place.

These ideas about how to build a better future remained in my mind as I approached the first meeting of our Experiencing Political Texts reading group, which took place at another wonderful city institution, Newcastle's Literary and Philosophical Society. The aim of this group is to explore the dissemination of political information both today and in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, thinking in particular about how the medium through which political ideas are conveyed can frame, influence - and even distort - the message.

Infographic advertising the Experiencing Political Texts reading group. With thanks to Nifty Fox Creative for the design.

At our initial meeting we talked about where each of us gets our knowledge about politics and current affairs from. There were various responses ranging from traditional media such as print newspapers and journals through to social media such as Twitter. It was also clear that while some of us favour text-based material, others prefer aural forms such as radio and podcasts. Fewer of us seemed to prioritise visual media, but that is also a format that is increasing in popularity - especially among the young.

Participants also commented on the limitations of some of these formats. In social media, headlines are accentuated, yet these do not always provide an accurate indication of the content of the article. Even longer articles may not provide as much depth - particularly on the history behind events - as might be necessary to properly understand them. Social media have been criticised for creating echo chambers, but participants also questioned the extent to which individuals reading conventional media seek out views and opinions different from their own.

This image and the one below are infographics produced by Nifty Fox Creative during the live scribing of our first reading group meeting.

More broadly, participants identified two pressing issues. First, the increasingly blurred line between truth and fiction - which becomes especially worrying when it is applied to the outcome of elections, as has been the case in several countries recently. Secondly, the fact that in many quarters the presentation of the news seems to be aimed primarily at entertaining the audience rather than informing or educating them. I share these concerns, but it also struck me that some of the early modern figures I have been studying actively deployed such tactics in order to engage readers. For example, Henry Neville deliberately presented his political views in entertaining genres such as a travel narrative and dialogue, and he used satire to draw in his audience. He also deliberately blurred the line between truth and fiction in order to prompt his readers into thinking more deeply about the truth of the information being presented to them. There is clearly a complexity here that requires careful unpicking.

Finally, we looked at some examples of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century political texts and compared them with the sources of political information available to us today. The group discussed what sort of people would have been able to read these works, thinking about access, class, and literacy. We acknowledged that the sharing of texts - for example by reading them aloud, passing them on to friends, and using the circulating and subscription libraries that emerged in the eighteenth century - will have increased the number of people who could engage with them. The presentation of works will also have been affected by the authors' sense of their target audiences - including the fact that some works will have been designed to be read aloud in coffee houses. The group also raised the thought-provoking question of whether authors thought only about contemporary audiences or whether they also had future readers in mind. If not, what does that mean for reading groups like ours addressing these texts today? I look forward to exploring these issues further in later sessions.

A New Utopia: Oceana for the 21st Century

Frontispiece to James Harrington, The Commonwealth of Oceana in The Oceana and Other Works of James Harrington, ed. John Toland (London, 1737). Private copy.

George Monbiot's book Out of the Wreckage: A New Politics for an Age of Crisis calls for the creation of a "politics of belonging". He is not the only person to suggest, in recent months, that a new way of thinking about politics is required. These calls have prompted me to think again about the utopian character of James Harrington's The Commonwealth of Oceana. 

Historians have long debated whether Oceana should be labelled as a utopia at all, partly because it was very clearly intended as a practical model for a specific place and time. Yet Colin Davis, author of Utopia and the Ideal Society, sees this as precisely one of the key features of a utopia. Davis argues that what distinguishes utopias from other conceptions of the ideal society is their acceptance that limited resources are exposed to unlimited desires: 'The utopian's method is not to wish away the disharmony implicit within the collective problem, as the other ideal-society types do, but to organise society and its institutions in such a way as to contain the problem's effects.' (Colin Davis, Utopia and the Ideal Society: A Study of English Utopian Writing 1516-1700, Cambridge, 1981, pp. 37-8). This kind of model, one that takes human society as it is and offers practical solutions to human problems - and yet pushes beyond the framework of the current system - is precisely what we need just now. So what would an Oceana for the twenty-first century look like?

It will come as no surprise to readers of this blog that, in the first place, my twenty-first century Oceana would seek to challenge the idea that politics is the preserve of a distinct political class. Harrington, following Aristotle, believed every citizen should rule and be ruled in turn. He also insisted that human nature dictated that individuals who held power for long periods of time (however good and virtuous they were in the first place) would inevitably become corrupt. Harrington's solution was the rotation of office, with representatives being in post for three years before standing down and being ineligible for re-election for a similar term. Something like this system could be introduced in the UK Parliament. Of course there are problems that would need to be addressed. Being effectively made redundant after three years may deter certain individuals (perhaps particularly the poorest) from standing at all, so jobs would need to be held open and provision made to support those retiring from office. But the potential advantages of politics being an activity in which most citizens engage at some point, rather than the preserve of a political élite, are significant.

Thirteenth order of Harrington's Oceana on the agrarian law.

Another central tenet of Harrington's political programme was the preservation of an equitable division of land within the nation. This was necessary to maintain a balance of property, and hence of power, suitable for commonwealth government. Harrington sought to achieve this through his agrarian law, which required those owning large tracts of land to divide their estate more equally among their children. While land is still a crucial source of the wealth of the super-rich, it has largely been replaced by money as the basis of power. My concern here is not with the redistribution of property in either its landed or monetary form, but rather with the means by which the majority of us earn our money. Work is currently divided in ways that are uneven, creating unhappiness both among those who have too much and those who have too little. Earlier this year the New Zealand trustee company Perpetual Guardian initiated a six-week trial in which its employees were to work four days a week while being paid for five, and in this country the Autonomy Institute has called for the implementation of a four-day week. I am one of a growing number of parents who have made the  switch to working four days a week. While there is a danger (for those of us doing four days' work for four days' pay) of succumbing to the tendency to do five days' work in four, my experience is that a four-day week makes for a better work-life balance, for those able to take it. There are also potential benefits for others since, in my own and many other professions, a large number of highly talented young people are struggling to get their feet on the career ladder. If more people worked fewer days a week then more positions would open up for junior staff. Of course, employers may well complain that it would create a less efficient system. But we could off-set the inefficiencies of having to employ more staff against the efficiencies gained from workers being less tired, more motivated, and less susceptible to stress and its associated health problems. Nor should this change in work patterns be available only to professionals. A wholesale reconsideration of what constitutes a working week ought to address changes and benefits that can be brought to all workers.

Finally, Harrington's commitment to healing and settling a divided nation could be developed for the twenty-first century. As I demonstrated in a previous blogpost, he insisted that peace could only be established in post-civil war England if those on both sides of the royalist-parliamentarian divide were allowed to engage equally as citizens. He was also a strong advocate of religious toleration, insisting that no-one's right to citizenship or to hold office should be rescinded on the basis of religious belief. The Brexit Referendum, along with the debates at home and negotiations in Europe that have followed, have created deep divisions in our society. As a result, we too are in need of healing and settling. I suggest, though, that the solution for us lies less in extending citizenship to those who are currently excluded than in making political citizenship more substantial.

John Milton by William Faithorne, line engraving, 1670. National Portrait Gallery NPG D22856. Reproduced under a Creative Commons License.

One way of doing this would be to encourage open debate about key issues. This might be seen as going against Harrington's ideas, in that his popular assembly was not allowed to discuss legislative proposals - he worried that popular political debate would lead to anarchy. Yet he saw debate by the Senate as crucial to the political process, and he did not want to prevent popular debate from taking place outside the popular assembly. Moreover, in several of his writings he expressed the idea that greater knowledge would arise from the debating of issues, even suggesting that his model constitution would be improved by others examining and criticising it. There is an echo here of Milton's notion from Areopagitica that good ideas will inevitably win out if free debate is allowed to flourish. If we could create opportunities at all levels of society for free, open and constructive political debate involving those of different political views, perhaps we could construct a society that is more open, tolerant, and better informed.

Sir Thomas More, after Hans Holbein the Younger, early C17 based on a work of 1527. National Portrait Gallery, NPG 4358. Reproduced under a Creative Commons License.

Of course, what I have offered here is not a utopia but just three proposals inspired by Oceana. A further distinguishing feature of utopias, noted by Davis, is that they are conceived as total schemes. In the early modern era this was often achieved by setting the utopia on a distant island, as Thomas More did in the work that gave its name to the genre. This reflected a fascination with the, as yet not fully charted nature of the globe at that time. While, like More, Harrington was writing a utopia for England, he indicated the intended location more overtly, the fictional guise he employed simply signalled a concern with England as it ought to be rather than as it actually was. Today, the obvious place to situate a utopia would be in the virtual realm. Moreover, with the right software one might even be able to play out the consequences of such a system, as is done in disaster scenario planning (and as Harrington attempted to do in a more basic form in the corollary to Oceana). Perhaps my next step, after my Harrington book has been delivered to the publisher, should be to construct a Harringtonian 'digitopia'.