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Interpretation in Political Theory: The Case of Harrington

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Kathleen Toth
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Extract

Felix Raab has argued that the interpretation of James Harrington's thought is today a key issue in the study of midseventeenth- century English history because, “at one point or another, hisideas have become relevant to every recent analysis of that difficult period.” In the not too distant past such a statement would have been unthinkable. Harrington's place in the history of political thought is unsettled, as might be expected of a thinker generally known as the creator of an exceptionally mundane Utopia. However, the rise, elaboration, and criticism of interpretations of Harrington in the last few decades has produced a rather large and discordant body of literature, enlivened by the peculiar assertion of exactly contrary interpretations of Harrington's intent and of his relations to the politics of his own day. Another curious aspect of this renewed interest in Harrington is the extent to which the various interpretations cohere with the ideological commitments of the interpreters—a fact which by itself warrants no more then caution in accepting any of these readings, but which also displays continuity with other uses2 that have been made of Harrington.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 37 , Issue 3 , July 1975 , pp. 317 - 339
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1975

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References

1 Raab, Felix, The English Face of Machiavelli(London, 1964), p. 185Google Scholar.

2 Although Harrington has not been a major figure in the history of political thought, he has been seized upon from time to time and interpreted in such a way as to be discovered anew as the precursor or discoverer of some principle or school of thought. See Shklar, Judith, “Ideology Hunting: The Case of James Harrington,” American Political Science Review, 53 (1959), 662–692CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Tawney, R. H., “Harrington's Interpretation of His Age,” Proceedings of the British Academy, 27 (1941), 4Google Scholar.

4 Ibid., p. 11.

5 Ibid.

6 Ibid., p. 17.

7 Ibid., p. 11.

8 Ibid., pp. 17–18.

9 Trevor-Roper, H. R., The Gentry 1540–1640(Cambridge, 1953), p. 46Google Scholar.

10 The issues involved in this controversy are discussed byHextor, J. H. in “Storm Over the Gentry,” Encounter (08, 1958), pp. 75–76Google Scholar, and by a number of writers in Social Change and Revolution in Britain, ed. Stone, L. (London, 1965)Google Scholar.

11 SeeMacpherson, C. B., The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism (Oxford, 1962)Google Scholar.

12 SeeSkinner, Quintin, “The Ideological Context of Hobbes's Political Thought,” The Historical Journal, 9 (1966), 286–317 andCrossRefGoogle Scholar“Thomas Hobbes and the Nature of the Early Royal Society,” The Historical Journal, 12 (1969), 217–239CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Tawney, , “Harrington's Interpretation on His Age,” especially pp. 7–8Google Scholar.

14 Part three of Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems utilizes an Aristotelian account of natural motion, and a number of other writers employ similarly “unscientific” modes of explanation, especially when attempting to deal with gravity and magnetism. For an account of the continuity of Aristotelian elements, see Randall, John, The Career of Philosophy, vol I (New York, 1962)Google Scholar.

15 See Kargon, R., Atomism in England from Hariot to Newton (Oxford, 1966)Google Scholar.

16 See Larsen, Robert, “The Aristotelianism of Bacon's Novum Organun” Journal of the History of Ideas, 23 (1962), 435–450CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Webster, C., “The Early Royal Society,” History of Science, 6 (1967), 106–128CrossRefGoogle Scholar . Also see Laudan, L., “Scientific Method from Plato to Mach,” History of Science, 7 (1968), 1–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Boyle's achievements are recounted, with some exaggeration, in the many writings of Marie Boas Hall; see especially her introduction to Robert Boyle on Natural Philosophy (Bloomington, 1965)Google Scholar.

19 Skinner and Kargon both discount any attempt to simply portray the members of the early Royal Society as hardheaded practitioners of the experimental philosophy.

20 See Greenleaf, W. H., Order, Empiricism and Politics (London, 1964)Google Scholar, chapters 9 and 10. The other methodology, which appears to have been more widely respected until at least the 1660's, was the “resolutive-compositive” method, made popular by Galileo, but bearing a strong resemblance to Aristotle's Posterior Analytics (and the hypothetico-deductive schemata of Carl Hempel). The “resolutive-compositive” technique took geometry as its model of a successful science, and its use by a number of writers whom Harrington wished to refute, most notably Hobbes, led him to repeatedly disparage “mathematical reasoning.”

21 At this time it was only the antiquarian who was beginning to recognize the problems involved in doing such comparative historical analysis. See Fussner, H., The Historical Revolution (New York, 1963)Google Scholar, chap. 4.

22 Harrington, James, Oceana, ed. Liljegren, S. B. (Heidelberg, 1924), p. 59Google Scholar.

23 Fink, Zera, The Classical Republicans (Evanston, 1962)Google Scholar.

24 See Pocock, J. G. A., Politics, Language and Time (New York, 1971)Google Scholar; idem, “The History of Political Thought: A Methodological Enquiry,” in Philosophy, Politics and Society (second series), eds. P. Laslett and W. G. Runciman (Oxford, 1967).

25 Fink, , Classical Republicans, pp. 2–5Google Scholar. It should be pointed out that this ritualized version of the classification scheme is hardly descriptive of anyone's theory.It is most often invoked by theorists as a device for giving a rapid account of a position which is often revised or ignored by them; this is done by both Machiavelli and Harrington. Polybius himself mentions seven forms of government in addition to the mixed state, a move which presents him with a number ofdifficulties when he attempts to close his cycle of governments. For an account of this problem and of attempts to render Polybius consistent with his avowed aims and sources seeGumming, Robert, Human Nature and History, vol. 2 (Chicago, 1969), 143–174Google Scholar.

26 Pocock, J. G. A., The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law (New York, 1967), chap. 6Google Scholar.

27 Ibid., p. 129.

28 Ibid.

29 Ibid., p. 141.

30 Ibid., p. 144.

31 Ibid.

32 Ibid.

33 Pocock, J. G. A., “Machiavelli, Harrington and English Political Ideologies in the Eighteenth Century,” in Politics, Language and Time, pp. 104–147Google Scholar.

34 Ibid., pp. 112–114.

35 Ibid., p. 111.

36 Ibid., p. 112.

37 Ibid., p. 114.

38 Ibid., p. 129.

39 Ibid., pp. 130–131.

40 Ibid., p 127.

41 For example, the neo-Harringtonians, by making use of a set of concepts which were interrelated in a certain fashion, could arrive at the judgment that their government was corrupt, yet that term, by being structured, embedded in a complex and disciplined way of looking at politics, does not represent an arbitrary choice, nor an unimpeachable one, because it is a technical termin the language of mixed-government theorizing. There are criteria governing its correct application, as well as reasons why the conditions which it casts disfavor upon should be avoided in terms of the misery which may follow from corruption.

42 Greenleaf, , Order, Empiricism and Politics, pp. 180–182Google Scholar.

43 Aristotle, Politics, books 3 and 4. Plato, of course, discusses a hypothetic cal cycle of personalities and the sorts of states they give rise to in the Republic, but he does not deal with “mixed government” or a special sort of balanced state there. Lawsfocuses upon types of constitutions rather than types of individuals, and makes use of the idea of a mixture being the best sort of constitution.

44 Polybius, Histories, 6.3.

45 Harrington believed that a situation in which power did not lie decisively with one part of the state was inherently unstable.

46 Polybius, Histories, 6.47.

47 Aristotle, Politics, 4.9; Plato, Laws, 693b.

48 Polybius, Histories, 6.18 and 6.10.

49 Machiavelli, The Prince, chaps. 12 and 13; The Discourses, 3.36.

50 Raab, , English Face of Machiavelli, pp. 160–181Google Scholar. Raab takes the position that he does largely because he believes that there is no such institutional emphasis in Machiavelli's thought and, with the large exception of military institutions, I agree with him. Certainly the classification scheme provided by mixed-government thought is not used a great deal or with much care by Machiavelli, who is much more concerned with the distinction between commonwealths for increase and those built for preservation, a distinction which is also found in Polybius.

51 Bodin, The Six Bookes of a Commonweale, especially 1.8.

52 Such as Ponet's, JohnA Treatise of Politke Power (London, 1556),Google ScholarSirSmith's, ThomasDe Republica Anglorum (London, 1566)Google Scholar and Hunton's, PhilipA Treatise of Monarchie (London, 1643)Google Scholar.

53 Oceana, p. 49.

54 This preponderance is sometimes said to be that of “three parts in four,” sometimes “two parts in three”: see Oceana, p. 15 and The Oceana of James Harrington and His Other Works, ed. Toland, J. (London, 1700), p. 250Google Scholar.

55 Oceana, pp. 15–49.

56 Ibid., pp. 185–186, 141, and 50–51.

57 The major element of continuity between the important figures of the tradition seems to be simply their focus upon the same terminology for classifying governments, and their insistence that some sort of mixture is the best form of government.

58 Although it must be emphasized that in early republican thought the distinctionbetween public and private is not clearly present because there is no concept of a distinct sphere of life apart from the public.

59 Pocock, , “English Political Ideologies,” p. 112Google Scholar.

60 Ibid., pp. 130–131.

61 Harrington attempts to translate what Aristotle meant by virtue by substituting his own term of balance, thus, he says, giving much light to this author who is “not always of one mind.” See Works, p. 292.

62 Harrington also has trouble understanding just what the classical authors meant by “corruption”; he resolves the difficulty in the case of Machiavelli in the same way as with Aristotle, by translating what Machiavelli must have meant into his own terminology. He concludes that “division of opinion in a people,” or “division into parties” is not “sufficient proof of corruption.” See Oceana, pp. 53–56.

63 “The effects which proceed from fortune (if there be any such thing) are like their cause, unconstant” (Oceana, p. 137). A “political anatomy” which would lay bare all the ligaments of power must demonstrate its principles out of “the fabrick of nature” (Works, pp. 429 and 553).

64 Oceana, p. 22.

65 Ibid., p. 50.

66 Ibid., p. 155.

67 “Whereas the people taken apart are but so many private interests, but if you take them together they are the public interest…” (Ibid., p. 141.)

68 Raab, and Gunn, J. A. W., in his Politics and the Public Interest in the Seventeenth Century (London, 1969)Google Scholar, have begun to explore this context of “interest” arguments although they present rather different views as to the sources of the vocabulary and the nature of the arguments used.

69 Oceana, pp. 20–22; for examples of similar arguments by contemporaries see Gunn, , Politics and the Public Interest, pp. 130–138Google Scholar.

70 Royalist John Hall analyzed the claims of Parliament men to show that the public interest they proclaimed was only a facade in Of Government and Obedience as They Stand Directed and Determined by Scripture and by Reason (London, 1654)Google Scholar; he was, however, willing to argue that the king's private interest amounted to the public interest.

71 This line of argument, begun in The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law, is continued in Pocock's new book, The Machiavellian Moment (Princeton, 1975)Google Scholar, which was in press at the time this paper was completed.

72 Shklar, , “Ideology Hunting,” p. 674Google Scholar. Such a claim ignores Harrington's connection with decades of important debate on the subject of interest and Hobbes's own manipulation of this subject.

73 Philosophy, Politics and Society (first series), ed. Laslett, P. (Oxford, 1956), p. viiGoogle Scholar.

74 Pocock, , Politics, Language and Time, p. 3Google Scholar.

75 See, for example, Wolin, Sheldon, “Paradigms and Political Theory,” in Politics and Experience, eds. King, P. and Parekh, B. C. (Cambridge, 1968), pp. 125–152Google Scholar.

76 See in particular Skinner's, essay, “Some Problems in the Analysis of Political Thought and Action,” Political Theory, 2 (1974), 277–303CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

77 Theory and change in Greek society has been examined in this way by Adkins, A. W. H., Merit and Responsibility (Oxford, 1962)Google Scholar.

78 As claimed, for example, by Greenleaf, W. H. in his essay, “Hobbes: The Problem of Interpretation, ” reprinted in Hobbes and Rousseau, eds. Cranston, M. annd Peters, R. (New York, 1972), pp. 5–36Google Scholar . Greenleaf takes it as an axiom of interpretation that a theorist's thought will always be rendered consistent if his context is adequately understood. The arguments of Winch, Peter in The Idea of a Social Science (London, 1958Google Scholar) have parallel implications which I have pursued in my paper, “Explanation and Understanding,” prepared for the 1974 annual meeting of the Northeastern Political Science Association.