The March of the State in the Early Modern World

Abstract

Renaissance thinkers revive Platonic ideas about the relationship between state and individual. These are to the detriment of individual liberty. The works of Niccolò Machiavelli and Tommaso Campanella are examined; Machiavelli is shown to exhibit significant similarities to Plato in his treatment of religion, military valor, and the noble lie. Campanella is even more Platonist and relies on astrology to order his imagined utopia. Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet promotes a theory of royal absolutism that accords well with the court of Louis XIV, but that is normatively flawed. It is argued that Bossuet’s system nonetheless reflects absolutism in practice much better than those of Robert Filmer or Thomas Hobbes.