On the Role of Symbolism in Political Thought

Abstract

New philosophy calls in doubt, wrote John Donne, and thereby suggested a theory of intellectual transformation. Because the universe was of a piece, its parts harmoniously connected, the Copernican revolution seemed to call into question not only Ptolemaic astronomy but also a whole series of related ideas having to do with order, not in the heavens but on earth. With the sun lost and the cosmos all in pieces, Prince, Subject, Father, Son are things forgot.' Suddenly, the very categories of social and political thought seemed empty anct useless. In a sense, Donne was right: later seventeenth-century writers like Hobbes and Locke were indeed compelled to work out anew the meanings of authority and subjection and to redefine political and familial obligation. But was he also right to suggest that this work was made necessary by the new philosophy? For other writers, it was the new religious ideas which had destroyed the perceived coherence of the social world. Machiavellian atheism and Protestant voluntarism, thought Richard Hooker, endangered the ancient, elaborate, and lawful structure of human