Civic Humanism Research Articles

Invectives against ignoramuses: Petrarch and the defense of humanist eloquence

ABSTRACTFrancesco Petrarch was a pioneering figure not only in the study of the humanities, but also in the defense of the humanities. A prolific writer and avid reader of the classics, particularly of the historians, rhetoricians, and poets, Petrarch cleared the way for humanistic studies in an age dominated by rigid scholasticism. Not surprisingly, then, Petrarch also had to defend himself against attacks from establishment elites who condemned the new studies as useless distractions from the pursuit of knowledge, by which they meant the study of syllogisms. I argue in this essay that Petrarch's invectives against his detractors offer a unique and communicative defense of the humanities that does not rely on the traditional recourse to civic humanism, a tradition that arose only subsequent to Petrarch. In his understanding of humanism, the value of humanistic studies is found in their capacity to produce a combination of humility and love—humility by expanding the circumference of our experience and exposing the limitations of our knowledge, and love by the capacity to create unity out of division. Furthermore, Petrarch defines the enduring opponent of the humanities as the scholastic ignoramus, a character that endures today.

THE ANCIENT CONSTITUTION AND THE LANGUAGES OF POLITICAL THOUGHT

AbstractHistorians of political thought speak of ‘languages’ of politics. A language provides a lexicon, an available resource for legitimating positions. It is looser than a ‘theory’, because protean, and not predictive of particular doctrines. Some languages attract considerable scholarly attention, while others languish, for all that they were ambient in past cultures. In recent scholarship on early modern European thought, natural law and civic humanism have dominated. Yet prescriptive appeals to national historiographies were equally pervasive. Many European cultures appealed to Tacitean mythologies of a Gothic ur-constitution. The Anglophone variant dwelt on putative Saxon freedoms, the status of the Norman ‘Conquest’, whether feudalism ruptured the Gothic inheritance, and how common law related to ‘reason’, natural law, and divine law. Whigs rooted parliaments in the Saxonwitenagemot; though, by the eighteenth century, ‘modern’ Whigs discerned liberty as the fruit of recent socio-economic change. Levellers and Chartists alike talked of liberation from the ‘Norman Yoke’. These themes were explored from the 1940s onwards under the stimulus of Herbert Butterfield; one result was J. G. A. Pocock's classicAncient constitution and the feudal law(1957).

El humanismo cívico y sus raíces Aristotélicas

Civic Humanism is one de most relevant theories in present day political philosophy. Its main characteristics are the rejection of radical individualism, the emphasis on the social and political responsibility of citizens, and the consideration that the realisation of a mature personality is only possible through communities on pre-political and pre-economical levels. The author of this paper maintains that there is a continuity from the start of Civic Humanism in Renaissance until its revival in XX Century. He defends as well that the philosophical roots of Civic Humanism can be found in the aristotelian practical philosophy, especially in the notions of good citizen, good life, common good and teleological praxis.

Cicerón descuartizado, Cicerón en un fractal. Nota sobre el republicanismo contemporáneo

This paper shows how the republican model of Cicero has been transmitted fragmentarily, through the Italian civic humanist tradition (Maquiavelo), the English republican humanism of XVI, XVII and XVIII centuries, and the republicanism of the American patriots, (“neo-republicanism”). The proposals of Pettit and Brugger are analyzed, and a great variety of positions that some consider “republican” are summarily reckoned. Finally, it is maintained that the classic republican model is present in a very fragmented way in contemporary political theories, for these theories are incapable to accept some strong anthropological, ethical and metaphysical theses. Cicero’s model of republicanism appears to us like in a large scale copy or replica, precisely in the political and legal reality of the contemporary world, in its practices and institutions, and in the political function of its theoretical reflections.

Freedom, ethical choice and the Hellenistic polis

ABSTRACTThis paper examines ideas of individual freedom in the Hellenistic city-states (c. 323–31 BCE). It concentrates on the civic ideas expressed in the laws and decrees of Hellenistic cities, inscribed on stone, comparing them with Hellenistic historical and philosophical works. It places different Hellenistic approaches alongside modern liberal, neo-Roman republican and civic humanist theories of individual liberty, finding some overlaps with each of those modern approaches. The argument is that the Hellenistic Greeks developed innovative ways of combining demanding ideals of civic virtue and the common good with equally robust ideals of individual freedom and ethical choice. They did so not least by adapting and developing traditional Greek approaches close to modern civic humanism, in ways very relevant to modern debates about how to reconcile civic duty, the common good and pluralism.

Antonio Genovesi and Italian economic thought: when ethics matters in economics

The renewed interest in studies of Italian Enlightenment after the Second World War has enabled a complex new understanding of the Italian contribution to political economy. In particular, a new line of research that brings together the analysis of commercial society developed by Italian economists, and the canon of « civil life » elaborated within classical civic humanism and the natural legal tradition, has explained the deep ethical and social concerns inherent in the Italian approach to economic studies. This collection of articles takes stock of some of these achievements in scholarship and, at the same time, offers some new elements about the hermeneutical role played by these fundamental relationships between economics and ethics in identifying a more complex and multidimensional structure of scientific discourse. The articles are a selection of those presented at three conferences held in 2013, thanks to the support of the Luigi Sturzo Institute and Milan-Bicocca University, in Naples (Banco di Roma Foundation), Rome (Lumsa University) and Milan (Istituto Lombardo - Accademia di Scienze e Lettere), and they explore the thought of Antonio Genovesi as well as Eighteenth-Century Italian economic thought.

After Civic Humanism: Learning and Politics in Renaissance Italy, ed. Nicholas Scott Baker and Brian Jeffrey Maxson

After Civic Humanism: Learning and Politics in Renaissance Italy, ed. Nicholas Scott Baker and Brian Jeffrey Maxson

A Tale of Two Languages. Latin, the Vernacular, and Leonardo Bruni’s Civic Humanism

This article reconstructs the views of Leonardo Bruni concerning the different natures, historical trajectories, and domains of Latin and the Florentine vernacular. It argues that his encomia of Florentine culture are careful to distinguish the two, and indeed that this distinction holds the key to reconciling the seemingly contradictory positions regarding Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio espoused in his Dialogues for Pier Paolo Vergerio. Bruni’s concept of the Latin language, moreover, explains why he believed that humanists were required to restore it to its Ciceronian glory. If Latin regained the functions it had had in Cicero’s day, this would exclude the Ciompi and the lower guilds from Florentine politics, and thus refashion Florence in the image of the Roman Republic both linguistically and politically. The article therefore salvages some of Hans Baron’s 'civic humanism', in that it shows Bruni – Baron’s archetypical civic humanist – to advocate self-government by the Latinate elites

Ricoeur and Anglo-American Political Philosophy

It is a common conviction that Ricoeur’s main contribution to Anglo-American political philosophy is to be found in the dialogue he tried to establish between liberalism and communitarianism. I argue that the depth of Ricoeur’s political philosophy is better served by situating it not only with regard to liberalism and communitarianism, but especially with regard to republicanism. This article shows how Ricoeur’s political philosophy—with its focus on the so-called “political paradox”—contains the main components of contemporary republicanism, with its stress on active citizenship and mixed constitution as necessary prerequisites for freedom, interpreted as the absence of illegitimate domination. I also argue that there are, however, significant differences between Ricoeur’s theory and the main currents in contemporary republicanism, civic republicanism, and civic humanism, because of his reliance on a positive conception of freedom on the one hand and his emphasis on the fragility of politics on the other hand.

America's Machiavellian Moment: Origins of the Atlantic Republican Tradition

In this article, the author answers the question: Where did America's Founders get their ideas? The essay delves deeply into the origins of the American political tradition by exploring the legacies of Medieval and Renaissance Europe and the transmission of these ideas across time and space. Of particular note is the role of “civic humanism” and “civic virtue,” ideas that can be traced to Niccolò Machiavelli and conveyed into the English political tradition by James Harrington and others. This understanding of republicanism helped to shape the views of America's Founders and those who came after them. [Display omitted]

The public domain of eloquence in civic humanism

No abstract availableRealidad: Revista de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades No. 119, 2009: 215-229

The Relationship between Civic Humanism and Calvin’s View of the State

The Relationship between Civic Humanism and Calvin’s View of the State

„Civitas mensura” – obywatel miarą wszechrzeczy. Emancypacyjny i upodmiotawiający wymiar obywatelskiego humanizmu

The consideration of emancipatory and empowering dimension of civic humanism is the chief concern of the article. In the first part there are recalled classical Protagorean sources of European humanism with a special attention to its civic dimension. In the second part I analyse points 3 and 4 of The Amsterdam Declaration 2002 dedicated to the democratic political system. In the last part I propose and develop a thesis that co-participation of citizens in exercising of all three powers in deliberative democratic system – the legislative power (participation in the law-making processes), the executive (participation in creation and realisation of public policies) and the judicial (participation in the system of exercising justice as lay judges) - constitutes the foundation of contemporary humanism as civic activity.

After Civic Humanism: Learning and Politics in Renaissance Italy

After Civic Humanism: Learning and Politics in Renaissance Italy

The "Athenian Disease" in Early-Modern England: Rhetoric, Republicanism, and the Restoration Cures

My paper aims at throwing light on the crucial link between rhetorical education and republicanism in mid-seventeenth-century England (1640-1660, the years of the Civil War, the regicide, Cromwell’s rule) and on the demonization suffered by rhetoric at the hands of the Establishment culture in the Restoration. Bluntly speaking, the change is from a time when the adversary is charged with practising poor rhetoric, to a time when the charge is that of practicing rhetoric tout court . What used to be given as a civilizing force, now becomes force of sedition and source of anarchy. The ‘cures’ advanced may very well be represented by the proliferation of proposals of linguistic systematization and reform, “real characters” and “universal languages” informed by plainness and ‘naturalness’, and inspired by a pre-hermeneutic ideal of discourse, in a strategy of political/cultural containment through linguistic control. However, the fight between the parties never ceases to employ rhetoric both as a message and as a code. The authoritative endorsement of the anti-rhetorical/anti-republican prejudice provided by Hobbes is contrasted with the agonic defense of the reasons of rhetoric and of civic humanism engaged by John Milton, the most powerful orator among the classical, neo-roman republicans involved in the founding of a new Athens in England.

Nicholas Scott Baker and Brian Jeffrey Maxson, editors.After Civic Humanism: Learning and Politics in Renaissance Italy.

Journal Article Nicholas Scott Baker and Brian Jeffrey Maxson, editors. After Civic Humanism: Learning and Politics in Renaissance Italy. Get access Nicholas Scott Baker and Brian Jeffrey Maxson, editors. After Civic Humanism: Learning and Politics in Renaissance Italy. (Essays and Studies, no. 35.) Toronto, Canada: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2015. Pp. 297. $34.95. The American Historical Review, Volume 121, Issue 4, October 2016, Page 1403, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/121.4.1403a Published: 03 October 2016

After Civic Humanism: Learning and Politics in Renaissance Italy

After Civic Humanism: Learning and Politics in Renaissance Italy

The Concept of Corruption in J.G.A. Pocock's The Machiavellian Moment

SUMMARYIn the scholarship on the concept of political corruption, one frequently encounters the lamentation that the manner in which the concept is deployed in liberal modernity is insufficiently attuned to the richer sense in which the term was employed in the ‘civic humanist’ tradition. In these lamentations, the usual point of reference is J.G.A. Pocock's The Machiavellian Moment, a work that made corruption the central term of art in a political language stretching from the Renaissance to the eighteenth century and beyond. Certainly there is something quite attractive today about the ‘Machiavellian’ inflection of the term—our era is replete with the very things the protagonists of Pocock's story decried: debt, dependency, oligarchy, standing armies and the diminution of civic duties. But to what extent is Pocock's classic text a reliable guide for those studying the concept of corruption? This article suggests that Pocock uses the term in an excessively capacious manner, which both weakens his book's utility for understanding eighteenth-century political thought and undermines its power as a foundation for political critique by civic-minded anti-corruption reformers.

From Hanover to Gibraltar: Cato’s Letters (1720–23) in International Context

SUMMARYOriginally composed as a series of polemical essays to a weekly newspaper called The London Journal, appearing from November 1720 to July 1723, John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon's Cato's Letters (1724 in book form) had a lasting influence on the development and evolution of Country ideology. It was, as is well known, one of the most widely read and influential books in Revolutionary America. Because of the enduring influence it had on the dissemination of the civic humanist tradition from Britain to North America, Cato's Letters has been more often than not taken out of historical context. This article revisits Cato's Letters by placing it against the background of the War of the Quadruple Alliance of 1718–20. What Trenchard and Gordon strove to do was to construct a distinctively Whig vision of Britain's maritime future that in a fundamental way rested on the Hanoverian Succession of 1714 and justified the conduct of foreign policy under George I and, more especially, the controversial alliance with France in 1716. The focal point of Cato's foreign-policy platform was Gibraltar. But were it not for the timely burst of the Mississippi Bubble in 1720, Trenchard and Gordon could not have retrained their civic humanist association of libertas and imperium with such assurance and confidence.

The Absence of Macpherson and Strauss in Pocock’s Machiavellian Moment

SUMMARYPocock's Machiavellian Moment is monumental in its erudition, and thus one may be surprised that Pocock virtually ignored Macpherson's Political Theory of Possessive Individualism in his assessment of seventeenth-century political thought, and ignored Strauss's Thoughts on Machiavelli. Pocock noted that ‘the schools of Marx, Strauss and Voegelin concur’ in holding Locke to be a bourgeois or possessive individualist. Pocock elaborated a paradigm of republicanism as civic humanism as a contrast to liberalism as possessive individualism. Pocock seemed to accept tacitly Macpherson's and Strauss's view that Locke inverted the Aristotelian view of property as a means to political participation, whereby politics became a means to the protection and accumulation of property. Macphersonian scholars have criticised Pocock for misinterpreting the function of property in the Atlantic republican tradition and Straussian scholars have criticised The Machiavellian Moment for its failure to distinguish ancient from modern republics, and for Pocock's failure to appreciate the epochal significance of Machiavelli's call to master fortune or dominate nature through technique. But it is questionable whether or not it is incumbent on an intellectual historian to address present preoccupations about capitalism or global technique.