Imagining the Future through the Past: Classical and Early Modern Political Thought

The origin of the idea of ‘Republic’ has until recently been taken for granted among classicists. New works are beginning to address the fact that debate cannot continue without a reassessment of the ‘problem of definition’ of the derivation respublica. However, this has not yet taken place from a classical perspective.

The main interlocutor in Thomas More’s Utopia is Raphael Hythloday, an explorer who prefers Greek to Latin “because his main interest is philosophy, and in that field he found that the Romans have left us nothing very valuable except certain works of Seneca and Cicero” (More 11). Critics of Utopia have long debated the conflict in this text between Roman commitments to politics, or the vita activa, and the vita contemplativa associated primarily with Greek philosophical traditions.

In his Politica (1589), Justus Lipsius (1547-1606) presents his political philosophy as a carefully constructed cento, ostensibly addressed to emperors, kings, and princes but, in reality, to other learned humanists who could activate the associations and deliberate on the alluded context. This essay focuses on Lipsius' allusions to Lucretius in his controversial fourth book.

Lucian's entanglement in Reformation politics has remained somewhat understudied. But it is no coincidence that at the nadir of their tumultuous relationship, Martin Luther, in his Tischreden, uses no single term more frequently to vilify Erasmus than "Lucianist". The story is more complicated than that Luther and members of his circle always responded univocally against Lucian and, more specifically, Erasmus' translations of Lucian, or themselves did not incorporate Lucianic elements into their own writings.

In this paper (the basis for a chapter in a larger monograph) I trace and compare the reception of Plutarch through a number of political thinkers who were also translators of Plutarch in Renaissance Europe. Budé, Erasmus and Seyssel all engaged in translation of various aspects of Plutarch’s work and their work in translation also had an impact on the development of their own political theory. In particular, I focus on the competing understandings of the theme of the la chose publique that animates these various thinkers.