Machiavelli, Hobbes, and the Formation of a Liberal Republicanism in England

Rating:
Summary: Original and necessary
Review: This book fills an important gap in the Machiavelli scholarship. We all know that Machiavelli had a huge influence over subsequent political philosophers. Sullivan now gives us the WHO and the HOW. Of the six English thinkers Sullivan treats in this book, I am most familiar with the thought of Algernon Sidney, whom I always suspected was (in Sullivan's words) a "secret admirer" of Machiavelli. I even wrote a paper to that effect in graduate school. But Sullivan's account blows my feeble effort out of the water. And from what I can tell, she is dead on. I also found the Hobbes chapter quite convincing, although that is (of course) a much easier case to make.

I give the book only four stars because of what I consider to be a significant error in the Machiavelli chapter. Sullivan repeatedly says that for Machaivelli, war is the purpose, or end, of the state. I believe that Machiavelli views war more as a means than an end. It is a necessary means to procuring the security and plenty desired by the people, and a necessary stage for the glory and swashbuckling desired by the great. Machiavelli's ends are the ends desired by real people living in this world: security and material comfort for the many, fame and command for the few.

That said, Sullivan's account of Machiavelli's recommended regime is remarkable for its clarity and concision. She shows how NM attempts to reconcile and harmonize the competing aims of the people and the great by building institutions that channel the destructive impulses of the great in a way that they can only be satisfied by serving the impulses of the people.