The rapture of motion: James Harrington's republicanism

Abstract

When a thing is in motion, it will eternally be in motion, unless somewhat els stay it. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651) When he beheld … the rapture of motion … into which his spheres were cast, without any manner of obstruction or interfering … [he] abdicated the magistracy of Archon. James Harrington, Oceana (1656) I have opposed the politics of Mr Hobbes, to show him what he taught me. James Harrington, The Prerogative of Popular Government (1658) English republicanism has proved a rich intellectual terrain. This may be some compensation for its abject practical failure. For contemporaries the English republic was the Rump Parliament, the disreputable fag-end of an august political institution. It fell victim to the turbulence of the times, not once but twice. All the bodies upon whose truncation or abolition it was founded preside prosperously over its failure to this day. Yet through the window of this brief break with political custom there shone an intense ideological light. English republican thought was remarkable, both for the depth of its reach back into the past, and for its internal variety. The republican experience became a prism, receiving the broadest rays of antiquity and the Renaissance and refracting them for the use of modern Europe and America. Among their number the republican writers included some of the most innovative and influential of a century exceptionally endowed with both. This was an extraordinary achievement.

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