Political Philosophy of the Period
Renaissance political philosophy and the recovery of the ancient legislators.
The Renaissance, or more accurately the Humanist movement, brought to light the works of ancient legislators and political philosophers, and these were studied with great zeal by the votaries of the new learning. Glenn describes the political thought that resulted, in which the classical models were applied to the conditions of the Italian city-states and the emerging national monarchies. He treats the chief writers of the period and shows how their doctrines depart from the medieval conception of authority as derived from God and ordered to the common good, tending instead to make the State its own end and to detach political practice from the moral law.
Article 4. Political Philosophy of the Period
The Renaissance, or, more accurately, the Humanist movement, brought to light the works of ancient legislators and political philosophers, and these were studied with great zeal by the votaries of the new fad of studying and excessively valuing “everything human” in the treasury of the universe. This study, plus the spirit of rebellion against authority, ecclesiastical and civil, which the Reformation induced, as well as a new devotion to the so-called Principle of Nationality (which holds that each nation should constitute its own civil society) occasioned the emergence of many social philosophies in the 16 century. Not a few of these were opposed to the Social Ethics of Scholasticism.
Of the Political Philosophers of the Period we mention only three:
i. Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), who expressed his political philosophy in a work called The Prince (Il Principe).
ii. Bl. Thomas More (1480-1535), English martyr, whose Utopia describes an imaginary island-republic so governed as to procure absolute equality for its citizens and to promote universal happiness—an ideal impossible of attainment.
iii. Hugo de Groot (Grotius 1583-1645), a learned Dutch divine (Protestant), who wrote on The Right of War and of Peace.
Machiavelli teaches that the chief aim of civil society is the development of The State. The State must be made supreme in all things, and all means are lawful to achieve this great end. The ruler need feel himself bound by no law, natural or human, but may manage things at will, so long as he works consistently in the direction of State supremacy. Machiavelli warred against Christianity, which he found in conflict with his ideal of State apotheosis.
De Groot was much more of a philosopher than either Machiavelli or Thomas More. He distinguishes right as divine and human, and subdivides human right into natural and civil. He calls civil or social right voluntary because he believes that while man has a tendency towards life in society, he has actually assumed social obligations and privileges by a sort of free compact, at least implicitly. He declares that in the state of original innocence community of goods among men was assured; the right of individual ownership became necessary as a consequence of sin; and this necessary right secured recognition in the world by at least a tacit agreement or compact among men.