James Harrington's 'Machiavellian' anti-Machiavellism

In the last thirty years historians of republicanism have offered us the image of Harrington as the true hero of Machiavellism. This paper suggests instead that Harrington adopted Machiavelli's method in political science, but shared only few of his master's values, often referring to those cherished in anti-Machiavellian circles, as in the case of the agrarian laws. Indebted to the anti-Machiavellian Petrus Cunaeus's analysis of the Jewish Jubilee laws, Harrington transformed Cunaeus's specific observations into a general law of his own political science. This paper emphasizes the originality and modernity of such science, based on the inextricable interconnectedness between politics and economics. Further, it argues that this science entails a new, post-Machiavellian theory of liberty and property. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.