Search Results

Historians of republicanism have focussed on states where princely rule was overthrown (15th‐century Florence, 17th‐century England). Yet even in princely realms town magistrates claimed to be part of a underline respublica mixta, a state combining the principles of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. Dutch writers understood the United Provinces as a underline respublica mixta—that is, a stable, balanced constitution. Some embraced the democratic principle, invoking the memory of ancient Athens. Others (partisans of the House of Orange) bemoaned the weakness of the monarchical principle. Still others, like Holland's Hugo Grotius, saw the town oligarchies as forming a proper, aristocratic republic, like Sparta or Venice. Thus understood, the new polity was hardly democratic; but in a Europe dominated by strong monarchies, it was a beacon of republican liberty.

This chapter focuses on the republican liberty in the aftermath of the revolution. The defeat of the revolutionary experiment made the most perceptive political writers aware of the fact that Italy lacked a public spirit capable of sustaining republican institutions. These thinkers realized that the true enemies of republican liberty, rather than reactionary governments and the papacy, were Italy's bad customs and bad religion. The revolutionary initiative could change governments and institutions, but only education could improve customs and religion. Cuoco understood better than anybody else that the Italian problem was above all one of public spirit. In a letter to Giovanni Battista Giovio on March 7, 1804, he explains that no better order would arise as long as Italians remained “sluggard and fainthearted,” especially weak in spirit rather than just in politics and arms.

This introductory chapter examines different conceptions of liberty. If being free means that neither other individuals nor the state can prevent citizens from doing as they choose, then Italy is a free country. The problem is that liberty, if understood as an absence of impediments, is not in and of itself the liberty of citizens. Instead, it can be the liberty of servants and subjects. If the masters or the sovereigns are good, or weak, or foolish, or they have no interest in oppressing them, the servants and the subjects can enjoy the freedom to do more or less as they please. The liberty of citizens, or republican liberty, is quite another matter. It does not consist of not being hindered, or in merely not being oppressed, but rather of not being dominated, which is to say, not being subjected to the arbitrary or enormous power of another man or other men.

This chapter examines Niccolò Machiavelli's ideas about liberty. It considers Machiavelli's Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livy (1584), which contains Machiavelli's treatment of republican liberty and is considered to be his greatest contribution to the discussion of the tensions between political power and the liberty of both the individual citizen and the community at large. Alongside the conflict between law and the liberty of the republican citizen, the chapter turns to another key point in Machiavelli's arguments about liberty—the contradictions between liberty and what he calls fortuna (good luck or good fortune). Next, the chapter studies Machiavelli's Discourses in light of the genre of the utopia, as conceived by Sir Thomas More. Finally, the chapter takes a more detailed look into Machiavelli's other famous work, The Prince (1532).

This introductory chapter tackles the difficult question of liberty as it was developed in the Western world since the second half of the twentieth century and beyond. Clearly related, in the first instance, to the aftermath of the systematic persecution and massacre of the Jews and the dictatorial regimes that succeeded in coming to power in some of the most civilized and refined cultures of the Western world, a literature has been produced on the liberty that was lost—and only arduously (and not always fully) regained—that is daunting both in its quantity and quality. Alongside this brief discussion of the term “liberty” and all it implies, the chapter turns to another issue which is often brought up alongside debates about liberty—republicanism. This chapter explores some theses on republicanism to form a context based on the historical roots of the liberty discourse.

This chapter considers work of Alessandro Manzoni, who composed the poem and the novel that taught people to love liberty as a religious principle. In the ode “Marzo 1821” (March 1821), Manzoni directs the Italians toward a biblical God who listens to the invocation of the oppressed peoples. In Pentecoste, Manzoni writes of “living God” who operates in the world, supplying inspiration to a church that suffers, prays, and fights. In another work, Osservazioni sulla morale cattolica (Observations on Catholic morality), Manzoni affirms that the Christian religion requires courage to defend justice from the arrogance of the powerful.