James Harrington on the Hebrew Commonwealth

Abstract

AbstractLiving in the post-9/11 world that we do, it is evident that the contemporary world continues to be very much vulnerable to political disruptions emanating from theocratic politics; and in that sense, any secularist hopes that may have been entertained for a political domestication of religion are far from having been fulfilled. That in turn suggests to us that the concerns that animated the great seventeenth-century struggle against clerical power and theocratic authority are enduring ones, and that we have reason to continue to engage intellectually with critics of priestcraft like Hobbes, Harrington, and Spinoza. Within that broader context, this article concerns itself with Harrington in particular, focusing on his efforts in his polemical writings of the late 1650s to draw resources for Erastian politics from a Hobbes-inspired account of the Hebrew republic.