ABSTRACT
It is against such a background that one can appreciate the revolution in political theory that Niccolo Machiavelli accomplished. To be sure, the older order of thought did not vanish overnight. The year in which The Prince was probably finished was also the year of two such popular works as Erasmus’s Education o f a Christian Prince, an eloquent homily, and Thomas More’s Utopia. This latter was in the classical rather than in the medieval tradition, but these had more in common with each other than with the modern mode. More’s Utopia was located, not in the future, but out of time entirely; it posed an ideal and criticized reality in its namebut it did not suggest that reality could be transformed into ideality through political action. It was a purely normative exercise. Within the book itself, More inserts a dialogue on what role philosophers can play in politics (he had just been offered a post by Henry VIII), and concludes that, at best, he can by his counsel prevent some evil from being done. This
was hardly what we would today call utopian doctrine. And, in the event, More’s own martyrdom was to reveal that even this ‘at best’ was an elusive possibility.
