ABSTRACT
During the early modern period, the idea of the state, and of the nation-state in particular, became firmly established in philosophy and (at least in some countries) in popular sentiment. Among philosophers, this meant above all the conception and delimitation of a unique sphere of human interaction in which the artifices of written law, officialdom and sovereignty overlaid the natural course of personal relationships (cf. Cheyette 1978). The state as a distinctive category now became the principal topic of political philosophy. Thinkers such as Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau might draw very different constitutional conclusions, but they at least agreed that the state was a human contrivance requiring specifically rational justification. Among ordinary people, nation or race was increasingly regarded as the primary human community (other than the family). What concerns us here is the manner in which concepts and values deriving from the city-state and, above all, the corporation were woven into the idea of the state and of the constitution appropriate to it. First, however, we must briefly consider the survival of the commune itself in this period.
