ABSTRACT
James Harrington's Oceana provides us with an alternative rendering of man in a state of nature than that offered by Hobbes and Milton. Harrington was the most historical of political thinkers writing in the mid-seventeenth century. Whereas Hobbes, as we shall see, gave as one reason the excessive preoccupation with classical history and literature for the current lamentable state of affairs in the 1640s and 1650s, Harrington's thought was deeply obliged not only to classical historiography and political theory, but also its sixteenth-century application by continental republican historians and political thinkers. The most notable of these is Machiavelli, whose analysis of past and present political behaviour in the Discourses and The Prince exercised a profound influence on Harrington's works. Oceana is a utopian text, and although all such writings are to a greater or lesser extent indebted to Plato's Republic, above all Harrington's republicanism is indebted to Machiavelli: 'In The Commonwealth of Oceana [Harrington] found means of depicting England as a classical republic and the Englishman as a classical citizen'. Reacting to an 'historic constitution' that had collapsed, 'Harrington's classical republicanism' was one of many attempts in the 1650s designed 'to formulate various moral, political and theoretical problems' faced for the first time in England. 1 On the other hand Jonathan Scott has argued that the affinity between Harrington and Machiavelli has been overstated. On every major issue that concerns the organisation of the commonwealth along republican principles, Harrington is in contradiction with Machiavelli and in closer accord with Hobbes than previous commentators have been willing to allow. The argument of the 'Preliminaries' is not based upon irreconcilable differences between the two; rather, it is 'the rivalry of siblings'. The root of this difference is that 'Harrington thought the ancients had perceived the principles of nature, Hobbes did not'. Oceana, by this reckoning, demonstrates that 'ancierit prudence is conformable with Hobbes' metaphysics' .2 Scott's analysis is powerfully argued, yet does not render a convincing account of the basic points of disagreement that Harrington has with Hobbes on the nature of fear and the law.
