The Cambridge School’s “Guicciardinian Moments” Revisited

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the most influential contemporary approach to the study of classical and early-modern republicanism and Niccolò Machiavelli's supposed place within that tradition—the Cambridge School of intellectual history, most prominently represented by J.G.A. Pocock and Quentin Skinner. It argues that these world-renowned intellectual historians obscure important aspects of both republican and Machiavellian political thought; specifically, they largely ignore the fact that ancient and modern republicanisms secure the privileged position of elites more than they facilitate political participation by citizens. They also underplay the fact that Machiavelli's political prescriptions more substantively empower common people and more actively facilitate popular contestation of elites than did most authors and regimes that typify republicanism.