Abstract
A political theorist, James Harrington expressed his ideas in his The Commonwealth of Oceana (1656), a constitutional utopia through which he drafted institutional and political principles meant to guarantee social and political stability. According to Harrington, political systems are somehow dependent on the distribution of property among the people and if property is in the hands of the many, stability will thus require a republican form of government. Harrington aspiration was to set up the principles of a new “art of lawgiving” based on the equal and balanced distribution of property, orders, and offices that is deemed to be the true reason of the states.
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References
Primary Literature
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Arienzo, A. (2016). Harrington, James. In: Sgarbi, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02848-4_502-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02848-4_502-1
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