historical and political thought in the seventeenth - RePub - Erasmus ...

Chapter 8
The science of politics.
The Institutiones politicae
In the previous chapter we have seen that although Boxhorn followed many
of the historical commonplaces and topics of his time, he gave them his own
particular twist that makes it hard to pin him down as a typical humanist historian.
In this chapter I will try to show that the same reasoning holds good
for Boxhorn’s political thought. For we will see that beneath the many commonplaces
he used in his political works and that earned him a classification
among the examples of the monarchical, Aristotelian, humanist tradition that
dominated the Dutch universities in the first half of the seventeenth century, 1
Boxhorn actually laid the groundwork for future Dutch political thinkers such
as the brothers De la Court and Spinoza. 2 Indeed, a thorough analysis of his
Institutiones politicae will make it hard to sustain that he, as Kossmann would
have it, ‘remained deliberately and with conviction within the traditional
mould’. 3 For a close study of the Institutiones politicae will make it clear that
unlike Aristotle, but more like Hobbes and the brothers De la Court, Boxhorn
saw fear, self-interest and necessity not only as the causes behind the establishment
of political society, but also as the most important principles that should
guide its organisation and endurance. Furthermore, anticipating the brothers
De la Court and Spinoza’s critique on Holland’s oligarchical regenten regime,
Boxhorn held a specific, although somewhat covert plea for the ‘democratisation’
of Holland’s body politic in the Institutiones politicae.
In like manner, a close look at the Disquisitiones politicae, which we shall
discuss in the next chapter, will show that Boxhorn took his historical thought
into the realm of politics to the effect of criticising and undermining the prin-
1 Kossmann, Political Thought in the Dutch Republic, pp. 41-43, and Wansink, Politieke wetenschappen
aan de Leidse universiteit, pp. 156-83, 242-47.
2 Ernst Kossmann has hinted that Boxhorn’s ‘modern’ raison d’état thinking might have influenced
Johan de la Court. Kossmann, Political Thought in the Dutch Republic, p. 42. Eco Haitsma Mulier has
suggested that the brothers De la Court got acquaintated with the works of Tacitus and Arnold Clapmarius
through the works of Boxhorn. E.O.G. Haitsma Mulier, The Myth of Venice and Dutch Republican
Thought in the Seventeenth Century. Translated by Gerard T. Moran (Van Gorcum; Assen, 1980), p. 123. As I
will try to show, Boxhorn’s influence on the political thought of the brothers De la Court was possibly
much greater than thus far has been perceived.
3 Kossmann, Political Thought in the Dutch Republic, p. 42.