The Meaning of Prudence in Bodin

Historians generally agree that Jean Bodin is the most important French political theorist of the sixteenth century. But there seems to be no hope of reconciling the disagreements that arise when authorities try to determine the exact meaning of his work. J. W. Allen has remarked that ‘it is impossible to separate Bodin's political from his religious thought.' And because of this entanglement it is difficult to place Bodin in a definite intellectual tradition. At times Bodin's political analysis seems to be completely secular, without any moral considerations. In the Republic, for example, there are passages analyzing sovereignty that resemble the absolutism of Hobbes. And the Republic's theory of the origin of the state is further evidence of the secularism of his political thought. Of course Bodin follows the traditional conception of the family as the primary human group and a natural organization. But men form city-states or republics only after ambition has driven them to conflict. This transition from family to state occurs when the chief of a victorious company of warriors continues to rule his followers as subjects, and his captives as slaves: Then that complete and natural liberty of living as one wished was completely taken away from the conquered; and it was even diminished somewhat in the victors by the one whom they had elected chief, because it was necessary to recognize the sovereignty (summum imperium) of another. This change was the origin of slaves and subjects, citizens and foreigners, prince and tyrant. From here reason itself leads us to the fact that governments and republics first grew up out of force (imperia scilicet ac Respublicas vi primum coaluisse).