'Paradise Lost' and Republican Tradition from Aristotle to Machiavelli (review)

In this densely packed but readable book, William Walker argues against the critical consensus that John Milton's works uniformly support the ancient republican tradition. Rather, Walker traces a shift from the classical republicanism of Milton's earlier political writings to the Christian values of Paradise Lost, a work that, Walker argues convincingly, fundamentally breaks with republican tradition.

To make his argument, Walker reviews the development of republican political theory in a range of classical authors, including Aristotle, Cicero, Sallust and Livy. Through close readings of these authors, Walker identifies what he terms a 'family' of characteristics belonging to the classical republican tradition. These characteristics include: a view of human nature as comprised of passion and appetite controlled by reason, which is unique to humans; a focus on virtue as action aimed at living the virtuous life, which can be accomplished only in society; an antiformalist approach to government; the conception of civil liberties as contingent on a society's aims and desires; and finally, the privileging of military and political action in republican historical accounts. Walker argues that, by identifying these characteristics as a family of associated but not essentially linked traits, it becomes possible to understand how later authors such as Machiavelli and Milton participate in, but also depart from, republican tradition.

After the introduction, each chapter begins with a review of one of the above characteristics as understood by the classical authors and by Machiavelli, and then goes on to explore Milton's views as expressed in Paradise Lost. This method is not especially elegant, but it has the virtue of clarity. In Chapter 1, Walker shows how Milton endorses classical views of human nature as morally neutral in a text like Eikonoklastes, but in Paradise Lost depicts humanity as utterly depraved as the result of the Fall, and rejects classical views of happiness as the ultimate aim of human existence. In Chapter 2, Walker examines the classical idea that the virtuous life can be fully lived only in society, not in isolation - an idea Milton rejects in Paradise Lost to emphasize how the virtuous life not only can, but often must, be lived in opposition to society.

In Chapter 3, Walker demonstrates the antiformalism of classical republicanism by showing how republicans often endorsed monarchy as a just form of government. Paradise Lost demonstrates, in Walker's analysis, a antiformalist approach very like that taken by the republicans, refusing to condemn any form of government per se, but rather presenting all such forms as both useful and as subject to corruption. This is an especially interesting argument, since most recent Milton scholars have tended to read the poem as critical of earthly monarchy. Walker does, however, argue that Milton takes his antiformalism not from the republican tradition, but rather from his rigorously Protestant reading of the Bible that takes 'the spirit as the source of whatever value human works and forms may have' (p. 188).

In Chapter 4, Walker identifies considerable variation in the classical republican approach to civil liberties, and suggests that Milton takes a rationalist approach which emphasizes how civil law can enable liberty, not restrain it. Walker also shows how, in Paradise Lost - in notable contrast to the earlier political tracts - Milton considers no civil liberty essential to the fulfilment of human ends, since for him the ultimate goal of human life is salvation, not glory or happiness.

Finally, in Chapter 5, Walker discusses the centrality of history to the classical republican tradition, a centrality that depends on the assumption that humans remain the same throughout time and, thus, can learn from the experiences of the past. Crucially, the tradition also assumes the paramount value of Roman political and military history - an assumption not shared by Milton in Paradise Lost, who places Israel at the heart of human history. Furthermore, Milton regards human history as occurring within a much larger framework of struggle between supernatural forces, which...