Simone Luzzatto’s Political Thought: Between Reason of State, Scepticism, and Jewish Political Tradition

The rediscovery of the thought of Sextus Empiricus and the revival of the work of Cicero led, from the first half of the sixteenth century onwards, to a rethinking of some of the traditional principles of political philosophy, which had already been shaken not only by the work of Machiavelli but also by the events that had transformed Europe in the wake of Protestant Reformation. Authors such as Montaigne and Charron, for example, found in the philosophy of Sextus and Cicero useful tools to address the crisis into which French society had fallen after the Wars of Religion. The political implications of scepticism, then, should be regarded as a current of political thought in the early modern period on a par with other traditions such as Reason of State and Tacitism. From this perspective, it seems logical to argue that the philosophers and thinkers of this period who can be considered sceptical, that is, who recognized in such a philosophy an indispensable tool for interpreting the reality that surrounded them, have used the same tools to interpret the political organization in which they lived. This assumption, however, does not seem to have entered into the interpretation of the thinking of Simone Luzzatto. If all the rest of his work has been recognized as profoundly influenced by the philosophy of Sextus and Pyrrho, his analysis of politics seems to have been entirely unaffected by it. He developed important political thought in both his works: the main question is whether a link can be established between his statements and his well-known sceptical philosophy, or whether his attitude to politics is independent of his philosophical ideas.