The materialistic foundations of the social order. Sociological anticipations in the thought of James Harrington

James Harrington’s best known work is The Commonwealth of Oceana1. In it, the author outlines the construction of an ideal republican constitutional system, Oceana, described through a meticulous overall apparatus that includes within it the entire state organization, passing from the political, to the administrative and military element up to the economic and fiscal one, examined with extreme abundance of details. It is interesting to note that the focus is on the sphere of the city and its government and not exclusively on the concept of form of government. The urban context, that is, represents one of the most important elements on which the author’s cognitive efforts are concentrated.