Chapter 3 compares uses of politique in Jean Bodin’s Six livres de la République and the paratexts of Loys Le Roy’s translation and commentary of Aristotle’s Politiques. It shows that politics was rising as a discipline in the 1560s and 1570s. It considers the place of Aristotle in the politique problem, and the influences of authorities ancient and modern (including Machaivelli), as well as associations between politics and prudence, and the importance of law and history for Bodin and Le Roy. The second half of the analysis deals with the politique character that emerges in these texts: a powerful, even clairvoyant incarnation of political knowledge. The end of the chapter addresses the ways in which this characterisation is exclusive and excluding in terms of social hierarchy, global geography, and gender.

Having concentrated in the previous chapter on the foundation of Bodin’s political thought, in this chapter we turn to more specific questions regarding the relationship of politics and oeconomics and their relationship to ethics, and so reconstruct what Bodin was doing with the classical tripartite scheme of active philosophy. We will look closely at the difference between family and state and examine aspects of nature and necessity in Bodin’s thought. Far more than any other thinker, Bodin devoted considerable space to analysing the merits of the natural and the care for daily necessities for the political life. An analysis of Bodin’s understanding of wealth and of the relationship of private and public property leads to an examination of his notion of equality and to his notion of citizenship. Crucial for Bodin’s thought, these topics have not found much attention in scholarship. They are, however, most important for understanding who and what was included in and excluded from Bodin’s Renaissance commonwealth.