In this article I explore Montesquieu's discussion of republics and the constitution of England in order to question the extent to which he should be accorded a central place in a tradition of modern republicanism. This involves challenging Paul Rahe's recent thesis that Montesquieu thought both that monarchy was not at all suited to modernity and that England was a republic all along. By stressing the importance of honour and ambition I argue that the liberty that Montesquieu thought exemplified in the English constitution was, in large part, secured by its monarchical principle. Moreover, by eschewing the relevance of political virtue for modern commercial societies, Montesquieu set his own proposals out in opposition to the prevalent French republican discourse of his time; thus it is highly problematic to view him as having proposed a republic for the moderns. The article also serves to disentangle Montesquieu's understanding of political liberty from his analysis of republics in order to refute the idea that he provides support for a distinctively republican conception of liberty as non-domination. This undermines the republican critique of liberalism set forth by Philip Pettit, which is further challenged by considering the affinities between Montesquieu's and Constant's conceptions of liberty. Many commentators have argued that Montesquieu repudiated classical republicanism, yet on the reading advanced in this article it is equally problematic to view him as a modern republican.

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Thomas Hobbes has recently been cast as one of the forefathers of political realism. This article evaluates his place in the realist tradition by focusing on three key themes: the priority of legitimacy over justice, the relation between ethics and politics, and the place of imagination in politics. The thread uniting these themes is the importance Hobbes placed on achieving a moral consensus around peaceful coexistence, a point which distances him from realists who view the two as competing goals of politics. The article maintains that only a qualified version of the autonomy of the political position can be attributed to Hobbes, while arguing more generally that attending to the relation between ethics and politics is central to assessing his liberal credentials from a realist perspective. Against the prevalent reading of Hobbes as a hypothetical contract theorist, the article proceeds to show that the place of consent in his theory is better understood as part of his wider goal of transforming the imagination of his audience; a goal which is animated by concerns that realists share.