L’oeconomie politique di Antoine de Montchrétien tra Ragion di Stato e sovranità

The essay deals with the relationship between reason of state, the birth of political economy and sovereignty in Antoine de Montchrétien’s Traicté de l’oeconomie politique. This work is in fact interpreted as one of the main ramifications that the discourse on the art of governing, which contemporary authors named reason of state, took place in Europe. Therefore, I will argue that the treatise does not represent an anticipation of the future science of economics, but a specific attempt to configure an art of the government out of a reinterpretation of political Aristotelianism. When compared with the theory of sovereignty elaborated by Jean Bodin, the Traicté by Montchrétien appears to express a different political rationality, specifically oriented on developing a new art for the “government of men” within a state in the modern age.