Abstract

Summary One of the great intellectual productions of the postwar period, J. G. A. Pocock's The Machiavellian Moment was also an intervention in the American polity of the 1970s. The book's content, its rhetorical style, its methodology, and even its physical printed form were all designed to effectuate a political gesture. The crises of 1968 to 1973 invalidated the optimistic liberalism of Pocock's academic circle. The history of political language offered a refuge and a programmatic foundation for Pocock's pragmatic conservatism. The Machiavellian Moment was designed to reinforce the weight of tradition in contemporary political debate