Niccolò Machiavelli Vivanti, Corrado; MacMichael, Simon
2021, 2013, 2021-08-10
eBook
A colorful, comprehensive, and authoritative account of Machiavelli's life and thought This is a colorful, comprehensive, and authoritative introduction to the life and work of the Florentine ...statesman, writer, and political philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527). Corrado Vivanti, who was one of the world's leading Machiavelli scholars, provides an unparalleled intellectual biography that demonstrates the close connections between Machiavelli's thought and his changing fortunes during the tumultuous Florentine republic and his subsequent exile. Vivanti's concise account covers not only Machiavelli's most famous works— The Prince, The Discourses, The Florentine Histories, and The Art of War —but also his letters, poetry, and comic dramas. While setting Machiavelli's life against a dramatic backdrop of war, crisis, and diplomatic intrigue, the book also paints a vivid human portrait of the man.
The thought and influence of Machiavelli have had a significant impact on a variety of academic disciplines, including political science and government, history, literature, language, theatre, and ...philosophy. Rather than inscribe Machiavelli within the boundaries of a single academic approach, tradition, or discourse, this volume assembles multidisciplinary perspectives on his writings on government, on his creative works, and on his legacy. The result is intended to appeal at once to generalists seeking baseline knowledge of Machiavelli and to specialists who are interested in critical views of Machiavelli that use a broad lens and that approach their subject from different angles.Contributors include: Susan Ashley, Salvatore Bizzarro, Julia Bondanella, JoAnn Cavallo, Salvatore Di Maria, Marie Gaille-Nikodimov, Eugene Garver, Joseph Khoury, William Klein, Sante Matteo, Gerry Milligan, RoseAnna Mueller, John Roe, Gerald Seaman, Charles Tarlton, Patricia Vilches, and Mary Walsh.
Between Friends Najemy, John M
2019, 20190115, 1993, 2019-10-04, Volume:
5272
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Between Friends offers the first extended close reading of the most famous epistolary dialogue of the Renaissance, the letters exchanged from 1513 to 1515 by Niccolo Machiavelli and Francesco ...Vettori. John Najemy reveals the literary richness and theoretical tensions of the correspondence, the crucial importance of the dialogue with Vettori in Machiavelli's emergence as a writer and political theorist, and the close but complex relationship between the letters and Machiavelli's major works on politics. Unlike previous and mostly fragmentary treatments of the correspondence, this book reads the letters as a continuously developing, collaborative text in which problems of language and interpretation gradually emerge as the critical issues. Najemy argues that Vettori's skeptical reaction to Machiavelli's first letters on politics and provoked Machiavelli into a defense of language's power to represent the world, a notion that soon become the underlying assumption of The Prince. Later, and largely through an apparently whimsical exchange of letters on love and the foibles of eros, Vettori led Machiavelli to confront the power of desire in language, which opened the way for a different, essentially poetic, approach to writing about politics that surfaces for the first time in the pages of the Discourses on Livy. John M. Najemy is Professor of History at Cornell University. He is the author of Corporatism and Consensus in Florentine Electoral Politics, 1280-1400 (North Carolina).
Originally published in 1993.
ThePrinceton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Scholarship in rhetorical political analysis and parliamentary studies devoted little attention to study how politicians employ intellectuals' authority and theories in their discourses. We offer ...methodological directions to navigate this territory, combining quantitative and qualitative analyses to investigate the employment of Machiavelli's figure in the Italian Parliament. We show that Machiavelli is regarded as a contested authority and that appeals to his arguments can perform different rhetorical functions, which are countered with different rhetorical tactics. In particular, we show that the right appropriates the realist Machiavelli, especially in foreign policy, both as a national symbol and as a legitimate source of insights on political affairs, while the left and the centre resist these claims with alternative rhetorical tactics. Finally, we provide an original dataset and a new theoretical framework for future explorations of intellectuals and other authoritative figures' rhetorical influence on politics.
InRedeeming "The Prince,"one of the world's leading Machiavelli scholars puts forth a startling new interpretation of arguably the most influential but widely misunderstood book in the Western ...political tradition. Overturning popular misconceptions and challenging scholarly consensus, Maurizio Viroli also provides a fresh introduction to the work. Seen from this original perspective, five centuries after its composition,The Princeoffers new insights into the nature and possibilities of political liberation.
Rather than a bible of unscrupulous politics,The Prince, Viroli argues, is actually about political redemption--a book motivated by Machiavelli's patriotic desire to see a new founding for Italy. Written in the form of an oration, following the rules of classical rhetoric, the book condenses its main message in the final section, "Exhortation to liberate Italy from the Barbarians." There Machiavelli creates the myth of a redeemer, an ideal ruler who ushers in an era of peace, freedom, and unity. Contrary to scholars who maintain that the exhortation was added later, Viroli proves that Machiavelli composed it along with the rest of the text, completing the whole by December 1513 or early 1514.
Only if we readThe Princeas a theory of political redemption, Viroli contends, can we at last understand, and properly evaluate, the book's most controversial pages on political morality, as well as put to rest the cliché of Machiavelli as a "Machiavellian."
Bold, clear, and provocative,Redeeming "The Prince"should permanently change how Machiavelli and his masterpiece are understood.
Uniting thirty years of authoritative scholarship by a master of textual detail, Machiavelli's Virtue is a comprehensive statement on the founder of modern politics. Harvey Mansfield reveals the role ...of sects in Machiavelli's politics, his advice on how to rule indirectly, and the ultimately partisan character of his project, and shows him to be the founder of such modern and diverse institutions as the impersonal state and the energetic executive. Accessible and elegant, this groundbreaking interpretation explains the puzzles and reveals the ambition of Machiavelli's thought.
Among the most provocative passages in Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince is his discussion of whether it is better for a political leader to be loved or feared by his or her subjects. Machiavelli ...argues that political stability and effective governance are more readily achieved if the people fear, rather than love, their political leaders. Noting that Machiavelli rarely cites biblical texts to demonstrate the wisdom of his counsel, this study begins with the question of whether he could have found illustrative examples of this position in the Hebrew Bible. I then ask a broader question about whether the presence of such examples would demonstrate a more fundamental agreement between the Hebrew Bible and Machiavelli on the topics of fear, love, and leadership. I examine primarily narrative materials, finding examples of leaders who successfully wield fear to enhance their authority, namely, Moses, Samuel, Joshua, and Solomon. In addition, Saul represents the exception that proves Machiavelli's rule, and David supports his claim that the people's love is fickle and, if unaccompanied by fear, can result in political chaos. I conclude by acknowledging a reluctance to commend fearing a leader especially in biblical legal texts, which instead promote fearing YHWH; but ultimately the evidence points to a substantial agreement between the Hebrew Bible and Machiavelli that the people's fear of their leader promotes national stability and affirms a leader's authority.
To what extent was Machiavelli a "Machiavellian"? Was he an amoral adviser of tyranny or a stalwart partisan of liberty? A neutral technician of power politics or a devout Italian patriot? A reviver ...of pagan virtue or initiator of modern nihilism?Reading Machiavellianswers these questions through original interpretations of Niccolò Machiavelli's three major political works-The Prince,Discourses, andFlorentine Histories-and demonstrates that a radically democratic populism seeded the Florentine's scandalous writings. John McCormick challenges the misguided understandings of Machiavelli set forth by prominent thinkers, including Jean-Jacques Rousseau and representatives of the Straussian and Cambridge schools.
McCormick emphasizes the fundamental, often unacknowledged elements of a vibrant Machiavellian politics: the utility of vigorous class conflict between elites and common citizens for virtuous democratic republics, the necessity of political and economic equality for genuine civic liberty, and the indispensability of religious tropes for the exercise of effective popular judgment. Interrogating the established reception of Machiavelli's work by such readers as Rousseau, Leo Strauss, Quentin Skinner, and J.G.A. Pocock, McCormick exposes what was effectively an elite conspiracy to suppress the Florentine's contentious, egalitarian politics. In recovering the too-long-concealed quality of Machiavelli's populism, this book acts as a Machiavellian critique of Machiavelli scholarship.
Advancing fresh renderings of works by Machiavelli while demonstrating how they have been misread previously,Reading Machiavellipresents a new outlook for how politics should be conceptualized and practiced.
Machiavelli's The Prince is an important modern work of political science, but it is also one that has been often misinterpreted by students and scholars. This work helps the reader to better ...understand Machiavelli's consequentialism and realism by using examples from modern films and television series to illustrate his messages.
