Vittorio Morfino draws out the implications of the dynamic Spinoza-Machiavelli encounter by focusing on the concepts of causality, temporality and politics. This allows him to think through the ...relationship between ontology and politics, leading to an understanding of history as a complex and plural interweaving of different rhythms.
Historians of political thought have argued that the real Machiavelli is the republican thinker and theorist of civic virtù.Machiavellian Rhetoricargues in contrast that Renaissance readers were ...right to see Machiavelli as a Machiavel, a figure of force and fraud, rhetorical cunning and deception. Taking the rhetorical Machiavel as a point of departure, Victoria Kahn argues that this figure is not simply the result of a naïve misreading of Machiavelli but is attuned to the rhetorical dimension of his political theory in a way that later thematic readings of Machiavelli are not. Her aim is to provide a revised history of Renaissance Machiavellism, particularly in England: one that sees the Machiavel and the republican as equally valid--and related--readings of Machiavelli's work.
In this revised history, Machiavelli offers a rhetoric for dealing with the realm of de facto political power, rather than a political theory with a coherent thematic content; and Renaissance Machiavellism includes a variety of rhetorically sophisticated appreciations and appropriations of Machiavelli's own rhetorical approach to politics. Part I offers readings ofThe Prince, The Discourses,and Counter-Reformation responses to Machiavelli. Part II discusses the reception of Machiavelli in sixteenth-and seventeenth-century England. Part III focuses on Milton, especiallyAreopagitica, Comus,andParadise Lost.
Exemplum Lyons, John D; Lyons, John D
2014., 20140701, 2014, 1990, Volume:
1056
eBook
Examples, crucial links between discourse and society's view of reality, have until now been largely neglected in literary criticism. In the first book-length study of the rhetoric of example, John ...Lyons situates this figure by comparing it with more frequently studied tropes such as metaphor and synecdoche, discusses meanings of the terms example and exemplum, and proposes a set of descriptive concepts for the study of example in early modern literature. Tracing its paradoxical nature back to Aristotle's Rhetoric, Lyons shows how exemplary rhetoric is caught between often competing aims of persuasive general statement and accurate representation. In French and Italian texts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries this dual task was rendered still more challenging by a transition to new sources of examples as the age of discovery brought increased emphasis on observation. The writers of this period were aware of a crisis in exemplary rhetoric, a situation in which serious questions were raised about how authors and audience would find a common ground in interpreting representative instances. Lyons's focus on the strategy of example leads to new readings of six major writers--Machiavelli, Marguerite de Navarre, Montaigne, Pascal, Descartes, and Marie de Lafayette.
Originally published in 1990.
ThePrinceton Legacy Libraryuses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback 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.
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.
Deep Republicanism: Prelude to Professionalism establishes the importance of Machiavelli's radical republican agenda in understanding the major revolutions of the modern world. Donald Hodges's ...nuanced analysis of The Discourse of Livy reveals a subversive republicanism in Machiavelli's theorizing that is at odds with the demoliberalism often perceived as the work's primary political agenda. Hodges follows this strand of republicanism through history, providing a fascinating account of how these two political philosophies vied with each other throughout much of modern history in conflicts that culminated in the Russian and American Revolutions. A unique treatment of Machiavelli's political agenda, its implementation by numerous historical actors, and its legacy, professionalism,Deep Republicanism examines aspects of Machiavelli's work that have often been overlooked. It also sheds light on Machiavelli himself, whose famously devious and crafty writing style was partly motivated by his political vulnerability in fifteenth century Florence. Hodges's study is both a novel examination of the historical influence of Machiavelli's thought and a testament to the enduring power, influence, and subtlety of one of the best-known Western political philosophers.
The man whose name is shorthand for all that is ugly in politics was more nuanced than his reputation suggests. Christopher Celenza’s portrait of Machiavelli removes the varnish to reveal not just ...the hardnosed philosopher but the skilled diplomat, learned commentator on ancient history, comic playwright, tireless letter writer, and thwarted lover.
Niccolò Machiavelli, though best known as a teacher of princes, is also a teacher of republics. In his Discourses on Livy, he argues that republican liberty depends upon a contentious mixture of ...elitism and populism. Only the elite’s wily pursuit of domination, combined with the people’s spirited resistance to such domination, can produce that compromise between servitude and license known as liberty. The task of the founder and the statesman is to construct and maintain the appropriate “orders and modes” within which each party to the conflict can make its appropriate contribution. The elite, at its best, contributes prudence, military virtue, and the capacity to innovate, while the people contributes moral and political stability. David Levy explains and defends Machiavelli’s conception of liberty as conflict, and then uses that conception as the lens through which to understand his views on religion, war and imperialism, goodness and corruption, and the relation between republics and princes. Also discussed is Machiavelli’s own kind of wiliness: his artful and often ironic mode of writing. Levy shows that Machiavelli’s republican teaching as a whole remains persuasive today, and deserves careful consideration by all those concerned with the survival and the success of liberty. This book will be of interest both to beginning and more advanced students of Machiavelli, as well as to students of modern republicanism and of the history of ideas.
One of the greatest political advisers of all time, Niccolò Machiavelli thought long and hard about how citizens could identify great leaders-ones capable of defending and enhancing the liberty, ...honor, and prosperity of their countries. Drawing on the full range of the Florentine's writings, acclaimed Machiavelli biographer Maurizio Viroli gathers and interprets Machiavelli's timeless wisdom about choosing leaders. The brief and engaging result is a new kind of Prince-one addressed to citizens rather than rulers and designed to make you a better voter.
Demolishing popular misconceptions that Machiavelli is a cynical realist, the book shows that he believes republics can't survive, let alone thrive, without leaders who are virtuous as well as effective. Among much other valuable advice, Machiavelli says that voters should pick leaders who put the common good above narrower interests and who make fighting corruption a priority, and he explains why the best way to recognize true leaders is to carefully examine their past actions and words. On display throughout are the special insights that Machiavelli gained from long, direct knowledge of real political life, the study of history, and reflection on the political thinkers of antiquity.
Recognizing the difference between great and mediocre political leaders is difficult but not at all impossible-with Machiavelli's help. So do your country a favor. Read this book, then vote like Machiavelli would.
This book places Machiavelli in historical context but argues that his understanding of moral conflicts is well ahead of his time. Instead of arguing for the autonomy of politics, as is commonly ...supposed, Machiavelli grapples with the special problems of role-differentiated morality, where the duties of public office often conflict with the demands of conventional morality.
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