Machiavelli on Liberty and Conflict

Machiavelli on Liberty and Conflict PDF Author: David Johnston
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022642930X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 430

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Book Description
Papers from a conference held 6-7 December 2013 at the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies at Columbia University to mark the five-hundredth anniversary of the publication of The Prince.

Machiavelli on Liberty and Conflict

Machiavelli on Liberty and Conflict PDF Author: David Johnston
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022642930X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 430

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Book Description
Papers from a conference held 6-7 December 2013 at the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies at Columbia University to mark the five-hundredth anniversary of the publication of The Prince.

Machiavelli on Freedom and Civil Conflict

Machiavelli on Freedom and Civil Conflict PDF Author: Marie Gaille
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004376011
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
In Machiavelli on Freedom and Civil Conflict, Marie Gaille discusses Machiavelli’s conception of civil conflict, its historical and medical language, and its uses in contemporary conceptions of democracy.

Machiavelli in Tumult

Machiavelli in Tumult PDF Author: Gabriele Pedullà
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107177278
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Reconstructs the origins of the idea that social conflict, and not concord, makes political communities powerful.

Machiavelli's Politics

Machiavelli's Politics PDF Author: Catherine H. Zuckert
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022643480X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 511

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Book Description
Machiavelli is popularly known as a teacher of tyrants, a key proponent of the unscrupulous “Machiavellian” politics laid down in his landmark political treatise The Prince. Others cite the Discourses on Livy to argue that Machiavelli is actually a passionate advocate of republican politics who saw the need for occasional harsh measures to maintain political order. Which best characterizes the teachings of the prolific Italian philosopher? With Machiavelli’s Politics, Catherine H. Zuckert turns this question on its head with a major reinterpretation of Machiavelli’s prose works that reveals a surprisingly cohesive view of politics. Starting with Machiavelli’s two major political works, Zuckert persuasively shows that the moral revolution Machiavelli sets out in The Prince lays the foundation for the new form of democratic republic he proposes in the Discourses. Distrusting ambitious politicians to serve the public interest of their own accord, Machiavelli sought to persuade them in The Prince that the best way to achieve their own ambitions was to secure the desires and ambitions of their subjects and fellow citizens. In the Discourses, he then describes the types of laws and institutions that would balance the conflict between the two in a way that would secure the liberty of most, if not all. In the second half of her book, Zuckert places selected later works—La Mandragola, The Art of War, The Life of Castruccio Castracani, Clizia, and Florentine Histories—under scrutiny, showing how Machiavelli further developed certain aspects of his thought in these works. In The Art of War, for example, he explains more concretely how and to what extent the principles of organization he advanced in The Prince and the Discourses ought to be applied in modern circumstances. Because human beings act primarily on passions, Machiavelli attempts to show readers what those passions are and how they can be guided to have productive rather than destructive results. A stunning and ambitious analysis, Machiavelli’s Politics brilliantly shows how many conflicting perspectives do inform Machiavelli’s teachings, but that one needs to consider all of his works in order to understand how they cohere into a unified political view. This is a magisterial work that cannot be ignored if a comprehensive understanding of the philosopher is to be obtained.

Machiavelli and the Orders of Violence

Machiavelli and the Orders of Violence PDF Author: Yves Winter
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108580718
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description
Niccolò Machiavelli is the most prominent and notorious theorist of violence in the history of European political thought - prominent, because he is the first to candidly discuss the role of violence in politics; and notorious, because he treats violence as virtue rather than as vice. In this original interpretation, Yves Winter reconstructs Machiavelli's theory of violence and shows how it challenges moral and metaphysical ideas. Winter attributes two central theses to Machiavelli: first, violence is not a generic technology of government but a strategy that tends to correlate with inequality and class conflict; and second, violence is best understood not in terms of conventional notions of law enforcement, coercion, or the proverbial 'last resort', but as performance. Most political violence is effective not because it physically compels another agent who is thus coerced; rather, it produces political effects by appealing to an audience. As such, this book shows how in Machiavelli's world, violence is designed to be perceived, experienced, remembered, and narrated.

Wily Elites and Spirited Peoples in Machiavelli's Republicanism

Wily Elites and Spirited Peoples in Machiavelli's Republicanism PDF Author: David N. Levy
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780739197011
Category : Elite (Social sciences)
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In this book, author David N. Levy uses Machiavelli's conflict between the elite and the people as the lens through which to understand the other major features of his republicanism. Through analyzing his Discourses on Livy, Levy shows that Machiavelli's principles can provide support for, and constructive criticism of, modern liberal democracy.

Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy: New Readings

Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy: New Readings PDF Author: Diogo Pires Aurélio
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004442073
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 291

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Book Description
Original scholarly essays by leading philosophers, which bring to life Machiavelli’s lengthiest and most challenging work.

Machiavelli on Liberty and Conflict

Machiavelli on Liberty and Conflict PDF Author: David Johnston
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022642944X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 430

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Book Description
More than five hundred years after Machiavelli wrote The Prince, his landmark treatise on the pragmatic application of power remains a pivot point for debates on political thought. While scholars continue to investigate interpretations of The Prince in different contexts throughout history, from the Renaissance to the Risorgimento and Italian unification, other fruitful lines of research explore how Machiavelli’s ideas about power and leadership can further our understanding of contemporary political circumstances. With Machiavelli on Liberty and Conflict, David Johnston, Nadia Urbinati, and Camila Vergara have brought together the most recent research on The Prince, with contributions from many of the leading scholars of Machiavelli, including Quentin Skinner, Harvey Mansfield, Erica Benner, John McCormick, and Giovanni Giorgini. Organized into four sections, the book focuses first on Machiavelli’s place in the history of political thought: Is he the last of the ancients or the creator of a new, distinctly modern conception of politics? And what might the answer to this question reveal about the impact of these disparate traditions on the founding of modern political philosophy? The second section contrasts current understandings of Machiavelli’s view of virtues in The Prince. The relationship between political leaders, popular power, and liberty is another perennial problem in studies of Machiavelli, and the third section develops several claims about that relationship. Finally, the fourth section explores the legacy of Machiavelli within the republican tradition of political thought and his relevance to enduring political issues.

Reading Machiavelli

Reading Machiavelli PDF Author: John P. McCormick
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069121154X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
A new reading of Machiavelli’s major works that demonstrates how he has been previously misread To what extent was Niccolò 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 Machiavelli answers these questions through original interpretations of Machiavelli’s three major political works—The Prince, Discourses, and Florentine 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, and he emphasizes the fundamental, often unacknowledged elements of a vibrant Machiavellian politics. Advancing fresh readings of Machiavelli’s work, this book presents a new outlook on how politics should be conceptualized and practiced.

Machiavellian Democracy

Machiavellian Democracy PDF Author: John P. McCormick
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139494961
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
Intensifying economic and political inequality poses a dangerous threat to the liberty of democratic citizens. Mounting evidence suggests that economic power, not popular will, determines public policy, and that elections consistently fail to keep public officials accountable to the people. McCormick confronts this dire situation through a dramatic reinterpretation of Niccolò Machiavelli's political thought. Highlighting previously neglected democratic strains in Machiavelli's major writings, McCormick excavates institutions through which the common people of ancient, medieval and Renaissance republics constrained the power of wealthy citizens and public magistrates, and he imagines how such institutions might be revived today. It reassesses one of the central figures in the Western political canon and decisively intervenes into current debates over institutional design and democratic reform. McCormick proposes a citizen body that excludes socioeconomic and political elites and grants randomly selected common people significant veto, legislative and censure authority within government and over public officials.