Niccolo Machiavelli

This essay interprets Machiavelli’s famous letter to Francesco Vettori in terms of a play-element that runs across his works. The letter to Vettori is a masterpiece of epistolary form, but beyond its most memorable passage, where Machiavelli recounts his evening in study, it has not received much scholarly attention. Reading the letter in its entirety is to discover Machiavelli’s account of an eclectic political education and the pleasures of playing with others. Machiavelli’s letter speaks to a basic ludicity in his (...) political thinking, in which play is not opposed to the serious, and diverse play forms can be thought together. Hans-George Gadamer’s Truth and Method, Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens, and Roger Caillois’s Man, Play, and Games provide resources for reconstructing this play-element in Machiavelli’s thought. (shrink)

The purpose of this succinct work is to present N. Machiavelli's classic republican view from his proposition of an inevitable paradox, the founding of an expansionist republic, difficult to govern, or the founding of a stable, but small and weak republic. Such a paradox, according to Machiavelli, should direct and condition all the constitutive devices of the republic when choosing what will be its destiny as a political body. The model of republic preferred by the Florentine will be the expansionist (...) model of Rome, leading him to assume all the devices that gave this republic its power. From this presentation of the Machiavellian proposition, we will analyse the assimilation of republican thought in England from the Elizabethan period, as well as the political-social scenario that exists there. This itinerary will allow us to understand, in general, why classical republicanism was received on English soil from the perspective of establishing a mixed, stable government, thus favouring the spread of the Venice myth as a serene republic and delaying the use, even that mitigated, of the republican presuppositions expressed in the Machiavellian work that directed towards a Roman model. (shrink)

Apocalypse, it seems, is everywhere. Preachers with vast followings proclaim the world's end and apocalyptic fears grip even the non-religious amid climate change, pandemics, and threats of nuclear war. But as these ideas pervade popular discourse, grasping their logic remains elusive. Ben Jones argues that we can gain insight into apocalyptic thought through secular thinkers. He starts with a puzzle: Why would secular thinkers draw on Christian apocalyptic beliefs--often dismissed as bizarre--to interpret politics? The apocalyptic tradition proves appealing in part (...) because it theorizes a special relation between crisis and utopia. Apocalyptic thought points to crisis as the vehicle to bring the previously impossible within reach, thus offering apparent resources for navigating challenges in ideal theory, which tries to imagine the best and most just society. By examining apocalyptic thought's appeal and risks, this study arrives at new insights on the limits of ideal theory and utopian hope. (shrink)

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

Machiavelli’s historical writings, notably the Discourses on Livy and the Florentine Histories, continued the tradition of the humanist historical enterprise. They were informed by th...

Profonda magia è un percorso a ritroso nella filosofia naturale e politica di Giordano Bruno, che ricostruisce la nozione di vincolo dagli ultimi scritti magici ai dialoghi italiani e alle prime opere latine. L’esigenza che muove la ricerca è quella di rintracciare nell’esperienza intellettuale e biografica del Nolano quale sia e come si costituisca la relazione tra filosofia naturale e politica. L’autore indaga se la riflessione politica possa essere slegata dallo studio della natura, o se trovi piuttosto la sua origine (...) e il suo sviluppo nel cuore stesso della physis. Per compiere quest’operazione egli isola e analizza quale sia la funzione che la nozione di vincolo assume tra la riflessione filosofico naturalistica e politico-antropologica. Ne risulta una ridefinizione della magia che è profonda non perché tesa verso il prodigioso, l’occulto e il soprannaturale, ma perché è la natura stessa, forza vincolante che lega e riconduce i suoi molteplici volti alla sua infinita unità. (shrink)

While scholars have widely acknowledged a reliance on medical language in the political theories of Marsilius of Padua and Niccolò Machiavelli, they have rarely investigated the epistemological status of this appropriation. Questioning Leo Strauss’ claim that Jewish-Arabic Platonic ideas on the philosopher-king could have been a possible model for Marsilius and Machiavelli, this paper aims to show that the use of medical language by Marsilius of Padua and Machiavelli entails a form of political knowledge that is decidedly at odds with (...) any kind of Platonic philosophical politics. This article makes the claim that, in their political theories, Marsilius and Machiavelli break with two key assumptions of Platonism: first, that philosophy as “absolute self-knowledge” is needed to rule; and, second, that philosophers must be lawgivers or legislators. (shrink)

RESUMEN El presente artículo busca determinar el sentido de la fundación política en el pensamiento de Maquiavelo, a partir de lo señalado en el capítulo VI del Príncipe. Nuestra hipótesis es que, en dicho texto, el Secretario florentino introduce la idea según la cual la auténtica fundación política debe ser realizada sobre una materia completamente informe y disponible. Dado que los fundadores míticos tuvieron una ocasión ideal para hacer algo así, el trabajo de los fundadores históricos es intentar recrear -en (...) la medida de lo posible- aquellas condiciones ideales de fundación, lo que exige aplicar grados muy elevados de violencia. Esta perspectiva maquiaveliana es, de algún modo, el punto de partida de buena parte del pensamiento político moderno. ABSTRACT This article tries to assess the sense of Political Foundation in Machiavelli’s thought, based on his statement in Chapter VI of The Prince. Our hypothesis is that - in this text - the Florentine secretary introduces the idea by which true political foundation must be carried out on matter completely devoid of form and fully available. Given that the mythical founders were presented with an ideal situation to undertake such a thing, the work of the historical founders is to try to recreate - when possible - those ideal founding conditions, which demands the application of very high levels of violence. This Machiavellian perspective is - in some way - the starting point of a major portion of the modern political thought. (shrink)

Volume 25, Issue 2, February - March 2020, Page 229-231.

This article revisits the long-standing question of the relations between ethics and politics in Machiavelli’s work, assessing its relevance to the ‘liberalism of fear’ in particular in the work of Judith Shklar, Bernard Williams and also John Dunn. The article considers ways in which Machiavelli has been a ‘negative’ resource for liberalism – for instance, as a presumed proponent of tyranny; but also ways in which even for the liberalism of fear he might be considered a ‘positive’ resource, above all (...) around the issues of political necessity and prudential judgement. (shrink)

This is the first English translation of the majority of Fichte’s 1807 essay on Machiavelli, which has been hailed as a masterpiece and was important for the development of German idealist political thought, as well as for its reception by figures such as Carl von Clausewitz, Max Weber, Leo Strauss, and Carl Schmitt. Fichte’s essay attempts to resuscitate Machiavelli as a legitimate political thinker and an “honest, reasonable, and meritorious man.” It tacitly critiques Napoleon, who was occupying Prussia when Fichte (...) composed the piece, and calls on the Germans to resist the French. And some have argued that it marks a shift in Fichte’s political thought toward a more realist position. (shrink)

This article seeks to address a tension in contemporary scholarship regarding Machiavelli’s view of human nature. While it is common for readers to identify Machiavelli’s rejection of any foundational law that determines the structure of the world, it is just as common for them to abstract human nature from this world and thereby to posit a fixed human essence. Machiavelli is thus seen as an anti-essentialist when it comes to external nature and as an essentialist when it comes to internal (...) human nature. I will attempt to demonstrate, however, that for Machiavelli these two interpretations are integrated into an overall ontology of being that rejects all forms of essentialist thinking, including all positive models of human nature. Machiavelli’s rejection of a fixed or positive human essence will be demonstrated by analyzing his account of the openness of human being to change and alteration by socialization, and his account of the multiplicity of forms of human doing and being. I argue that Machia... (shrink)

Luck egalitarianism is a family of egalitarian theories of distributive justice that give a special place to luck, choice, and responsibility. These theories can be understood as responding to perceived weaknesses in influential earlier theories of both the left – in particular Rawls’ liberal egalitarianism (1971) – and the right – Nozick’s libertarianism (1974) stands out here. Rawls put great emphasis on the continuity of his theory with the great social contract theories of modern political thought, particularly emphasising its Kantian (...) character, while Nozick overtly develops his theory as an elaboration of John Locke’s account of property. By contrast, how luck egalitarianism is related to the history of political thought or philosophy more generally has been left unexplored by its proponents. Perhaps this is because they see luck egalitarianism, with its focus on individual choice and association with such contemporary concerns as equality of opportunity, as without significant predecessors in the canon. My purpose in this chapter is to make the tentative first steps towards identifying some historical antecedents of luck egalitarianism among the main works of Western political thought, in particular Aristotle, Machiavelli, and Locke. (shrink)

Niccolò Machiavelli’s _The Prince_ is one of the most influential works in the history of political thought and the adjective Machiavellian is well-known and perhaps even over-used. So why does the meaning of the text continue to be debated to the present day? And how does a contemporary reader get to grips with a book full of references to the politics of the early 16 th Century? The Routledge Guidebook to Machiavelli’s The Prince provides readers with the historical background, textual (...) analysis, and other relevant information needed for a greater understanding and appreciation of this classic text. This guidebook introduces: the historical, political and intellectual context in which Machiavelli was working the key ideas developed by Machiavelli throughout the text and the examples he uses to illustrate them the relationship of _The Prince _to _The Discourses _and Machiavelli’s other works Featuring a timeline, maps and suggestions for further reading throughout, this book is an invaluable guide for anyone who wants to be able to engage more fully with _The Prince_. (shrink)

Steven B. Smith examines the concept of modernity, not as the end product of historical developments but as a state of mind. He explores modernism as a source of both pride and anxiety, suggesting that its most distinctive characteristics are the self-criticisms and doubts that accompany social and political progress. Providing profiles of the modern project’s most powerful defenders and critics—from Machiavelli and Spinoza to Saul Bellow and Isaiah Berlin—this provocative work of philosophy and political science offers a novel perspective (...) on what it means to be modern and why discontent and sometimes radical rejection are its inevitable by-products. (shrink)

The fully understanding of the Machiavellian concept of the State depends on the determination of the idea of political equality. Political equality must be conceived, in its turn, as domination equality and absence of privilege/precedence; in other words, absence of subordination. Taking into account a definition such as that, the Machiavellian model of the State could only be the Republic. So, this paper argues G. Pancera`s view, proposed in his book “Maquiavel entre Repúblicas”, that such model of the State was (...) more explicitly formulated in Machiavelli`s Discursus. This interpretation will be questioned, pointing out the existence of textual elements in the Discursus which allow us to think that a Principate or a Monarchy could also be among Machiavelli’s purpose to the reform of the Florence State examined in the Discursus. -/- Para captar a concepção maquiaveliana de Estado é necessário determinar a ideia de igualdade política. Esta deve ser entendida como igualdade de comando e ausência de privilégio/precedência, ou seja, ausência de subordinação. Considerando esta definição, o modelo de Estado maquiaveliano só pode ser a república. O artigo discute a partir da obra de G. Pancera “Maquiavel entre repúblicas” a questão, levantada por Pancera, de que seria no Discursus de Maquiavel que semelhante modelo de Estado estaria formulado de modo mais explícito. Problematizaremos esta interpretação apontando para a existência de elementos textuais da obra citada que autorizam pensar que igualmente um principado ou monarquia poderiam estar na intenção de Maquiavel na reforma do Estado de Florença examinada no Discursus. (shrink)

In "Machiavelli’s Art of Politics" Alejandro Bárcenas offers a reexamination of Niccolò Machiavelli’s political thought in order to propose a concise and historically accurate portrayal of his ideas and intellectual context. -/- This study provides a nuanced view of the complexities of Machiavelli’s thought by analyzing his classical background, taking into particular consideration the influence of Xenophon, and his view of the ideal ruler as someone who creates the conditions for a flourishing human life. In addition, Bárcenas explains why Machiavelli (...) defends a republican political order that encourages citizens to live according to their own laws while serving a common good and revises his legacy through the writings of Leo Strauss, Eric Voegelin and Maurizio Viroli. (shrink)

_Uncovers clues regarding the inner life of Machiavelli's political leaders._.

This book gives a radical, new, chapter-by-chapter reading of Machiavelli's The Prince, arguing that it is an ironic masterpiece with a moral purpose. It outlines Machiavelli's most important ironic techniques: a normatively coded use of language.

Times of prolonged conflict spur great minds to seek a lasting peace. Thus was the case of Warring States China, which saw the rise of the Hundred Schools of Thought, including the Doadejing and the Han Feizi, and Renaissance Italy, which produced Niccolò Machiavelli. Witnessing their respective societies fall prey to internal corruption and external aggression, all three thinkers sought ways to produce a strong, stable state that would allow both the leader and the populace to endure. Fortune and the (...) Dao: A Comparative Study of Machiavelli, the Daodejing, and the Han Feizi demonstrates where the shortcomings of each theory lie, with emphasis on the similarities among Machiavelli, Laozi, and Han Feizi. Jason P. Blahuta ultimately argues that if Machiavelli’s philosophy, the most comprehensive of the three theories, were supplemented by aspects of the Daodejing, the revision would potentially overcome the deficiencies of the original. (shrink)

At Discorsi II.20, Machiavelli defines auxiliary arms as those, “whom a prince or a republic send captained and already paid for, for your aid.” My contention is that Machiavelli’s treatment of auxiliary arms is much more nuanced than it may seem at first glance. Throughout his works, Machiavelli articulates this type of force from the standpoint of the prince but also, surprisingly, from the standpoint of the people. In their princely employment, auxiliary arms act instrumentally as means for the projection (...) of power. However, analyzed from the standpoint of the people, auxiliary force exposes the projects of the state to the radically aleatory. Acknowledging the aspectival function played by the definition of auxiliaries in Machiavelli’s texts offers a new vantage point for re-reading Machiavelli on the nature of authority, power and the conflict of the umori. (shrink)

For those familiar with Machiavelli’s texts, Foucault’s interpretation of Macchiavelli in his 1978 lecture series Sécurité, Territoire, Population1 is surprising. Although Machiavelli figures prominently in five of the thirteen lectures,2 Foucault treats Machiavelli as if he were the author of only one book—The Prince—and his reading treats this complex text as if it covered only one topic: how to guarantee the security of the Prince. Clearly Foucault did not intend his interpretation of Machiavelli as a close exegesis. Other discussions of (...) Foucault’s treatment of Machiavelli have acknowledged the role Machiavelli plays in these lectures and even note the inadequacy of the interpretation given by Foucault, but most commentators do not pursue Foucault’s reading further.3 This investigation is not concerned with whether Foucault got Machiavelli right. Rather, Foucault’s reading of Machiavelli is noteworthy because it is partial and incomplete in a way reminiscent of Foucault’s reading of Hobbes in, Il faut défendre la société. This fragmentary character of Foucault’s inscription of Machiavelli as a forerunner of the history of biopolitique allows an innovative reading of the Florentine that connects Machiavelli’s thinking, however indirectly, on a trajectory that encounters, for instance, Foucault’s analysis of populations, the police state, and even his reading of liberalism during the 1978-­‐ 1979 lectures. My argument here is that the specific way Foucault’s inscribes Machiavelli in the history of gouvernementalité, while seeming to reject him, in fact acts to resuscitate, and thereby relay, a reading of Machiavelli as a thinker who articulates encounters among political practices engaged within a horizon of radical immanence. (shrink)

Political protesters often don’t play by the rules. Think of the Occupy Movement, which brought lower Manhattan to a standstill in 2011 under the slogan, “We are the 99%”. Closer to home, think of the refugee activists who assisted a breakout from South Australia’s Woomera detention centre in 2002. Both are examples of contentious politics, or forms of political engagement outside the institutional channels of political decision-making. The democratic credentials of contentious politics are highly ambivalent. On the one hand, contentious (...) politics appears to have insufficient respect for democratic decision. Protesters are often forceful, uncivil and rowdy, aiming to disproportionately influence policy. But shouldn’t proposals be put forward with civility through the proper channels? And shouldn’t their proponents accept with good grace if they are democratically rebuffed? A closer look at the history of political thought can provide us with the framework to assess the case for and against the democratic reasonableness of contentious politics. (shrink)

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.

This essay explores the legacy of the Platonic philosophy at the end of the sixteenth century, when the Catholic Church switched from a tolerant approach to a rejection of the heterodox elements of the prisca theologia, and provides an analysis of Ciro Spontoni’s Corona del principe (1590) and Dodici libri del governo di Stato (1599). This two works clearly witnessed this change in the contemporary cultural climate, as Katinis shows highlighting the contrast between the massive presence of Platonism and Hermeticism (...) in the Corona and the exclusion of them from the Dodici libri. Furthermore, the essay examines the relationship between Spontoni’s political arguments and their sources. The essay addresses the major contemporary trends, including Platonism, Aristotelianism, Machiavellism, and Hermeticism, and pays particular attention to Marsilio Ficino’s commentary of Plato’s Republic, translated in vernacular by Spontoni himself and published with his Corona del principe. (shrink)

Machiavelli consistently advises that well-ordered republics must ‘keep their citizens poor’. Although this maxim recurs throughout the Discourses, Machiavelli never directly elaborates on what this prescription for civic poverty requires. To the limited extent that this maxim has received critical examination, it is commonly regarded as contending that citizens must live in a condition of material austerity. Through an analysis of Machiavelli's writings on the German free cities, this article challenges this interpretation and argues that rather than requiring that citizens (...) live at some particular level of poverty, the maxim instead requires only that citizens maintain certain attitudes towards poverty and wealth. (shrink)

We are presently confronted with an impressive growth of the religious phenomenon. This can be observed not only related to both the outbreak of new religions and the increasing attendance to worship services, but also for the presence of the religious language in the political discourse. We can see nowadays a political use of religion and a religious use of politics. When we approach the religions in a large scale perspective is possible to verify that in all of them both (...) aspects live together, and they are contradictory and excludent only in appearance. This evidence brings some particular questions: there would be more political and bellicose religions than others? Or maybe the contentious nature of religions rises when they become ideologies, in the same way ideologies impose themselves politically when they act like religion? We will let ourselves be guided by this hypothesis in order to explore the ambiguous relation between politics and religion. It was precisely after the death of the ideologies that religions of any creed reappeared strongly in the scenario. We will take as references to this theoretical task two thinkers in particular: Marsilius of Padua and Machiavelli. They both will guide us to think respectively the religious use of politics and the political use of religion. -/- Estamos confrontados na atualidade com um vertiginoso crescimento do fenômeno religioso. Isso pode ser observado não apenas pelo surgimento de novas religiões e o aumento da frequência aos cultos, mas também pela presença da linguagem religiosa no discurso político de tal modo que podemos falar num uso político da religião e um uso religioso da política. Quando abordamos as religiões na longa duração, percebemos que em todas elas coabitam estes dois aspectos, contraditórios e excludentes apenas na aparência. Esta constatação leva ao questionamento: existiriam religiões mais políticas, ou mais conquistadoras, do que outras? Ou então, talvez, a natureza belicosa das religiões emergiria a partir do momento em que elas se erigem em ideologias, da mesma forma como as ideologias se impõem politicamente quando agem à maneira de religiões? Neste trabalho nos orientaremos por esta hipótese para explorar a relação ambígua entre política e religião, pois foi precisamente após a morte das ideologias que as religiões, independente do credo, retornaram com toda a força. Para tanto, tomaremos como referência teórica dois pensadores, Marsílio de Pádua e Nicolau Maquiavel, para pensar, respectivamente, o uso religioso da política e o uso político da religião. (shrink)

In this article, I offer a reassessment of the influence of two disparate bodies of thought – republicanism and existentialism – on Hannah Arendt. Arendt, I argue, is not involved in an ‘agonistic appropriation’ of Heidegger. Arendt identifies two opposed attitudes in Heidegger’s work. The first Promethean moment places Heidegger squarely in the tradition of Western political philosophy, and the second seemingly correcting for this recommends a quietism. Arendt rejects both these attitudes. Machiavelli rather than Heidegger, I argue, is the (...) key influence on Arendt's political thought. Through a reading of Arendt’s published works and her unpublished 1955 lecture notes on Machiavelli I show that the central categories of Arendt’s thought emerge from her meditation on Machiavelli’s texts. Arendt finds in Machiavelli a performative understanding of politics, an accurate understanding of the connection between morality and politics, and a primacy given to politics that she thought it deserves. (shrink)

This anthology of some 60 excerpts offers a comprehensive overview from across Machiavelli's work of his ideas on international relations. It includes an introductory chapter framing the volume and accompanying illustrative material to situate Machiavelli's work within the complex political events of his time.

Medieval and Renaissance humanist political discourse and Machiavelli -- Machiavelli and Spanish imperialist discourse in the sixteenth century -- Machiavelli and the foundations of the Spanish reason-of-state tradition : Giovanni Botero and Pedro de Ribadeneyra -- Machiavellian discourse in the Hispanic Baroque reason-of-state tradition -- Juan Pablo Mártir Rizo's rereading of the Prince -- Conclusion.

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.

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.