Machiavelli and the Orders of Violence

New York: Cambridge University Press (2018)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

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.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,616

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Violence, oppresssion.David T. Risser - 1999 - In Christopher B. Gray (ed.), The Philosophy of Law: An Encyclopedia (vol. 2). Garland Publishing, Inc.:893-895.
Foucault, Politics, and Violence.Johanna Oksala - 2011 - Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press.
The media and political violence.Virginia Held - 1997 - The Journal of Ethics 1 (2):187-202.
The Political calculus.Niccolò Machiavelli & Anthony Parel (eds.) - 1972 - [Toronto]: University of Toronto Press.
On the Violence of Systemic Violence.Harry van der Linden - 2012 - Radical Philosophy Review 15 (1):33-51.

Analytics

Added to PP
2018-03-10

Downloads
13 (#886,512)

6 months
4 (#319,344)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Citations of this work

Niccolò Machiavelli.Cary Nederman - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references