_Discourses on Livy_ is the founding document of modern republicanism, and Harvey C. Mansfield and Nathan Tarcov have provided the definitive English translation of this classic work. Faithful to the original Italian text, properly attentive to Machiavelli's idiom and subtlety of thought, it is eminently readable. With a substantial introduction, extensive explanatory notes, a glossary of key words, and an annotated index, the _Discourses_ reveals Machiavelli's radical vision of a new science of politics, a vision of "new modes and orders" (...) that continue to shape the modern ethos. "[Machiavelli] found in Livy the means to inspire scholars for five centuries. Within the _Discourses_, often hidden and sometimes unintended by their author, lie the seeds of modern political thought.... [Mansfield and Tarcov's] translation is careful and idiomatic."—Peter Stothard, _The Times_ "Translated with painstaking accuracy—but also great readability."—_Weekly Standard_ "A model of contemporary scholarship and a brave effort at Machiavelli translation that allows the great Florentine to speak in his own voice."—_Choice_. (shrink)

_Discourses on Livy_ is the founding document of modern republicanism, and Harvey C. Mansfield and Nathan Tarcov have provided the definitive English translation of this classic work. Faithful to the original Italian text, properly attentive to Machiavelli's idiom and subtlety of thought, it is eminently readable. With a substantial introduction, extensive explanatory notes, a glossary of key words, and an annotated index, the _Discourses_ reveals Machiavelli's radical vision of a new science of politics, a vision of "new modes and orders" (...) that continue to shape the modern ethos. "[Machiavelli] found in Livy the means to inspire scholars for five centuries. Within the _Discourses_, often hidden and sometimes unintended by their author, lie the seeds of modern political thought.... [Mansfield and Tarcov's] translation is careful and idiomatic."—Peter Stothard, _The Times_ "Translated with painstaking accuracy—but also great readability."—_Weekly Standard_ "A model of contemporary scholarship and a brave effort at Machiavelli translation that allows the great Florentine to speak in his own voice."—_Choice_. (shrink)

This influential study contrasts the practices of ancient Rome with those of the author's 16th-century contemporaries. Machiavelli's The Prince offers advice on ruling a kingdom; this treatise explains the structure and benefits of a republic. Topics include establishing a republic's internal structure, conducting warfare, and exhibiting leadership qualities.

Machiavelli is known chiefly for The Prince, but his main considerations on politics are in his most profound and later work Discourses on Livy, the complexity, length and style of which have often discouraged new readers and interpreters of Machiavelli, despite its historical and theoretical importance. For this reason, the Discourses has not been given the attention it deserves. This volume of newly commissioned essays by some of the world's leading experts on Machiavelli overcomes this gap. It (...) is the first collective volume dedicated specifically to this work, ranging over topics such as Machiavelli's republicanism, the relation between liberty and tyranny, the role of religion, his conception of history, his writing style, his view of society as a plural and conflictive body, his suggestion of how a free state should be organized, or his notions of the people and virtù. Contributors include: Jérémie Barthas, Thomas Berns, Alessandro Campi, J. Patrick Coby, Marie Gaille, Marco Geuna, Mark Jurdjevic, Cary J. Nederman, Gabriele Pedullà, Diogo Pires Aurélio, Fabio Raimondi, Andre Santos Campos, Miguel Vatter, and Camila Vergara. (shrink)

The ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry has a parallel in an equally ancient dispute between philosophy and history. Which is to be the great teacher, ideas, words, or deeds? In the education of the human race, particularly for political life, are we to think of the state as an ideal concept, as a work of art, or as an achievement of a person of action? These themes have exercised political thinkers as old as Plato and Aristotle and as modern (...) as Hobbes and Hegel, as well as perhaps the first modern, Niccolò Machiavelli. The issues of power, reason, and language, raised again and again in his masterpiece, The Prince, are equally central to the longer, less often read, but no less profound work, the Discourses on Livy, here given a loving and lucid translation, with a perceptive and helpful introduction, notes, glossary, and index. The Prince, usually taken as recommending absolute and ruthless individual sovereignty, is presumed to be the characteristic work of its author. The Discourses, with its recommendation of virtue and republicanism, on the other hand, is thought of as an inconsistent extravagation from the true Machiavellian position. However, as the translators make clear, this is textually and conceptually foreign to the facts. Machiavelli perhaps emphasizes the one set of values in the shorter book, and the other in the longer, but both are necessary to a full picture of his thought. The political problem for Machiavelli is balancing force with freedom. The unity of states is effected by force, their diversity by freedom. There is a problem of the one and the many in political theory as there is in other branches of philosophy. (shrink)

Among the theses that for centuries have ensured Niccolò Machiavelli an ambiguous fame, a special place goes to his extremely positive opinion of social conflicts, and, more in particular, to the claim that in ancient Rome 'the disunion between the plebs and the Roman senate made that republic free and powerful'. Contrary to a long tradition that had always highly valued civic concord, Machiavelli thought that - at least under certain conditions - internecine discord could be a source of strength (...) and not of weakness, and built upon this daring proposition an original vision of political order. Machiavelli in Tumult is the first book-length study entirely devoted to analyzing this idea, its ancient roots, its enduring influence up until the American and the French Revolution, and its relevance for contemporary political theory. (shrink)

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

Discursos de Machiaueli (Medina del Campo, 1552 & 1555) is Juan Lorenzo Ottevanti's Spanish translation of Niccolò Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy. This is the first critical edition of this text, whose aim is to reproduce not Machiavelli's but the translator's intention, thereby allowing scholars to examine the modes in which Machiavelli's political and military thought was made intelligible to Spaniards in the early modern period. In his Introduction, Howard demonstrates that its original publication engaged in fascinating ways the (...) ongoing Spanish imperial project in both the European and American contexts. (shrink)

Although Machiavelli is usually considered a pioneer among modern political philosophers, he read deeply in and was greatly influenced by the works of classical Roman thinkers such as Livy. There is thus a fundamental tension between the modern and the ancient within Machiavelli's philosophy; he is both a precursor to the Enlightenment and a throwback to republican Rome. This is the main thesis behind Patrick Coby's innovative study of the neglected Machiavellian classic Discourses on Livy. Coby argues (...) that scholars have been too quick to dismiss the ancient antecedents of Machiavelli's thought, particularly with regard to the modes and orders of the Roman republic. The book seeks to resolve the central paradox of the Discourses, that Machiavelli recommends adoption of Roman modes and orders even though those modes and orders destroyed the virt?, the strength, which Machiavelli would have moderns resuscitate by imitating Rome. A sophisticated, highly engaging book, Machiavelli's Romans will be of special interest to political theorists, Renaissance scholars, and classicists. (shrink)

This study examines the manner in which Machiavelli undertakes to elaborate and to justify the notorious "realism" of his political science, which consists in a deliberate and rigorous critique of justice or moral goodness. Despite its overt appeal to the common good and republican devotion, the Discourses on Livy, I argue, supplies a pathway to the foundation of this realism: the work is addressed to "the young" who combine rare intelligence with moral and civic concern, and it is (...) guided by Machiavelli's concern to persuade such readers of the reasonableness of his amoral account of human affairs and the order of the world. Through his discourses on Livy's Romans Machiavelli undertakes to enlighten the young about the meaning of genuine virtu and the distance that allegedly separates it from the justice they currently embrace. ;An examination of Machiavelli's discussions of acquisitive necessity, domestic rule and foreign affairs in Books I and II reveals that the core of this enlightenment is a confrontation with what he understands to be the essentially pious foundation of the moral life: Machiavellian realism is a secular, and secularizing, enterprise. Machiavelli teaches those exceptional youth who are suited to become "princes" that the prosperous management of human affairs requires that the rulers of peoples abandon pious scruple and instead determine appropriate courses of action in accordance with necessities knowable through prudence or natural reason alone. However, by ascending in places to theoretical discussions about the "things of the world" , Machiavelli indicates his awareness that the adequacy of his political critique of piety ultimately depends upon his ability to demonstrate to the full satisfaction of reason the existence and sovereignty of Nature, understood as an order of impersonal necessity. Machiavelli's moral-political realism is thus shown to entail and to point towards a theoretical realism that confronts the claim that the world is ordered providentially under a just and omnipotent sovereign. (shrink)

Machiavelli's New Modes and Orders is the only full-length interpretive study on Machiavelli's controversial and ambiguous work, Discourses on Livy. These discourses, considered by some to be Machiavelli's most important work, are thoroughly explained in a chapter-by-chapter commentary by Harvey C. Mansfield, one of the world's foremost interpreters of this remarkable philosopher. Mansfield's aim is to discern Machiavelli's intention in writing the book: he argues that Machiavelli wanted to introduce new modes and orders in political philosophy in (...) order to make himself the founder of modern politics. Mansfield maintains that Machiavelli deliberately concealed part of his intentions so that only the most perceptive reader could see beneath the surface of the text and understand the whole of his book. Previously out of print, Mansfield's penetrating study brings to light the hidden thoughts lurking in the details of the Discourses on Livy to inform and challenge its readers at every step along the way. (shrink)

This book offers a significant reinterpretation of the history of republican political thought and of Niccolo Machiavelli's place within it. It locates Machiavelli's political thought within enduring debates about the proper size of republics. From the sixteenth century onward, as states grew larger, it was believed only monarchies could govern large territories effectively. Republicanism was a form of government relegated to urban city-states, anachronisms in the new age of the territorial state. For centuries, history and theory were in agreement: constructing (...) an extended republic was as futile as trying to square the circle; but then James Madison devised a compound representative republic that enabled popular government to take on renewed life in the modern era. This work argues that Machiavelli had his own Madisonian impulse and deserves to be recognized as the first modern political theorist to envision the possibility of a republic with a large population extending over a broad territory. (shrink)

Being concerned with conflict and its role both in providing democratic regimes with salutary forms of innovation and in enhancing the capacity of societies for self-government, this dissertation examines Machiavelli's thought on "revolution" in the Discourses. This dissertation develops three arguments: that Machiavelli's notion of conflict includes not only conflict between socioeconomic groups but conflict between political leaders; that Machiavelli's version of the mixed republic reflects not merely the channeling of contending social forces but the institutionalization of change so (...) that the quintessential virtu of a well-ordered republic is its ability to recruit responsible leaders whose individual ambition for public recognition is directed to the common good of the political community; and that although Machiavelli was aware of the power of public imagination in creating a change of regime, his vision of redemption in the Discourses remains far from a populist mode of revolution that can be identified with the emergence of one revolutionary class through indoctrination. ;Each argument appears as a heterogeneous body of thought. But this dissertation argues that there is common ground in terms of temporizing with or delaying a radical change through class upheaval. We may learn from Machiavelli's antityrannical and republican thought on revolution that the wisest policy for treating revolution is not simply avoiding impending dangers by extraordinary measures in a dire emergency but also making use of the spirit of new political actors by election, accusation, and rivalry between political leaders in normal times. And, if Machiavelli's redemptive politics is analyzed in an arena free from the simple antinomies of liberalism versus republicanism, what Machiavelli's thought on revolution in the Discourses may have to offer us is that a broad notion of revolution---one that includes the nature of hostility among human beings, the cycle of regimes, and the creation of a new political order---helps us react better to conflict and deal with its political consequences in multiple forms straightforwardly; and political solutions of social and economic questions, such as the mixed republic and the role of prudent leaders in its actualization, should be emphasized. (shrink)

Though Machiavelli is famous for advising the mere ‘appearance’ of certain Christian and classical virtues (P XVIII), Machiavellian virtù inherits the legacy (though neither the content nor the telos) of the Christian virtue of humility, a virtue that is not present in pagan Roman accounts of heroism. I am not contending that Machiavelli is a Christian nor that he is continuing a Christian principle. Rather, I am asserting in this article that Machiavelli secularises the distinctly Christian virtue of humility, particularly (...) in its affinity with the virtue of compassion, and that this is particularly true in his Discourses on Livy. To demonstrate how this is so, I compare Machiavelli's treatment of the Roman hero Brutus in the Discourses on Livy to the retelling of the life of Rome's liberator in Augustine's City of God. (shrink)

Five hundred years after his death, Niccolò Machiavelli still draws an astonishing range of contradictory characterizations. Was he a friend of tyrants? An ardent republican loyal to Florence’s free institutions? The father of political realism? A revolutionary populist? A calculating rationalist? A Renaissance humanist? A prophet of Italian unification? A theorist of mixed government? A forerunner to authoritarianism? The master of the dark arts of intrigue? This book provides a vivid and engaging introduction to Machiavelli’s life and works that sheds (...) new light on his originality and relevance. Gabriele Pedullà—a leading Italian expert and acclaimed writer—offers fresh readings of the Florentine thinker’s most famous writings, The Prince and the Discourses on Livy, as well as lesser-known texts. A new and often surprising Machiavelli emerges: one closer to his time but also better suited to inform our own. Pedullà’s portrait of Machiavelli highlights his close attention to social and emotional bonds, staunch opposition to oligarchy, keen awareness of the economic side of power dynamics, and strong preference for history over philosophy as a guide for leaders. This book recovers the excitement Machiavelli roused in his first readers for a twenty-first-century audience, capturing his capacity to provoke, both then and now, with unconventional ideas and startling insights. (shrink)

The Florentine political philosopher's commentaries on Livy's history of Rome are accompanied by critical and textual notes.

Leo Strauss argued that the most visible fact about Machiavelli's doctrine is also the most useful one: Machiavelli seems to be a teacher of wickedness. Strauss sought to incorporate this idea in his interpretation without permitting it to overwhelm or exhaust his exegesis of The Prince and the Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy . "We are in sympathy," he writes, "with the simple opinion about Machiavelli [namely, the wickedness of his teaching], not only because it (...) is wholesome, but above all because a failure to take that opinion seriously prevents one from doing justice to what is truly admirable in Machiavelli: the intrepidity of his thought, the grandeur of his vision, and the graceful subtlety of his speech." This critique of the founder of modern political philosophy by this prominent twentieth-century scholar is an essential text for students of both authors. (shrink)

In the Discourses on Livy, Machiavelli claims that writers who are afraid to condemn Caesar instead criticize Catiline. I argue that Machiavelli follows this advice by inverting it. He openly condemns Caesar and the empire he founded while signaling that he has in mind another inimical example: the Church. He signals his intention by echoing Cicero’s fourth Catilinarian oration, imitating Cicero’s image of the ruin of Rome if Catiline’s conspiracy were to succeed through his own vision of the (...) Italy wrought by wicked Roman emperors who succeeded Caesar. The reader of Machiavelli who recognizes this echo is in a position to see Machiavelli’s own Catilinarian oration against another successor of Caesar. In making my argument, I draw on Rex Stem’s treatment of the functions of exemplementarity as employed by authors of texts and as received by their readers. (shrink)

Niccolò Machiavelli is one of most influential modern political thinkers. His works, above all The prince, The discourses on Livy, The Florentine histories, and The art of war, are still passionately discussed in the intellectual community. Against the trite commonplace that Machiavelli was a teacher of evil who justified political immorality, Maurizio Viroli shows, on the basis of a rigorous study of his texts, that Machiavaelli taught instead the best way to attain true glory through political action.

The Florentine political philosopher's commentaries on Livy's history of Rome are accompanied by critical and textual notes.

In The Women of Grub Street (1998), Paula McDowell highlighted the fact that the overwhelming majority of women’s texts in early modern England were polemical or religio-political in nature rather than literary in content. Since that time, the study of early modern women’s political ideas has dramatically increased, and there have been a number of recent anthologies, modern editions, and critical analyses of female political writings. As a result of Patricia Springborg’s research, Mary Astell (1668-1731) has risen to prominence as (...) one of the most astute female political commentators of her day. Springborg argues for Astell’s importance as one of the first systematic critics of the philosopher John Locke, and she interprets Astell’s political thought as a reaction to Lockean Whig politics in the early reign of Queen Anne. But some scholars claim that it is a mistake to think that Astell was chiefly preoccupied with Locke, and others suggest that reading Astell in relation to Locke alone can distort our understanding of her larger political theory. In this chapter, I argue that a more accurate picture of Astell’s political outlook emerges by examining a little studied essay, ‘A Prefatory Discourse to Dr D’Aveanant’ in her 1704 work Moderation Truly Stated. In this critique of Charles Davenant’s Essays upon Peace at Home, and War Abroad (1704), Astell provides a commentary on the political ruthlessness of Niccolo Machiavelli in his Discourses on Livy. Astell’s comments reveal that, in an age in which the political vocabulary was turning to the language of rights, property, and liberty, she still subscribed to the ancient world view, and the ethical-political language of virtue and the good. My intention is to show that these ethical dimensions of Astell’s political thought are consonant with her wider philosophy. (shrink)

Niccolò Machiavelli Machiavelli was a 16th century Florentine philosopher known primarily for his political ideas. His two most famous philosophical books, The Prince and the Discourses on Livy, were published after his death. His philosophical legacy remains enigmatic, but that result should not be surprising for a thinker who understood the necessity to work … Continue reading Machiavelli, Niccolò →.

Astonishingly, despite the vast amount of scholarship on Machiavelli, no study exists on his theory of legislation, which runs through his celebrated work The Prince, the three-volume Discourses on Livy, the History of Florence, and many of his shorter writings. Jens Petersen's work fills this gap and applies his insights to contemporary legislation.

The second edition of David Wootton's Modern Political Thought: Readings from Machiavelli to Nietzsche offers a new unit on modern constitutionalism with selections from Hume, Montesquieu, the Federalist, and Constant. In addition to a new essay by Wootton, this unit features his new translation of Constant's 1819 essay "On Ancient and Modern Liberty". Other changes include expanded selections from Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy and a new Hegel selection, all of which strengthen an already excellent anthology.

T his article intends to analyse the Machiavellian treatment of the Romans' religion. This is, we will argue, a fundamental issue to understand the way the relation between religion, foundation and politics is thought in Machiavelli’s work. In the first part, we will analyse the chapters of the Discourses on Livy dedicated to the roman’s religion, and contrast the statement of this section with statements on the religious phenomenon from other parts of Machiavelli’s work, paying special attention to (...) the understanding of the relation between the phenomenon of belief and popular obedience Machiavelli expresses. In the second part, we will face the question of the way in which it is possible to interpret Machiavellian writing, with special emphasis in the problem of how to make sense of the recurrent contradictions the text presents. In the third section, and as a conclusion, we present some reflections on Machiavelli’s understanding of the relation between politics and religion, and the possibilities of a secular thought in the modern context. (shrink)

In this essay I consider the potential of Machiavelli’s Florentine Histories to contribute to the enrichment of contemporary democratic theory. In opposition to both of the major groups of current interpreters of this text—those who see it as representative of a conservative turn in Machiavelli’s thought grounded in a newfound skepticism regarding popular political competencies, and those who see it as merely a re-presentation of the republican commitments of the Discourses on Livy—I argue that it reveals to us (...) a unique political potentiality, but one that is essential for the construction of an internally consistent Machiavellian theory of democracy. Specifically, through disclosing the historicity and contingency of the humors of the parts of the city, the Histories suggests the possibility of concretely actualizing a condition of social equality, thus overcoming the main democratic deficit of the Discourses—the perpetuation of inequality, as represented in the preservation of the existence of a class with a desire to oppress. (shrink)

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...

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. (shrink)

The interplay between violence, religion, and politics is a central problem for societies and has attracted the attention of important philosophers, including Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, and René Girard. Centuries earlier during the Italian Renaissance, these same problems drew the interest of Niccolò Machiavelli. In Not Even a God Can Save Us Now, Brian Harding argues that Machiavelli’s work anticipates – and often illuminates – contemporary theories on the place of violence in our lives. While remaining cognizant of the historical (...) and cultural context of Machiavelli’s writings, Harding develops Machiavelli’s accounts of sacrifice, truth, religion, and violence and places them in conversation with those of more contemporary thinkers. Including in-depth discussions of Machiavelli’s works The Prince and Discourses on Livy, as well as his Florentine Histories, The Art of War, and other less widely discussed works, Harding interprets Machiavelli as endorsing sacrificial violence that founds or preserves a state, while censuring other forms of violence. This reading clarifies a number of obscure themes in Machiavelli’s writings, and demonstrates how similar themes are at work in the thought of recent phenomenologists. The first book to approach both Machiavellian and contemporary continental thought in this way, Not Even a God Can Save Us Now is a highly original and provocative approach to both the history of philosophy and to contemporary debates about violence, religion, and politics. (shrink)

This article calls for a new understanding of the relationship between classicizing and Christian discourses of exemplarity through a close reading of the figure of Scipio Nasica in Livy, Ab urbe condita Book 29 and Augustine, De ciuitate Dei Books 1–2. Nasica, whose selection as a uir optimus by the Senate in 204 b.c.e. has puzzled modern scholars, was a source of historiographical difficulty for Livy that prompted him to reflect upon exemplarity, mythmaking and the tenuous relationship (...) between past and present. For Augustine, on the other hand, Nasica was a pagan, and thus imperfect, realization of Christian pietas and restraint from luxurious behaviour. Although differing in their interpretations of the Republican exemplum, both Livy and Augustine point to the complexities inherent in invocations of paradigmatic Roman maiores. The close study of Scipio Nasica thus reveals the classicizing precedent lingering behind the supposedly ‘Christian’ rejections of pre-Christian Roman culture in the De ciuitate Dei. (shrink)

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.

The concept of human nature in Machiavelli’s work can be discussed on two levels. The first level regards its fundamental anthropological pessimism. The starting points of Machiavelli’s political philosophy is that people are inclined by nature to be evil, which, as quoted in The Discourses on Livy, must be taken as a starting assumption by every legislator. On the second level, the nature of a particular man is essentially unchangeable, and thus when it agrees with the times, he (...) succeeds, and when a man is in contradiction with what is required by the context, failure is inevitable. Many examples from Machiavelli’s work show that his pessimistic insight into human nature is the foundation upon which his entire political theory is built. The human nature, prone to evil and selfishness, is the explanation for the creation of communities, laws and state institutions, but also for the dynamics that lead to their decay and destruction. (shrink)

Provocative, brutally honest, and timeless, Machiavelli’s _The Prince_ is one of the most important yet misunderstood writings in history. In it, Machiavelli lays bare the reality behind politics as it has always been practiced, teaching leaders to avoid the errors and failings of others while also educating those outside of government about what goes on inside the halls of power. This edition offers a new and lively translation of _The Prince_, written in fluid modern English that is impressively accurate to (...) the original source. It also includes extensive selections from the _Discourses on Livy_, together with a range of Machiavelli’s other works such as his poetry, his personal correspondence, and the _Florentine Histories_. The supplemental readings, engaging original introduction, and thorough annotations provided in this edition show the relevance of _The Prince_ to a wide range of themes: human nature, the philosophy of history, and the existential question all rulers face—how to survive in a world that is largely outside of one’s control. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of social discord, based on the analysis of early chapters of Niccolo Machiavelli?s Discourses on Livy. I argue that, by deriving a broader philosophical concept from Machiavelli?s peculiar position that strife between the plebs and the senate made the Roman republic free and powerful, we can greatly enhance our understanding of not only some of the more original and controversial positions within the Florentine theorist?s magnum opus, but also (...) of his thought in general. Furthermore, by analyzing crucial moments within Machiavelli?s observation of the rise and fall of the Roman republic through the lens of social discord, I argue that the concept can be established as the foundation of his understanding of republicanism, while contesting his designation of the people as the guardians of liberty. Finally, I contrast the concept of social discord with that of social conflict - a subtle and seemingly negligible distinction that can, in my understanding of Machiavelli?s thought, nonetheless mean the difference between a republic?s development and prosperity and its untimely downfall. nema. (shrink)

In Machiavelli’s Prince there appears to be a link between Chap.IX on the civil principality and the hope for a unification of Italy by a new prince – a theme presented in the final Exhortation. In both sections, Machiavelli’s unusual lack of historical illustrations suggests the hypothesis that the civil principality and the new prince play a symbolic function. The reading here proposed argues that there is an ideal relation between Machiavelli’s Prince and the Discourses on Livy regarding (...) the opportunity of a regime change from popular principality to Republic. The possibility to switch from one form of government to the other is due to Machiavelli’s idealizations of the civil principality and the new prince. Accordingly, it is argued that Machiavelli’s method follows a strategy of mythologizing realism. In the civil principality the tension between the new prince and his people is not resolved, nor that between the plebs and the nobles. The paper concludes that Machiavelli emphasis on ‘the solitude’ of the prince is what ultimately justifies a transition from the civil principality to the Republic. (shrink)

Although repeated attempts have been made over the last half-century to make sense of Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy as an exposition of classical republicanism, such endeavours are bound to fail. After all, Machiavelli rejected the teleology underpinning the discursive republicanism of the ancients, and his understanding of the ends pursued by republics was profoundly at odds with the understanding predominant in ancient Greece and Rome. If he had a classical mentor, it cannot, then, have been Aristotle or Cicero (...) or one of the ancient historians. If he had such a mentor, it was surely Lucretius, the leading Roman critic of ancient political idealism--a figure so important to the Florentine that in the late 1490s he copied by hand in its entirety De rerum natura and that he drew on it throughout his subsequent career. Machiavelli's republicanism is best understood as an appropriation, critique and reworking of ancient Epicureanism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE FOUNDING MURDER IN MACHIAVELLI'S THEPRINCE Jim Grote Archdiocese ofLouisville One ofthe doctors ofItaly, Nicholas Machiavel, had the confidence to put in writing, almost in plain terms, "That the Christian faitii had given up good men in prey to Üiose who are tyrannical and unjust." (Francis Bacon) A theologian of glory calls evil good and good evil. A theologian ofdie Cross calls the tìiing what it actually is. (Martin (...) Luúher) René Girard has written eloquently ofthe founding murder described by Friedrich Nietzsche in aphorism 125 from The Gay Science (Girard 1988). In aphorism 125, Nietzsche reflects on the modem prophecy that "God is dead." The crowd, who surrounds the Madman in this aphorism, assumes that God has died ofnatural causes. As Girard says: "Nietzsche is taken to be the great prophet ofthe natural death ofGod" (Girard 1988, 232). The belief in God remains in modernity as a vestige ofthat senility to which God succumbed a long time ago. Unlike the crowd, the Madman cannot keep from hysterical outbursts about the unnatural death of God. "We have killed Him—you and I! All of us are his murderers!" According to Girard, the Madman's ravings are clues to an original collective murder that human culture JimGrote119 has been unable to repress despite its artistic and philosophic endeavors to the contrary. In fact, this founding violence is the foundation ofculture itself. It is surprising that Girard has written little about another modem prophet, Niccolo Machiavelli. A comparison and contrast of Girard's thought with Machiavelli's sheds an interesting light on both ofthem. IfNietzsche is the modern prophet (however misunderstood) of the unnatural death of God, Machiavelli is the modem prophet concerning the unnatural death ofhuman beings. A recent translator ofMachiavelli's The Prince argues that the heart ofhis teaching can be summed up in die simple adage: "you can get away with murder."1 One might summarize Girard's thought in a similar manner: "You cannot get away with murder." In order to better understand the role of the founding murder in modem thought it is useful to turn to the thought ofNiccolo Machiavelli. According to the political philosopher, Leo Strauss, the modernity that culminated in the work of Nietzsche was bom in the work of Machiavelli.2 Strauss describes Machiavelli as the founder ofmodernity. For Machiavelli all foundings entail violence. No enduring society can come into being without the equivalent of Romulus' murder of his brother Remus. Political order is established by a crime that necessarily transcends the boundaries of that order because it creates that very order. Morality is founded by immorality. Girard articulates the founding violence as a cultural rather than a political phenomenon. Machiavelli's political foundings presuppose Girard's cultural founding. In Girard's view of the founding murder, the original chaos or Hobbesian war of all-against-all is replaced by the sacrificial order of allagainst -one. Consider Gil Bailie's description ofthe founding murder: Primitive religion is bom at this moment, the moment when, as Girard puts it, "the atmosphere of terror and hallucination that accompanies the primordial religious experience" reaches its climax, and "the detente that follows only heightens the mystery of the whole process." In the beginning was the hush. Human culture as such begins with 1 See Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr.'s translation ofNiccolo Machiavelli's The Prince (vii). All quotations in the present essay cite both the chapter from The Prince and the page number from Mansfield's translation. Quotations from Machiavelli's Discourses are from Harvey C. Mansfield and Nathan Tarcov's translation, NiccoloMachiavelli: Discourses on Livy. 2 See Leo Strauss, "The Three Waves ofModernity" in Hilail Gildin, An Introduction to PoliticalPhilosophy: TenEssays byLeo Strauss. The three waves are Machiavelli, Rousseau, and Nietzsche. 120The FoundingMurder the community of victimizers looking at the corpse of its victim in solemn astonishment at the miracle of camaraderie that hasjust taken place. Whereas but a moment before strife had prevaüed, now there is a unanimous religious awe focused on the corpse ofthe victim. (22) This original sacrifice is not a rational decision or social contract. It is an unconscious mechanism. "There is no such thing as conscious scapegoating. Conscious... (shrink)

Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, mentions Niccolò Machiavelli by name in his extant works just a handful of times. That, however, he read him carefully and thoroughly time and again there can be no doubt, and it is also clear that he couches his argument both in his Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and their Decline and in his Spirit of Laws as an appropriation and critique of the work of (...) the predecessor whom he termed ‘this great man’. In this paper I explore the manner in which the Frenchman redeployed the arguments advanced by the Florentine for the purpose of refuting the latter's conclusions. ☆ In citing Machiavelli, I employ N. Machiavelli, Tutte le opere, ed. M. Martelli (Florence, 1971), and I refer to the divisions within each work provided by the author. To make my references to Machiavelli's Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio more precise, I sometimes also employ the paragraph enumeration added by the editors of N. Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, tr. H. C. Mansfield and N. Tarcov (Chicago, 1996). In citing Montesquieu, wherever possible, I have employed the splendid new critical edition being produced by the Société Montesquieu: Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, Œuvres complètes de Montesquieu, ed. J. Ehrard, C. Volpilhac-Auger, et al., 22 vols. (Oxford, 1998-), which I cite as VF. I cite Montesquieu, Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur décadence (1734), ed. F. Weil and C. Courtney, as CR by chapter and, where appropriate, line from VF, ii, 89–285. I cite Montesquieu, De l’Esprit des lois (1757), as EL by part, book, chapter, and, where appropriate, page from Montesquieu, Œuvres complètes de Montesquieu, ed. R. Caillois, 2 vols. (Paris, 1949–51), ii, 225–995, and Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, Mes pensées as MP by number from Montesquieu, Œuvres complètes de Montesquieu, ed. A. Masson, 3 vols. (Paris, 1950–5), ii, 1–677. (shrink)

We know that John Milton read Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy with very great care, and there is evidence suggesting that initially he found its argument attractive. In the end, however, he repudiated Machiavelli’s peculiar populism in no uncertain terms, and he did so by embracing Aristotle and Cicero in a manner that highlights the radical break which the Florentine initiated with the republicanism of the ancient Romans and Greeks.

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 the Preface to the Discourses Machiavelli laments that the greatness of the ancients is “rather admired than imitated” by his contemporaries and expresses the belief that recurring to past examples would be most beneficial to those interested in “ordering republics, maintaining states, governing kingdoms, ordering the military and administering war, judging subjects, and increasing empire” (D I 2.2). Machiavelli is indeed persuaded that the laws governing human nature are unchangeable, and that the ancients can be imitated, since the (...) causes for their actions and the reasons for their choices are the same that determine the conduct of the contemporaries. Thus, an analysis of Titus Livy’s work on the Roman republic might shed light on the weaknesses and strengths of existing governments and encourage men to the emulation of past greatness. More specifically, such an analysis would make clear that the greatness of Rome lied in that both the city and its citizens enjoyed a high level of freedom. In fact, the city had sovereign power over itself and other cities, rather than being ruled by others. Besides, no social group had enough power to overcome the others: people were able to foster their interests by participating in the civic life of the city and by protesting against those public decisions which they found contrary to their interests. But what did this freedom exactly consist in? In other words, does Machiavelli conceive freedom as non-interference, or rather as non-domination, by others? Moreover, does he consider participation and contestation as constitutive of liberty, or rather instrumental to it? In this paper, I will first present Philip Pettit’s account of three alternative conceptions of liberty and indicate which of them might have been endorsed by Machiavelli. I will then consider the issue of contestations and tumults and of their role within the polity. I will argue not only that Machiavelli endorses a republican view of freedom but also that, in contrast to Pettit, he maintains contestations and tumults to be instrumental to freedom, rather than constitutive of it. I will conclude by claiming that Machiavelli’s and Pettit’s different stance on the value of tumults and contestations reflects the kind of freedom as non-domination in which they are interested in. Pettit supports a more democratic form of republicanism, in which not only groups but also individuals must be able to contest given decisions. By contrast, Machiavelli endorses a republicanism in which power must be distributed among different political figures within a polity. Dissensions are seen as a means for one of these figures, i.e. the multitude, to raise its voice when its interests are damaged by public decisions. In Machiavelli’s view, the end to which a state should aim is to be great, for which it needs to be free only at the collective level. Different means might be employed in order to realise this aim. Tumults are just one of them: the one that made Rome a great city, worthy of being imitated. (shrink)

Political theorist Wendy Brown has argued recently that contemporary neoliberalism, with its relentless obsession on the economy, has all but undone the tenets of democracy. This book suggests one way of thinking out of the current moment, and it does so by looking to a perhaps unlikely figure: Niccolo Machiavelli. Ronald J. Schmidt, Jr. argues that if we imitate Machiavelli's interpretive method in reading The Prince and Discourses of Livy, we can find in them solutions to the neoliberal (...) problems Brown warns about. (shrink)