Antonio Genovesi is known as the thinker who raised a whole generation of Southern Italian intellectuals, among them Francesco Pagano and Gaetano Filangieri. One of the most influential of his works was the notoriously difficult Diceosina, o sia della filosofia del giusto e dell’onesto , a textbook destined for use in the universities. The Diceosina was a powerful, if controversial, attempt to mediate between the history of moral philosophy on the one hand, and the specific problems encountered by eighteenth-century commercial (...) society on the other. In fact, it contained the greater part of Genovesi's political, philosophical, and economic thought; a synthetic guidebook for Neapolitan economic and social development. This essay explores the work's context, rich intellectual origins, and ultimate significance through its long and complicated reception. The cultural and political connotations of Genovesi's Diceosina become particularly evident through an engagement with the works of Ermenegildo Personè, one of the book's most arduous critics. (shrink)

SummaryWhen analysing François Véron de Forbonnais's translation of Gerónimo de Uztáriz's Theórica y Práctica de comercio and Louis-Joseph Plumard de Dangeul's translation of Bernardo de Ulloa's Restablecimiento de las fábricas, the first important point to consider is that the two cousins, who had decided to bring the works to a French public at the suggestion of Vincent de Gournay, were working with a language and within a political and cultural environment which they had already experienced in person. A second important (...) consideration concerns the linguistic challenge inherent in the fact that the Spanish did not yet have an economic lexicon equal to that developed by French thinkers. The choices of terminology made by Forbonnais and Plumard bear witness to this different development and reveal the peculiarities of economic epistemology in the two countries. This essay will shed light on the translation strategies adopted by the French writers, focusing on a number of key concepts of the new science of commerce, such as consumption, exportation, importation, population, commerce, trade, money, and work. (shrink)

"This is an excellent, readable and vigorous translation of _The Prince_, but it is much more than simply a translation. The map, notes and guide to further reading are crisp, to-the-point and yet nicely comprehensive. The inclusion of the letter to Vettori is most welcome. But, above all, the Introduction is so gripping and lively that it has convinced me to include _The Prince_ in my syllabus for History of Western Civilization the next time that I teach it.... Great price, (...) too! And lovely printing and layout." --Rachel Fulton, _University of Chicago_. (shrink)

[I]t is safer to be feared than loved." These words embody the spirit of The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli's classic work of political philosophy. Machiavelli's advice for how a ruler should acquire and ruthlessly exercise power over others continues to be relevant to contemporary readers more than five centuries after it was first published.

Torna il commento puntuale di Machiavelli alla narrazione liviana: tre libri che pongono l'accento su origine, organizzazione e decadenza della grande repubblica romana, e di ogni repubblica, intesa come ordinamento statale capace di armonizzare le tendenze e gli interessi particolaristici. Così, sotto la veste apparentemente dimessa di un commento a Livio, viene articolandosi una visione del mondo coerente, che pur illustrando in termini inconsueti il nesso fra società, storia e natura, rifugge da ogni sistemazione dottrinale legata a rivelazioni provvidenzialistiche o (...) ad astratte speculazioni filosofiche. (shrink)

The received view says that possibility is the dual of necessity: a proposition is (metaphysically, logically, epistemically etc.) possible iff it is not the case that its negation is (metaphysically, logically, epistemically etc., respectively) necessary. This reading is usually taken for granted by modal logicians and indeed seems plausible when dealing with logical or metaphysical possibility. But what about epistemic possibility? We argue that the dual definition of epistemic possibility in terms of epistemic necessity generates tension when reasoning about non-idealized (...) agents and is a problem of concern for most hyperintensional epistemic logics that alleviate the problem of logical omniscience. The tension is particularly evident when knowledge is taken as a primitive to define other epistemic concepts, such as justification and belief, as done in the knowledge-first tradition. We propose a non-dual interpretation of epistemic possibility, employing a hyperintensionality filter similar to the one that makes the corresponding epistemic necessity operator hyperintensional. We employ the proposed semantics to model Stalnaker's belief as epistemic possibility of knowledge and provide a sound and complete axiomatization for a hyperintensional version of his bimodal logic of knowledge and belief. (shrink)

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

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.

Rosenkranz (2021) devised two bimodal epistemic logics: an idealized one and a realistic one. The former is shown to be sound with respect to a class of neighborhood frames called i-frames. Rosenkranz designed a specific i-frame able to invalidate a series of undesired formulas, proving that these are not theorems of the idealized logic. Nonetheless, an unwanted formula and an unwanted rule of inference are not invalidated. Invalidating the former guarantees the distinction between the two modal operators characteristic of the (...) logic, while invalidating the latter is crucial in order to deal with the problem of logical omniscience. In this paper, I present an i-frame able to invalidate all the undesired formulas already invalidated by Rosenkranz, together with the missing formula and rule of inference. (shrink)

"The Prince" has long been both praised and reviled for its message of moral relativism, and political expediency. Although a large part is devoted to the mechanics of gaining and staying in power, Machiavelli's end purpose is to maintain a just and stable government. He is not ambiguous in stating his belief that committing a small cruelty to avert a larger is not only justifiable, but required of a just ruler. Machiavelli gives a vivid portrayal of his world in the (...) chaos and tumult of early 16th century Florence, Italy and Europe. He uses both his contemporary political situation, and that of the classical period to illustrate his precepts of statecraft. (shrink)

Machiavelli's famously controversial work, is a leadership classic. This was the first book of its type to promise secrets of time management, presentations, change management and interview skills. With simple prose and straightforward logic Machiavelli's study of attaining power is relevant for any modern reader seeking to make their way in the world.

Assessing the scientific status of theories of consciousness is often a difficult task. In this paper, I explore the dialectic between the Integrated Information Theory, e1003588, 2014; Tononi et al. Nat Rev Neurosci, 17, 450-61, 2016) and a recently proposed criticism of that theory: the ‘unfolding argument’. I show that the phenomenology-first approach in consciousness research can lead to valid scientific theories of consciousness. I do this by highlighting the two reasons why the unfolding argument fails: first, phenomenology-first theories are (...) grounded, not circular. Second, falsificationism does not provide an adequate demarcation criterion in philosophy of science. I conclude that this specific debate has significance for how, in general, consciousness researchers test and criticize theories of consciousness, and how dismissing the phenomenology-first methodology in favour of a third person-based methodology means endorsing a position in philosophy of mind that has already been challenged. (shrink)

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)

Widely read for its insights into history and politics, The Prince is one of the most provocative works of the Italian Renaissance. Based on Niccoló̀ Machiavelli's observations of the effectiveness of both ancient and contemporary statesmen, the rules for governing set forth in his manual were considered radical and harsh by his contemporaries, and they have been thought shocking to many since then. William J. Connell's lucid introductory essay and translations of important related documents offer fresh insights into Machiavelli's life, (...) the meaning of his work, the context in which he wrote, and his book's influence over time. Document headnotes, maps, a chronology of Machiavelli's life and career, questions for consideration, a selected bibliography, and an index provide further pedagogical support. For this new edition, the translation has been revised from top to bottom to reflect recent advances in our knowledge of the text in the original Italian and the circumstances of its composition. (shrink)

Treatise on political power, statecraft, and the qualities of the ideal ruler.

"The Prince" has long been both praised and reviled for its message of moral relativism, and political expediency. Although a large part is devoted to the mechanics of gaining and staying in power, Machiavelli's end purpose is to maintain a just and stable government. He is not ambiguous in stating his belief that committing a small cruelty to avert a larger is not only justifiable, but required of a just ruler. Machiavelli gives a vivid portrayal of his world in the (...) chaos and tumult of early 16th century Florence, Italy and Europe. He uses both his contemporary political situation, and that of the classical period to illustrate his precepts of statecraft. (shrink)

v. 1. 1819-1826. (It 68-Jan)--v. 2. 1827-1855. (It 68-Mar).

It is universally recognized that in the fragments of Hipponax there are many references to Homer, in both language and content. In this paper I analyse the relationship between Hipponax’ poetic persona and the character of Odysseus.

Key to precision medicine is the development of expert database projects that gather data, integrate them in the pre-existing database, and publish the product of their processing for others to make use of. Increasingly, it is required that data infrastructure managers and curators pursue and lead research projects on the data so as to learn about new ways data could be used or information that could be potentially generated from them. I call these efforts “data curation-research” and use the case (...) study of COSMIC, the Catalogue of Somatic Mutations in Cancer, to analyze the contextual factors shaping the science of data curation-research. I build on March’s organizational learning categories of exploitation and exploration to place these factors within a theory of organizational change and innovation, and contribute to a richer picture of the social drivers of cancer genomics. (shrink)

"The Prince" has long been both praised and reviled for its message of moral relativism, and political expediency. Although a large part is devoted to the mechanics of gaining and staying in power, Machiavelli's end purpose is to maintain a just and stable government. He is not ambiguous in stating his belief that committing a small cruelty to avert a larger is not only justifiable, but required of a just ruler. Machiavelli gives a vivid portrayal of his world in the (...) chaos and tumult of early 16th century Florence, Italy and Europe. He uses both his contemporary political situation, and that of the classical period to illustrate his precepts of statecraft. (shrink)

In this paper, by means of a novel use of insights from the literature on scientific modelling, I will argue in favour of an instrumentalist approach to the models that are crucially involved in the study of adaptive systems within the Free-Energy Principle (FEP) framework. I will begin (§2) by offering a general, informal characterisation of FEP. Then (§3), I will argue that the models involved in FEP-theorising are plausibly intended to be isomorphic to their targets. This will allow (§4) (...) to turn the criticisms moved against isomorphism-based accounts of representation towards the FEP modelling practice. Since failure to establish an isomorphism between model and target would result in the former’s failure to represent the latter, and given that it is highly unlikely that FEP-models are ever isomorphic to their targets, maintaining that FEP-models represent their targets as they are, in a realist sense, is unwarranted. Finally (§5), I will consider what implications my argument in favour of an instrumentalist reading of FEP-models has for attempts at making use of the FEP to elaborate an account of what cognition exactly is. My conclusion is that we should not dismiss FEP-based accounts of cognition, as they would still be informative and would further our understanding of the nature of cognition. Nonetheless, the prospects of settling the philosophical debates that sparked the interest in having a “mark of the cognitive” are not good. (shrink)

That Machiavelli's name has become synonymous with cold-eyed political calculation only heightens the intrinsic fascination of The Prince, the world's preeminent how-to manual on the art of getting and keeping power and one of the literary landmarks of the Italian Renaissance. Written in a vigorous, straightforward style that reflects its author's realism, this treatise on states, statecraft, and the ideal ruler is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand how human society actually works.

"Il Principe" (titolo originale in lingua latina: "De Principatibus", lett. "Sui Principati") è un trattato di dottrina politica scritto da Niccolò Machiavelli nel 1513, nel quale espone le caratteristiche dei principati e dei metodi per mantenerli e conquistarli. Si tratta senza dubbio della sua opera più nota e celebrata, quella dalle cui massime (spesso superficialmente interpretate) sono nati il sostantivo "machiavellismo" e l'aggettivo "machiavellico".L'opera non è ascrivibile ad alcun genere letterario particolare, in quanto non ha le caratteristiche di un (...) vero e proprio trattato; se ne è ipotizzata la natura di libriccino a carattere divulgativo."Il Principe" si compone di una dedica e ventisei capitoli di varia lunghezza; l'ultimo capitolo consiste nell'appello ai de' Medici ad accettare le tesi espresse nel testo. (shrink)

Descrizione del modo tenuto dal Duca Valentino ...--Il principe.--Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio.--La vita di Castuccio Castracani da Lucca.

This Norton Critical Edition includes:* Wayne A. Rebhorn's thorough and thought-provoking introduction to Machiavelli, his world, and his famous political treatise (1513).* An accurate and highly readable translation, detailed explanatory annotations, and a map of North Central Italy in Machiavelli's time.* A judicious selection of Machiavelli's other writings that inform his immense influence as a diplomat, democrat, and correspondent.* Twelve interpretive essays from American and European sources, eleven of them new to the Third Edition.* A selected bibliography and an index.About (...) the SeriesRead by more than 12 million students over fifty-five years, Norton Critical Editions set the standard for apparatus that is right for undergraduate readers. The three-part format--annotated text, contexts, and criticism--helps students to better understand, analyze, and appreciate the literature, while opening a wide range of teaching possibilities for instructors. Whether in print or in digital format, Norton Critical Editions provide all the resources students need. (shrink)

Enjoy two classics of tactical and strategic thinking together in one volume! Despite being separated by 2000 years and half a world, these famous works of Niccol Machiavelli and Sun Tzu have much in common. Both books were produced during times of great unrest and both have altered the course of political and military thought and practice for generations. This book contains the acclaimed English translations of W.K. Marriott for The Prince and Lionel Giles for The Art of War.