Wily Elites and Spirited Peoples in Machiavelli's Republicanism
Title | Wily Elites and Spirited Peoples in Machiavelli's Republicanism PDF eBook |
Author | David N. Levy |
Publisher | Lexington Books |
Pages | 167 |
Release | 2014-07-02 |
Genre | Philosophy |
ISBN | 0739186418 |
Niccolò Machiavelli, though best known as a teacher of princes, is also a teacher of republics. In his Discourses on Livy, he argues that republican liberty depends upon a contentious mixture of elitism and populism. Only the elite’s wily pursuit of domination, combined with the people’s spirited resistance to such domination, can produce that compromise between servitude and license known as liberty. The task of the founder and the statesman is to construct and maintain the appropriate “orders and modes” within which each party to the conflict can make its appropriate contribution. The elite, at its best, contributes prudence, military virtue, and the capacity to innovate, while the people contributes moral and political stability. David Levy explains and defends Machiavelli’s conception of liberty as conflict, and then uses that conception as the lens through which to understand his views on religion, war and imperialism, goodness and corruption, and the relation between republics and princes. Also discussed is Machiavelli’s own kind of wiliness: his artful and often ironic mode of writing. Levy shows that Machiavelli’s republican teaching as a whole remains persuasive today, and deserves careful consideration by all those concerned with the survival and the success of liberty. This book will be of interest both to beginning and more advanced students of Machiavelli, as well as to students of modern republicanism and of the history of ideas.
Machiavelli and Republicanism
Title | Machiavelli and Republicanism PDF eBook |
Author | Gisela Bock |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Pages | 336 |
Release | 1990 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 9780521435895 |
Some of the world's foremost historians of ideas consider Machiavelli's political thought in the larger context of the republican tradition.
Machiavelli's Florentine Republic
Title | Machiavelli's Florentine Republic PDF eBook |
Author | Michelle T. Clarke |
Publisher | |
Pages | 205 |
Release | 2018-03-08 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 1107125502 |
Machiavelli believes republicans must be prepared to defend strict limits on elite power even when elites are 'good'.
Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy: New Readings
Title | Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy: New Readings PDF eBook |
Author | Diogo Pires Aurélio |
Publisher | BRILL |
Pages | 291 |
Release | 2021-10-11 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 9004442073 |
Original scholarly essays by leading philosophers, which bring to life Machiavelli’s lengthiest and most challenging work.
Machiavellian Democracy
Title | Machiavellian Democracy PDF eBook |
Author | John P. McCormick |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Pages | 265 |
Release | 2011-01-31 |
Genre | Political Science |
ISBN | 1139494961 |
Intensifying economic and political inequality poses a dangerous threat to the liberty of democratic citizens. Mounting evidence suggests that economic power, not popular will, determines public policy, and that elections consistently fail to keep public officials accountable to the people. McCormick confronts this dire situation through a dramatic reinterpretation of Niccolò Machiavelli's political thought. Highlighting previously neglected democratic strains in Machiavelli's major writings, McCormick excavates institutions through which the common people of ancient, medieval and Renaissance republics constrained the power of wealthy citizens and public magistrates, and he imagines how such institutions might be revived today. It reassesses one of the central figures in the Western political canon and decisively intervenes into current debates over institutional design and democratic reform. McCormick proposes a citizen body that excludes socioeconomic and political elites and grants randomly selected common people significant veto, legislative and censure authority within government and over public officials.
Machiavelli's Politics
Title | Machiavelli's Politics PDF eBook |
Author | Catherine H. Zuckert |
Publisher | University of Chicago Press |
Pages | 511 |
Release | 2017-04-25 |
Genre | Literary Criticism |
ISBN | 022643480X |
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.
Constructivist Turn in Political Representation
Title | Constructivist Turn in Political Representation PDF eBook |
Author | Disch Lisa Disch |
Publisher | Edinburgh University Press |
Pages | 330 |
Release | 2019-01-22 |
Genre | Political Science |
ISBN | 1474442633 |
This volume traces the roots of the constructivist turn in the distinct (and competing) traditions of Continental and Anglo-American Western political thought. Divided into three thematic parts, these 13 newly commissioned essays develop the constructivist turn as a central concept. They advance the insight that there can be no democratic politics without representation; constituencies or groups exist as agents of democratic politics only insofar as they are represented.