Download or read book The Machiavellian Cosmos written by Anthony Parel and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1992-01-01 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this highly original interpretation of Machiavelli's thought, Anthony J. Parel identifies a theme generally neglected in the scholarship of this sixteenth-century political thinker: Machiavelli's belief in the occult forces of heaven and humors. Challenging the current tendency to view Machiavelli as a pioneer of modern political science, Parel argues instead that a premodern cosmology and anthropology underlie Machiavelli's political works. Parel shows that Machiavelli's world picture owes more to the astrological cosmology prevalent in the Renaissance than to the Aristotelian or Platonic or Christian world picture. This astrological determination significantly affects Machiavelli's conceptions of history, politics, and religion and shapes his notions of virtu and fortuna. It also has considerable impact on his ethical ideas: the Machiavellian cosmos has no room for a Ruling Mind or for the Sovereignty of the Good, and humans are left to pursue their appetites for riches and glory as best they can. In a similar fashion, says Parel Machiavelli's political anthropology is influenced by the ancient idea that body humors determine a person's temperament and behavior, for he believes that humors compromise human autonomy and rationality. According to Parel, the theory of humors also affects Machiavelli's view of the body politic and his characterization of republics, princedoms, and licenzia, and Parel explicates this in new readings of The Prince, the Discourses, and the Florentine Histories.
Download or read book The Machiavellian Cosmos written by Anthony Parel and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1992-01-01 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this highly original interpretation of Machiavelli's thought, Anthony J. Parel identifies a theme generally neglected in the scholarship of this sixteenth-century political thinker: Machiavelli's belief in the occult forces of heaven and humors. Challenging the current tendency to view Machiavelli as a pioneer of modern political science, Parel argues instead that a premodern cosmology and anthropology underlie Machiavelli's political works. Parel shows that Machiavelli's world picture owes more to the astrological cosmology prevalent in the Renaissance than to the Aristotelian or Platonic or Christian world picture. This astrological determination significantly affects Machiavelli's conceptions of history, politics, and religion and shapes his notions of virtu and fortuna. It also has considerable impact on his ethical ideas: the Machiavellian cosmos has no room for a Ruling Mind or for the Sovereignty of the Good, and humans are left to pursue their appetites for riches and glory as best they can. In a similar fashion, says Parel Machiavelli's political anthropology is influenced by the ancient idea that body humors determine a person's temperament and behavior, for he believes that humors compromise human autonomy and rationality. According to Parel, the theory of humors also affects Machiavelli's view of the body politic and his characterization of republics, princedoms, and licenzia, and Parel explicates this in new readings of The Prince, the Discourses, and the Florentine Histories.
Download or read book The Quotable Machiavelli written by Niccolò Machiavelli and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2016-12-20 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of insightful and revealing quotations on a wide range of subjects from the father of modern politics Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) is the father of modern political thought, but he is also one of the greatest writers of the Renaissance and his wisdom and style extend far beyond politics to encompass a compelling philosophy of life as well. In The Quotable Machiavelli, Maurizio Viroli, one of the world's leading Machiavelli scholars, offers a rich collection of the Florentine’s most memorable words on a wide range of subjects, including politics, the human condition, religion, love and happiness, antiquity and history, patriotism, and virtue. Drawing on Machiavelli’s entire body of writings, and including little-known quotations as well as famous passages, the book shows the full scope of his thought and belies the cliché that he was a "Machiavellian" cynic. In addition to Machiavelli’s own words on dozens of subjects of perennial interest, the book includes some almost unknown texts in which his contemporaries describe him. Complete with a biographical introduction, the book serves as a handy reference and a smart and lively introduction to a masterly thinker and writer. Includes a rich collection of Machiavelli’s most memorable words on a wide range of subjects, from politics to the human condition—almost 700 quotations in all Edited and introduced by one of the world’s leading Machiavelli scholars Serves as a smart and lively introduction to Machiavelli’s life and works Draws on the complete body of Machiavelli’s writings Features a brief biography of Machiavelli, a chronology of his life, suggestions for further reading, and an index
Download or read book Race and the Cosmos written by Barbara A. Holmes and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2002-06-01 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Argues that theoretical physics and cosmology can provide a key to overcoming race-related problems, explaining how they enable a means for discussing individual and communal quests for fulfillment beyond racial, ethnic, class, and sexual barriers. Original.
Download or read book Machiavelli in Tumult written by Gabriele Pedullà and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-30 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reconstructs the origins of the idea that social conflict, and not concord, makes political communities powerful.
Download or read book Plato s World written by Joseph Cropsey and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1995-05-15 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Masterfully leading the reader through the seven scenes of the drama, Cropsey shows how they are, to an astonishing degree, concerned with the resources available to help us survive in such a world.
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Machiavelli written by John M. Najemy and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-06-24 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) is the most famous and controversial figure in the history of political thought and one of the iconic names of the Renaissance. The Cambridge Companion to Machiavelli brings together sixteen original essays by leading experts, covering his life, his career in Florentine government, his reaction to the dramatic changes that affected Florence and Italy in his lifetime, and the most prominent themes of his thought, including the founding, evolution, and corruption of republics and principalities, class conflict, liberty, arms, religion, ethics, rhetoric, gender, and the Renaissance dialogue with antiquity. In his own time Machiavelli was recognized as an original thinker who provocatively challenged conventional wisdom. With penetrating analyses of The Prince, Discourses on Livy, Art of War, Florentine Histories, and his plays and poetry, this book offers a vivid portrait of this extraordinary thinker as well as assessments of his place in Western thought since the Renaissance.
Download or read book Machiavelli and the Problems of Military Force written by Sean Erwin and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-06-16 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Central to Niccolò Machiavelli's writing is the argument that a successful state is one that prefers to lose with its own arms (arma propriis) than to win with the arms of others (arma alienis). This book sheds light on Machiavelli's critiques of military force and provides an important reinterpretation of his military theory. Sean Erwin argues that the distinction between arma propriis and arma alienis poses a central problem to Machiavelli's case for why modern political institutions offer modes of political existence that ancient ones did not. Starting from the influence of Lucretius and Aelianus Tacticus on the Dell'arte della guerra, Erwin examines Machiavelli's criticism of mercenary, auxiliary, and mixed forces. Giving due consideration to an overlooked conceptual distinction in Machiavelli studies, this book is a valuable and original contribution to the field.
Download or read book The Machiavellian Legacy written by J. Femia and published by Springer. This book was released on 1998-10-19 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What do classical elitists like Pareto and Mosca have in common with Marxists like Labriola and Gramsci? In this collection of essays, Joseph Femia argues that all four thinkers are united by the 'worldly humanism' they inherited from Machiavelli. Their distinctively Italian hostility to the metaphysical abstractions of natural law and Christian theology accounted for similarities in their thought that are obscured by the familiar terminology of 'left' and 'right'. The collection includes critical essays on each of the four thinkers, as well as an introductory chapter on their links with Machiavelli.
Download or read book Machiavelli s Ethics written by Erica Benner and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-10-26 with total page 543 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Machiavelli's Ethics challenges the most entrenched understandings of Machiavelli, arguing that he was a moral and political philosopher who consistently favored the rule of law over that of men, that he had a coherent theory of justice, and that he did not defend the "Machiavellian" maxim that the ends justify the means. By carefully reconstructing the principled foundations of his political theory, Erica Benner gives the most complete account yet of Machiavelli's thought. She argues that his difficult and puzzling style of writing owes far more to ancient Greek sources than is usually recognized, as does his chief aim: to teach readers not how to produce deceptive political appearances and rhetoric, but how to see through them. Drawing on a close reading of Greek authors--including Thucydides, Xenophon, Plato, and Plutarch--Benner identifies a powerful and neglected key to understanding Machiavelli. This important new interpretation is based on the most comprehensive study of Machiavelli's writings to date, including a detailed examination of all of his major works: The Prince, The Discourses, The Art of War, and Florentine Histories. It helps explain why readers such as Bacon and Rousseau could see Machiavelli as a fellow moral philosopher, and how they could view The Prince as an ethical and republican text. By identifying a rigorous structure of principles behind Machiavelli's historical examples, the book should also open up fresh debates about his relationship to later philosophers, including Rousseau, Hobbes, and Kant.
Download or read book Machiavelli Leonardo and the Science of Power written by Roger D. Masters and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 2016-10-14 with total page 477 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, Niccolò Machiavelli's works have been viewed primarily with historical interest as analysis of the tactics used by immoral political officials. Roger D. Masters, a leading expert in the relationship between modern natural sciences and politics, argues boldly in this book that Machiavelli should be reconsidered as a major philosopher whose thought makes the wisdom of antiquity accessible to the modern (and post-modern) condition, and whose understanding of human nature is superior to that of Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Marx, or Mill. Central to Masters's claim is his discovery, based on previously untranslated documents, that Machiavelli knew and worked with Leonardo da Vinci between 1502-1507. An interdisciplinary tour de force, Machiavelli, Leonardo, and the Science of Power will challenge, perplex, and ultimately delight readers with its evocative story of the relationship between Machiavelli and da Vinci, their crucial roles in the emergence of modernity, and the vast implications this holds for contemporary life and society.
Download or read book Ren Girard and the Western Philosophical Tradition volume 1 written by Andreas Wilmes and published by MSU Press. This book was released on 2024-07-01 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited volume situates René Girard in relation to the Western philosophical tradition. Each chapter engages the French anthropologist in dialogue with a key figure from the history of Western philosophy, from Plato to Kierkegaard. The pivotal question of René Girard and the Western Philosophical Tradition revolves around Girard’s assertion, “Since the attempt to understand religion on the basis of philosophy has failed, we ought to try the reverse method and read philosophy in the light of religion.” Major philosophers influenced Girard and contributed valuable insights into questions of desire, religion, violence, and the sacred. At the same time, he felt that Western philosophy often, if not always, neglected the founding violence that lies at the origin of culture. This is the first collective scholarly effort at situating René Girard in relation to the Western philosophical tradition. Volume 1 features chapters on Plato, Augustine of Hippo, Niccolò Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, Blaise Pascal, Baruch Spinoza, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith, Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Alexis de Tocqueville, Søren Kierkegaard, and René Girard.
Download or read book Seeking Real Truths written by Patricia Vilches and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2007 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is a multidisciplinary approach to Machiavelli's writings on government, his creative works and his legacy. It is meant for generalists seeking an introduction to Machiavelli and for specialists who are interested in a wide range of disciplinary views.
Download or read book Machiavellis Revivus written by Nevio Cristante and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2011-05-25 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From an intensive academic study based primarily on Machiavelli’s works, critical arguments arise in this text that undermine not only the current-day political mind-set, framework, and practices, but also the views established academically, up to the point where the “body politic” formed by the Western classical tradition is dissipated and dispersed. Comprised in a contrary unconventional manner similar to Machiavelli, the basic essential factors of history, religion, power, and authority were formulated as the four main chapters in this work by Nevio Cristante. From it, one can readily see the flaws today in the false praise in nostalgic historical hubris, the forgetting of a brand of religion that is essential for healthy politics, the overlooking of coercive forces that reduce politics to power, and the loss of true authority. In this book, Cristante comprises Machiavelli as a virtuous, unprecedented, “extreme humanist,” in stark contrast to the common incessant interpretations of him being a “teacher of evil,” a “diabolical,” “soulless” political advisor. A subversive satirical interpretation of The Prince has been formed herein, extending from the generated knowledge of history and the history of Machiavelli’s own experience. From the vivacious and unraveling Italian Renaissance, a cogent force prompted Machiavelli to create his literary works in order to form an educational cure for the deteriorating human condition, of his time, and any time. There is in Machiavelli, a differing sense of newness from that which is commonly known today, which circumvents its worth in this distinct educative interpretation. Machiavelli goes back in time in order to produce lessons applicable to correct the shortages in his, and every, present-day. With a divergent view of the works of art and literature outlined in this analysis, Machiavelli’s education becomes revived today in creating a virtuous political, spiritual, and cultural dynamism as a battle-cry to repel the ignorance and great misfortunes in our human condition.
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Machiavelli written by John M. Najemy and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-06-24 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A vivid portrait of this extraordinary thinker, assessing his place in Western thought since the Renaissance.
Download or read book Machiavelli s Romans written by Patrick J. Coby and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 1999-05-13 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Machiavelli and the Politics of Democratic Innovation written by Christopher Holma and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2018-01-01 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presenting a detailed reinterpretation and reconstruction of the political thought of Niccolò Machiavelli, Machiavelli and the Politics of Democratic Innovation uses original readings of Machiavelli's texts to develop a new theoretical model of democratic practice. The book critically and creatively juxtaposes certain concepts drawn from Machiavelli's work in order to produce new political insights. Christopher Holman identifies two unique ideas in Machiavelli through his rearrangement of Machiavellian concepts. The first, drawn primarily from The Prince, is an image of the individual human being as a creative subject that seeks the exteriorization of desire via political creation. The second, drawn primarily from The Discourses on Livy, is an image of the democratic republic as a form of regime in which this desire for creative self-expression is universalized, all citizens being able to affirm their psychic orientation toward innovation through their equal access to political institutions and orders. Such institutions and orders, to the extent that they function as media for the expression of a fundamental human creativity, must be arranged so that they are capable of continual interrogation and refinement. In the final instance, a new ethical ground for the normative defense of democratic life is constructed, one grounded in the orientation of individual beings toward novelty and innovation.
