Summary Of John P Mccormicks Reading Machiavelli

Download or read book Reading Machiavelli written by John P. McCormick and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-12-15 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new reading of Machiavelli’s major works that demonstrates how he has been previously misread To what extent was Niccolò Machiavelli a “Machiavellian”? Was he an amoral adviser of tyranny or a stalwart partisan of liberty? A neutral technician of power politics or a devout Italian patriot? A reviver of pagan virtue or initiator of modern nihilism? Reading Machiavelli answers these questions through original interpretations of Machiavelli’s three major political works—The Prince, Discourses, and Florentine Histories—and demonstrates that a radically democratic populism seeded the Florentine’s scandalous writings. John McCormick challenges the misguided understandings of Machiavelli set forth by prominent thinkers, including Jean-Jacques Rousseau and representatives of the Straussian and Cambridge schools, and he emphasizes the fundamental, often unacknowledged elements of a vibrant Machiavellian politics. Advancing fresh readings of Machiavelli’s work, this book presents a new outlook on how politics should be conceptualized and practiced.

Download or read book Summary of John P. McCormick's Reading Machiavelli written by Everest Media, and published by Everest Media LLC. This book was released on 2022-05-09T22:59:00Z with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 Machiavelli’s use of Borgia is a puzzle for interpreters of The Prince. Those who denounced the scandalous quality of Machiavelli’s book argued that the laudatory presentation of Borgia proved that he cared little for piety, morality, good government, or basic decency. #2 Machiavelli argues that the people are the greatest authority in a state, and he believes that they should be the ones who decide who holds power. He associates himself with Cesare Borgia, who was called Duke Valentino by the people, and with the common people as a class. #3 The people are fascinated by appearances and outcomes, but since in the world abide none but the vulgar, appearances and outcomes may be all that count in the end. While this may be taken as a criticism of the people’s shallowness, it actually affirms their validity. #4 The Italian tradition, represented by Dante, recognizes the Roman Caesars as the heirs of Alexander. The question of whether Cesare Borgia is capable of maintaining and building upon the foundations he inherits from his Alexander is central to The Prince.

Download or read book Machiavellian Democracy written by John P. McCormick and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-01-31 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

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 Machiavelli on Liberty and Conflict written by David Johnston and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-03-15 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Papers from a conference held 6-7 December 2013 at the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies at Columbia University to mark the five-hundredth anniversary of the publication of The Prince.

Download or read book Machiavelli and the Orders of Violence written by Yves Winter and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-20 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Machiavelli written by Mark Jurdjevic and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2019-07-12 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout his life, Niccolò Machiavelli was deeply invested in Florentine culture and politics. More than any other priority, his overriding central concerns, informed by his understanding of his city's history, were the present and future strength and independence of Florence. This volume highlights and explores this underappreciated aspect of Machiavelli's intellectual preoccupations. Transcending a narrow emphasis on his two most famous works of political thought, The Prince and the Discourses on Livy, Mark Jurdjevic and Meredith K. Ray instead present a wide sample of the many genres in which he wrote—not only political theory but also letters, poetry, plays, comedy, and, most substantially, history. Throughout his writing, the city of Florence was at the same time his principal subject and his principal context. Florentine culture and history structured his mental landscape, determined his idiom, underpinned his politics, and endowed everything he wrote with urgency and purpose. The Florentine particulars in Machiavelli's writing reveal aspects of his psyche, politics, and life that are little known outside of specialist circles—particularly his optimism and idealism, his warmth and humor, his capacity for affection and loyalty, and his stubborn, enduring republicanism. Machiavelli: Political, Historical, and Literary Writings has been carefully curated to reveal those crucial but lesser known aspects of Machiavelli's thought and to show how his major arguments evolved within a dynamic Florentine setting.