Pub Date : 2018-10-09DOI: 10.23943/PRINCETON/9780691183503.003.0004
John P. McCormick
This chapter argues that the people must assert their necessary, salutary role as the guardian of liberty against predatory oligarchs and tyrants. It suggests that once readers appreciate that one of the most frequently quoted passages in the entire Florentine Histories occurs just a mere few paragraphs after Machiavelli has demonstrated this to be a deeply inaccurate assessment of events, they are encouraged to begin rethinking the entire relationship of words and deeds in that book—a reconsideration which reveals that Machiavelli, perhaps more often than not, seems to undermine his own expressly declared evaluative judgments throughout the entire Histories. The chapter also shows how pleasurable, perplexing, and beguiling the careful reading of Machiavelli's political writings can be.
{"title":"On the Myth of a Conservative Turn in the Florentine Histories","authors":"John P. McCormick","doi":"10.23943/PRINCETON/9780691183503.003.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.23943/PRINCETON/9780691183503.003.0004","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter argues that the people must assert their necessary, salutary role as the guardian of liberty against predatory oligarchs and tyrants. It suggests that once readers appreciate that one of the most frequently quoted passages in the entire Florentine Histories occurs just a mere few paragraphs after Machiavelli has demonstrated this to be a deeply inaccurate assessment of events, they are encouraged to begin rethinking the entire relationship of words and deeds in that book—a reconsideration which reveals that Machiavelli, perhaps more often than not, seems to undermine his own expressly declared evaluative judgments throughout the entire Histories. The chapter also shows how pleasurable, perplexing, and beguiling the careful reading of Machiavelli's political writings can be.","PeriodicalId":117625,"journal":{"name":"Reading Machiavelli","volume":"47 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130443294","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-10-09DOI: 10.23943/PRINCETON/9780691183503.003.0006
John P. McCormick
This chapter analyzes Leo Strauss' engagement with the democratic elements of Niccolò Machiavelli's political thought; specifically, Machiavelli's self-avowed departure from the ancients in favoring the political judgment and participation of the many over the few, and in recommending the people, rather than the nobles, as the ultimate foundation for political authority. It identifies several of Strauss' misinterpretations of Machiavelli's democratic, anti-elitist republicanism and explores tensions and discrepancies within Strauss' reconstruction of Machiavelli's political-philosophical project. Furthermore, Strauss exaggerates Machiavelli's criticisms of peoples and underplays his criticisms of the nobilities within republics. Strauss marshals instances of elite-popular interactions in the Discourses that purportedly demonstrate Machiavelli's preference for elite intervention and manipulation over popular participation and judgment.
{"title":"Leo Strauss’s Machiavelli and the Querelle between the Few and the Many","authors":"John P. McCormick","doi":"10.23943/PRINCETON/9780691183503.003.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.23943/PRINCETON/9780691183503.003.0006","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter analyzes Leo Strauss' engagement with the democratic elements of Niccolò Machiavelli's political thought; specifically, Machiavelli's self-avowed departure from the ancients in favoring the political judgment and participation of the many over the few, and in recommending the people, rather than the nobles, as the ultimate foundation for political authority. It identifies several of Strauss' misinterpretations of Machiavelli's democratic, anti-elitist republicanism and explores tensions and discrepancies within Strauss' reconstruction of Machiavelli's political-philosophical project. Furthermore, Strauss exaggerates Machiavelli's criticisms of peoples and underplays his criticisms of the nobilities within republics. Strauss marshals instances of elite-popular interactions in the Discourses that purportedly demonstrate Machiavelli's preference for elite intervention and manipulation over popular participation and judgment.","PeriodicalId":117625,"journal":{"name":"Reading Machiavelli","volume":"37 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123283442","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-10-09DOI: 10.23943/princeton/9780691183503.003.0003
John P. McCormick
This chapter indicates how, when one realizes that Machiavelli presents the Gracchi's career in the Discourses in such a way that he may be read as both endorsing and criticizing the ill-fated Roman tribunes' redistributive agenda, the reader is compelled to doggedly pursue what Machiavelli actually means when he repeatedly declares that republics must keep the public rich but the citizens poor. At the end of this interpretive expedition, one discovers a radical answer to perhaps the most controversial question within the Roman-Florentine republican tradition: political liberty requires genuine economic equality. The chapter then asserts that the people of republics ought to relate to each other as free and equal citizens—not only politically equal but socioeconomically as well.
{"title":"“Keep the Public Rich and the Citizens Poor”","authors":"John P. McCormick","doi":"10.23943/princeton/9780691183503.003.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.23943/princeton/9780691183503.003.0003","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter indicates how, when one realizes that Machiavelli presents the Gracchi's career in the Discourses in such a way that he may be read as both endorsing and criticizing the ill-fated Roman tribunes' redistributive agenda, the reader is compelled to doggedly pursue what Machiavelli actually means when he repeatedly declares that republics must keep the public rich but the citizens poor. At the end of this interpretive expedition, one discovers a radical answer to perhaps the most controversial question within the Roman-Florentine republican tradition: political liberty requires genuine economic equality. The chapter then asserts that the people of republics ought to relate to each other as free and equal citizens—not only politically equal but socioeconomically as well.","PeriodicalId":117625,"journal":{"name":"Reading Machiavelli","volume":"65 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122283211","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-10-09DOI: 10.23943/princeton/9780691183503.003.0008
John P. McCormick
This concluding chapter entertains the idea of Niccolò Machiavelli possibly dismissing Leo Strauss, J.G.A. Pocock, Quentin Skinner, and even Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in much the same manner that he disdained “the writers” who comprised the Western tradition of ancient and medieval political thought—all of whom he considered pusillanimous propagandists for the enduring power of wealthy elites. Machiavelli often exposed the powerful forces operating throughout intellectual history that disparaged the political judgment of the people, hence prompting his own defiant, often uproarious, distancing of himself from that tradition. In this sense, the book's efforts to contest the influential interpretations of Machiavelli offered by Rousseau, the Straussian school, and the Cambridge School were intended to serve as a Machiavellian critique of Machiavelli scholarship itself.
{"title":"Scandalous Writings, Dubious Readings, and the Virtues of Popular Empowerment","authors":"John P. McCormick","doi":"10.23943/princeton/9780691183503.003.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.23943/princeton/9780691183503.003.0008","url":null,"abstract":"This concluding chapter entertains the idea of Niccolò Machiavelli possibly dismissing Leo Strauss, J.G.A. Pocock, Quentin Skinner, and even Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in much the same manner that he disdained “the writers” who comprised the Western tradition of ancient and medieval political thought—all of whom he considered pusillanimous propagandists for the enduring power of wealthy elites. Machiavelli often exposed the powerful forces operating throughout intellectual history that disparaged the political judgment of the people, hence prompting his own defiant, often uproarious, distancing of himself from that tradition. In this sense, the book's efforts to contest the influential interpretations of Machiavelli offered by Rousseau, the Straussian school, and the Cambridge School were intended to serve as a Machiavellian critique of Machiavelli scholarship itself.","PeriodicalId":117625,"journal":{"name":"Reading Machiavelli","volume":"22 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126191167","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-10-09DOI: 10.23943/PRINCETON/9780691183503.003.0007
John P. McCormick
This chapter focuses on the most influential contemporary approach to the study of classical and early-modern republicanism and Niccolò Machiavelli's supposed place within that tradition—the Cambridge School of intellectual history, most prominently represented by J.G.A. Pocock and Quentin Skinner. It argues that these world-renowned intellectual historians obscure important aspects of both republican and Machiavellian political thought; specifically, they largely ignore the fact that ancient and modern republicanisms secure the privileged position of elites more than they facilitate political participation by citizens. They also underplay the fact that Machiavelli's political prescriptions more substantively empower common people and more actively facilitate popular contestation of elites than did most authors and regimes that typify republicanism.
{"title":"The Cambridge School’s “Guicciardinian Moments” Revisited","authors":"John P. McCormick","doi":"10.23943/PRINCETON/9780691183503.003.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.23943/PRINCETON/9780691183503.003.0007","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter focuses on the most influential contemporary approach to the study of classical and early-modern republicanism and Niccolò Machiavelli's supposed place within that tradition—the Cambridge School of intellectual history, most prominently represented by J.G.A. Pocock and Quentin Skinner. It argues that these world-renowned intellectual historians obscure important aspects of both republican and Machiavellian political thought; specifically, they largely ignore the fact that ancient and modern republicanisms secure the privileged position of elites more than they facilitate political participation by citizens. They also underplay the fact that Machiavelli's political prescriptions more substantively empower common people and more actively facilitate popular contestation of elites than did most authors and regimes that typify republicanism.","PeriodicalId":117625,"journal":{"name":"Reading Machiavelli","volume":"22 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117004828","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-10-09DOI: 10.23943/princeton/9780691183503.003.0001
John P. McCormick
This introductory chapter presents an overview of the crucial themes within Machiavelli's three major political writings: The Prince, the Discourses and the Florentine Histories. It challenges what is considered to be misguided interpretive efforts offered by three illustrious, widely influential appraisals of the Florentine's work. Furthermore, the chapter substantiates Machiavelli's consistent advocacy for a new form of muscular, populist politics conveyed across his three greatest works. It also details how and why major interpretive schools of Machiavelli's political thought have either missed or deliberately obscured the radical extent of the Florentine's decidedly democratic form of republicanism. The chapter tackles suspect engagements with Machiavelli's political thought undertaken by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Leo Strauss, and scholars affiliated with the Cambridge School.
{"title":"Vulgarity and Virtuosity","authors":"John P. McCormick","doi":"10.23943/princeton/9780691183503.003.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.23943/princeton/9780691183503.003.0001","url":null,"abstract":"This introductory chapter presents an overview of the crucial themes within Machiavelli's three major political writings: The Prince, the Discourses and the Florentine Histories. It challenges what is considered to be misguided interpretive efforts offered by three illustrious, widely influential appraisals of the Florentine's work. Furthermore, the chapter substantiates Machiavelli's consistent advocacy for a new form of muscular, populist politics conveyed across his three greatest works. It also details how and why major interpretive schools of Machiavelli's political thought have either missed or deliberately obscured the radical extent of the Florentine's decidedly democratic form of republicanism. The chapter tackles suspect engagements with Machiavelli's political thought undertaken by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Leo Strauss, and scholars affiliated with the Cambridge School.","PeriodicalId":117625,"journal":{"name":"Reading Machiavelli","volume":"438 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123422491","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-10-09DOI: 10.23943/princeton/9780691183503.003.0002
John P. McCormick
This chapter demonstrates how Machiavelli's narrative of Cesare Borgia's career—to which he devotes more space than any other in The Prince—is presented as a story in which a holy father sends his son to redeem, and to bring peace to, his people. All of a sudden, religious tropes or images jump out and impose themselves on the reader in potentially subversive ways: one begins to discern the presence of the crucifixion, the transfiguration, a circumcision, a bloody sacrifice that atones for political sins, an empty tomb, even St. Paul—all of which signify Machiavelli's beliefs concerning the appropriate covenants that should characterize prince-people relationships.
{"title":"The Passion of Duke Valentino","authors":"John P. McCormick","doi":"10.23943/princeton/9780691183503.003.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.23943/princeton/9780691183503.003.0002","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter demonstrates how Machiavelli's narrative of Cesare Borgia's career—to which he devotes more space than any other in The Prince—is presented as a story in which a holy father sends his son to redeem, and to bring peace to, his people. All of a sudden, religious tropes or images jump out and impose themselves on the reader in potentially subversive ways: one begins to discern the presence of the crucifixion, the transfiguration, a circumcision, a bloody sacrifice that atones for political sins, an empty tomb, even St. Paul—all of which signify Machiavelli's beliefs concerning the appropriate covenants that should characterize prince-people relationships.","PeriodicalId":117625,"journal":{"name":"Reading Machiavelli","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133419875","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-10-09DOI: 10.23943/PRINCETON/9780691183503.003.0005
John P. McCormick
This chapter contends that Jean-Jacques Rousseau's analysis and appropriation of the Roman Republic deliberately undermines Machiavelli's efforts to reconstruct and promote institutions that both maximize the participation of poor citizens in popular governments and facilitate their efforts to control or contain economic and political elites. Rousseau's radical revision of Machiavelli's appropriation of the ancient Roman Republic historically served to foreclose the possibility of an alternative, popularly participatory, and anti-elitist strand of modern republicanism that in subsequent centuries would have better served democratic theory and practice. Through the promulgation of sociologically anonymous principles like generality and popular sovereignty, and by confining elite accountability to elections alone, Rousseau's institutional analyses and proposals allow wealthier citizens and magistrates to dominate the politics of popular governments in surreptitious and unassailable ways.
{"title":"Rousseau’s Repudiation of Machiavelli’s Democratic Roman Republic","authors":"John P. McCormick","doi":"10.23943/PRINCETON/9780691183503.003.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.23943/PRINCETON/9780691183503.003.0005","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter contends that Jean-Jacques Rousseau's analysis and appropriation of the Roman Republic deliberately undermines Machiavelli's efforts to reconstruct and promote institutions that both maximize the participation of poor citizens in popular governments and facilitate their efforts to control or contain economic and political elites. Rousseau's radical revision of Machiavelli's appropriation of the ancient Roman Republic historically served to foreclose the possibility of an alternative, popularly participatory, and anti-elitist strand of modern republicanism that in subsequent centuries would have better served democratic theory and practice. Through the promulgation of sociologically anonymous principles like generality and popular sovereignty, and by confining elite accountability to elections alone, Rousseau's institutional analyses and proposals allow wealthier citizens and magistrates to dominate the politics of popular governments in surreptitious and unassailable ways.","PeriodicalId":117625,"journal":{"name":"Reading Machiavelli","volume":"15 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128924789","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：