Machiavelli's Philosophy of Life
The main feature of Machiavelli's thought, wrote one of his finest interpreters, is his 'spiritual narrowness'; his insensitivity 'to any spiritual movement that is not subordinate to a purely political idea': no serious religious or moral anxiety, no sincere concern for the meaning of life; only a passion for politics and for the study of political events and actions. This image of Machiavelli has induced scholars to investigate his political thought as a selfsufficient and secluded province, and to leave aside his beliefs, about the cosmos, man, death, life, and history.
I believe that this approach distorts Machiavelli's intellectual and moral identity and prevents us from appreciating his interpretation of the meaning and significance of political action. This is not to say that his conceptions of politics are founded upon his beliefs of the universe, and even less that they were determined or constrained by them. It means rather that we can attain a richer understanding of his views on the goals and the value of political action if we consider them within the broader spectrum of his beliefs. Also, to study Machiavelli as a purely political thinker deprives us of a moral philosophy of the highest value based upon a magnanimous conception of life pervaded by irony and self-irony, tolerant to the variety of the human world and human fragility, sympathetic to poetic abandonment to beauty and love, sensitive to the affections of ordinary life, and--a feature which I find of invaluable worth--radically, even irreverently, secular.
Machiavelli
Book by Maurizio Viroli; Oxford University Press, 1998
When Machiavelli's brief treatise on Renaissance statecraft and princely power was posthumously printed in 1532, it generated a debate which has raged unabated until the present day. Written in 1513 after Machiavelli's enforced retirement from diplomatic service for the Republic of Florence, The Prince provided an analysis of the usually violent means by which men seize, retain, and lose political power. Machiavelli's original treatment of the major philosophical and political questions of his times, especially the relationship between public deeds and private morality, added a dimension of incisive realism to traditional discourse on the nature of the state which, according to Machiavelli, had far too often focused only upon ideal theoretical conditions rather than upon actual political practice.
Niccolò Machiavelli was born in Florence in 1469. Very little is known of his life until his entrance into the Florentine Chancery in 1498, where he served his mentor, the Florentine Standardbearer Piero Soderini, until the return of the Medici in 1512 overthrew Soderini's republic and caused Machiavelli both the loss of his position and even brief imprisonment for his republican sympathies. In addition to a longer and more complicated work on republics, The Discourses, Machiavelli wrote The Art of War, The History of Florence, lyric poetry, a novella, a number of brief essays and diplomatic narratives, and several plays, including the masterpiece of Italian Renaissance comedy, The Mandrake Root. He died in 1527.
PETER BONDANELLA, is Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature and Professor of Film Studies, Italian, and West European Studies at Indiana University, where he serves as Chairman of the Department of West European Studies. He is author of works on Machiavelli, Umberto Eco and Italian cinema (including individual works on Fellini and Rossellini). For the Oxford World's Classics series he has also co-translated and co-edited Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy, with Julia Conaway Bondanella.
MARK MUSA, co-translator of this edition, is Distinguished Professor of Italian at Indiana University, where he teaches Medieval literature. He is the author of Essays on Dante, and Advent at the Gates:Dante's Comedy, and has translated Dante's Vita Nuova and The Divine Comedy; he is the co-translator of The Portable Machiavelli and The Decameron.
How Many Kinds of Principalities There Are And. the Way They Are Acquired
on Mixed Principalities
on Mixed Principalities
Why the Kingdom of Darius, Occupied by Alexander,
Did Not Rebel Against His Successors After the Death of Alexander
How Cities or Principalities Should Be Governed That Lived by Their Own Laws
Before They Were Occupied
on New Principalities Acquired by one's Own Arms and Skill
on New Principalities Acquired with the Arms of Others and by Fortune
on Those Who Have Become Princes Through Wickedness
on the Civil Principality
How the Strength of All Principalities Should Be Measured
on Ecclestastical Principalities
on the Various Kinds of Troops and Mercenary Soldiers
on Auxiliary, Mixed, and Citizen Soldiers
A Prince's Duty Concerning Military Matters
on Those Things for Which Men, and Particularly Princes, Are Praised or Blamed
on Generosity and Miserliness
on Cruelty and Mercy,
and Whether It is Better to Be Loved Than to Be Feared or the Contrary
How a Prince Should Keep His Word
On Avoiding Being Despised and Hated
On Whether Fortresses and
Many Things That Princes Employ Every Day Are Useful or Harmful
How a Prince Should Act to Acquire Esteem
on the Prince's Private Advisers
on How to Avoid Flatterers
Why Italian Princes Have Lost Their States
on Fortune's Role in Human Affairs and How She Can Be Dealt With
An Exhortation to Liberate Italy from the Barbarians
Publication Information: Book Title: The Prince. Contributors: Peter Bondanella - editor, Peter Bondanella - transltr, NiccolÒ Machiavelli - author, Mark Musa - transltr. Publisher: Oxford University. Place of Publication: Oxford. Publication Year: 1998. Page Number: i.
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