Machiavelli’s Ironies: the language of praise and blame in the Prince. In 'Machiavelli’s Prince 500 Years Later', Special Issue of Social Research: An International Quarterly Vol. 81, No. 2 (2014) (original) (raw)
Related papers
NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI'S THE PRINCE: THE LOGIC OF ITS EXISTENCE
SAPIENTIA -Journal of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy, University of Uyo, Nigria , 2015
The practicability of Niccolo Machiavelli's ideas The Prince has generated series of controversies among past and contemporary scholars. To some, the book is of the devil and has created more problems than it intends to resolve. To others, the ideas in the book are perfect description of the true nature of politics and political elites in the society. This paper attempts to resolve the lingering controversies through a critical analysis of the underlying factors that influenced the writing of this political treatise by Machiavelli. It is argued that the socio-cultural milieu of a philosopher cannot be separated from his philosophical idea. Also, the paper argues that to properly understand and interpret the logic behind the ideas in The Prince, one must first understand the socio-cultural environment under which Machiavelli and his political ideas developed and took shape.
The place of the tyrant in Machiavelli's political thought and the literary genre of the prince
History of Political Thought, 2008
Contrary to the common interpretation, Machiavelli's notion of tyranny is quite elusive, for it is not based on moral or legal considerations. Machiavelli does not obliterate the difference between tyranny and principality, but he judges regimes and political behaviour according to the circumstances and to the end pursued by the statesman. His major political writings can be construed as aiming at the permanent education of the real statesman, to furnish him with a vision of the correct aim to pursue and, at the same time, to enable him to master 'the quality of the times'.
Original version published in California Italian Studies 2.2. (Dec. 2011)
In this essay, we use classical rhetorical theory to show that Machiavelli's Prince was not intended as advice for a prince, nor as "political science," but rather as a very subtle, but nevertheless powerful, critique of the Italian princes of his day, the Medici included. While not a new reading of the text (the notion of the Prince as a crypto-republican work goes back even before the Enlightenment to the very first years of its appearance), this article places such an interpretation on the firm base of rhetorical theory together with a close reading of the text. Classical rhetorical theory will thus be seen to be a powerful tool in the proper understanding of the text, a line of approach continuing the already important work of the past twenty years, which seeks to restore an appreciation of the fundamentally rhetorical nature of Machiavelli's literary technique and political thought. From this examination of the text against the background of rhetorical theory, one of the perennially vexing questions in the interpretation of Machiavelli's political thought--how to reconcile the apparently "princely" counsels of the Prince with the republican sentiments expressed in Machiavelli's other writings--can finally be resolved.