Word: machiavellis
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Burnham now produces additional arguments for the inevitability of a governing elite (if not necessarily his elite). The few genuine political realists, he feels, belong to the school of Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527). Its cardinal principles...
Burnham discusses at length the leading modern followers of Machiavelli...
...Gaetano Mosca (1858-1941) thought the Rabbits were a good deal more aggressive than Machiavelli did. Mosca found "the struggle for pre-eminence is far more conspicuous . . . than the struggle for existence...
...autocratic tendencies. Like Burnham, Hook recognizes the persistent power of the elite. But he thinks that democratic forces may overcome a ruling class. In Burnham's view, man is a long shot and history is doom. In Hook's view, man has the odds. For Burnham, Machiavelli is an aid to pessimism. For Hook, the concept of the hero bolsters optimism...
...beginning to question the whole framework of this pillared firmament. Copernicus proclaimed that the sun, not the earth, was the center around which the planets were set. Montaigne described man as a "miserable and puny creature" for whom the universe cared nothing and who was "only another animal." Niccolo Machiavelli not only saw man as a cunning beast but insisted that the royal ruler of men must be a super-beast, without moral scruples in his control of the state and in his relations with other nations. As a final blow, England had broken away from the religious sovereignty...