Word: machiavellis
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Niccolò Machiavelli offered a famously dim view of human nature in The Prince. People are so "ungrateful, fickle, [and] false," he wrote, that a ruler should comfortably abandon conventional morality in dealing with them. He should slay deposed rulers and their families, recognize that friendship "yields nothing," and, beneath a veneer of compassion and honesty, master treachery and deceit. In short, because man is evil, leaders must know "how to do evil...
Such cold-hearted prescriptions have shaped Machiavelli's reputation as the grand master of brutal pragmatism. But they reveal surprisingly little about the man himself - a statesman, poet, playwright and Florentine patriot who lived from 1469 to 1527. In his highly readable new biography, Machiavelli, Ross King paints a more complete picture of Florence's most misunderstood thinker and his tumultuous times. King's breezy narrative doesn't spare Machiavelli, depicting him as an intellectual who loved prostitutes as much as philosophy. But it does present the fresh and sympathetic hypothesis that Machiavelli may not, in fact, have been...
King, an art historian and the author of Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling, portrays a Machiavelli who lived by more than cunning and reason. He consulted astrologers and believed that the heavens influenced political events. Although he championed dissimulation, he was incapable of it: he refused to flatter fools and regularly mouthed off to superiors. He understood suffering, once urging his son to release a mule from its halter so that it might "regain its own way of life." And he inspired not fear, but affection. During his long trips abroad, friends wrote him letters professing that they were...
Other women missed him, too: one friend wrote to inform him that a particular prostitute was also yearning for his return. Yet the amoral tone of Machiavelli's work seems to reflect his age more than his temperament. In the 16th century, gore and tragedy dominated the Italian peninsula, a hodgepodge of warring city-states, kingdoms and republics. Machiavelli roamed this minefield of intrigue on horseback as Florence's diplomatic envoy from the age of 29. In an early mission, he failed to resolve a long-standing feud between two families, and King describes the result: "The heads...
...Cores around. Like many desirable Cores it boasts an early wake-up call, but Professor Carpenter and its readings make the a.m. worth it. MR 74 is a Western-centric, Gov-like course, focusing on the evolution of Republican systems as well as their relevance today. Readings range from Machiavelli to Mansfield, as you learn about the different definitions and manifestations of the Republic.Whether the above courses sound like a dream line-up or your worst nightmare, one thing to consider is that these courses may soon be a thing of the past—at least under the Moral...