Machiavelli’s Commonwealth without Justice

2021 ◽  
pp. 63-88
Author(s):  
Michael C. Hawley
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Niccolo Machiavelli ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
Niccolò Machiavelli ◽  
History Of

This chapter illustrates the fundamental divergence between the republican visions of Cicero and those of Niccolò Machiavelli. It demonstrates that Machiavelli does not share Cicero’s vision for a just commonwealth and should not be considered an heir to his strain of republican thought. The chapter also argues that Machiavelli moves further away from what would later become known as liberalism. He rejects the Ciceronian account of natural law, and his regime leaves no room for rights, consent, or the constitutional limitations on power that characterize Cicero’s thought. Machiavelli represents a failed challenge to the Ciceronian tradition. The chapter challenges long-standing accounts of Machiavelli’s place in the history of political thought.

Włoscy utopiści epoki nowożytnej (Machiavelli, Botero, Campanella) w polskich badaniach naukowych XX i przełomu XX i XXI wieku

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (247) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Bielański
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Negative Influence ◽  
Niccolo Machiavelli ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Niccolò Machiavelli ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
History Of ◽  
Utopian Thought ◽  
Modern Era

The author of the article analyzes the place and importance of the works of Italian utopiansfrom the modern era (such as Niccolò Machiavelli, Tommaso Campanella and Giovanni Botero)in Polish research from the range of the history of political thought from the 20th and the turnof 20th and 21st centuries. The first works dedicated to the aforementioned political thinkersfrom the 16th and 17th centuries by Bolesław Limanowski and Aleksander Świętochowski andthe publications from the interwar period were the starting point of the research. They werepresented much broader – also because of the appearance of the translations of the utopiansfrom the modern era in the 1940s and 1950s. Much interest – before 1956 – was attracted tothe concepts by Campanella, included in his famous work, City of the Sun. In the later times theimportant place in the Polish research on the history of Italian political thought was taken bythe content and expression of Niccolò Machiavelli, especially those fragments of The Prince,which show signs of utopian thought. Much interest was also brought to the works of GiovanniBotero, the author who was the first to use the term “reason of state” and who also proposedthe utopia of “universal monarchy”. The final part is dedicated to the reflections on theItalian utopians of the modern era (but also influencing the modern utopias and dystopias –for example Orwell) by such Polish researchers as e.g. Jerzy Szacki, Janusz Tazbir, LeszekKołakowski, Bohdan Szlachta, Marcin Król, Monika Brzóstowicz-Klajn or Andrzej Dróżdż. Inthe context of the reflections on the possible negative influence of the work of utopians, it isworth to remind the significant observation by J. Baszkiewicz, who thought that “politicalreflection is not always conducted innocently. Political ideas can bring socially beneficialeffects, but they also can become a cause for destructive actions and severe havoc”.Key words: Italian utopians of the Renaissance, history of political thought, state of scientificresearch

The Political Realism of the Egyptian Elite: A Comparison between The Teaching For Merikare and Niccolò Machiavelli’s Il Principe

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Langer
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Moral Realism ◽  
Niccolo Machiavelli ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Realism ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
Niccolò Machiavelli ◽  
Essential Properties ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Masses

A comparison between The Teaching for Merikare and Niccolò Machiavelli’s Il Principe produces some astonishing results. While Machiavelli’s treatise is generally thought to be representative of the dawn of modern Western political realism, its essential properties are already present in Merikare. This includes the firm belief in strong authority, the fallibility of man, the need to appease the masses, and, if necessary, the demand to repress any developing threat to the power of the elite. In terms of the history of political thought Merikare is placed between the works of the moral realism of Greek philosophers like Plato and the political realism of Thucydides and Machiavelli. With the latter being heavily influenced by ancient authors, questions regarding the genesis of Greek political thought can be asked. It may well be that Greek political thought was, at least indirectly, influenced by Egyptian political thought.

In Search of a Lost Archipelago

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aurelian Craiutu
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Niccolo Machiavelli ◽  
Blaise Pascal ◽  
Michel De Montaigne ◽  
Niccolò Machiavelli ◽  
Ethical Concept ◽  
History Of

This chapter examines different visions of moderation in the history of French political thought. It first considers the reluctance to theorize about moderation, in part because moderation has often been understood as a vague virtue. It then discusses moderation in the classical and Christian traditions, focusing on the works of Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero, followed by an analysis of the writings of sixteenth-century political thinkers such as Niccolò Machiavelli, Claude de Seyssel, Louis Le Roy, Étienne Pasquier, Michel de Montaigne, Blaise Pascal, and French moralists such as La Bruyère and François de La Rochefoucauld. It also describes the transformation of moderation from a predominantly ethical concept into a prominent political virtue. Finally, it explores the views of authors such as David Hume and Jean-Jacques Rousseau on fanaticism in relation to moderation.

scholarly journals The Use ofKairosin Renaissance Political Philosophy*

2014 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanne Paul
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
Important Concept ◽  
Niccolò Machiavelli ◽  
Greek Tradition ◽  
History Of

AbstractAlthough the Greek concept ofkairos (καιρός)has undergone a recent renewal of interest among scholars of Renaissance rhetoric, this revival has not yet been paralleled by its reception into the history of political thought. This article examines the meanings and uses of this important concept within the ancient Greek tradition, particularly in the works of Isocrates and Plutarch, in order to understand how it is employed by two of the most important political thinkers of the sixteenth century: Thomas Elyot and Niccolò Machiavelli. Through such an investigation this paper argues that an appreciation of the concept ofkairosand its use by Renaissance political writers provides a fuller understanding of the political philosophy of the period.

scholarly journals DEFOE, DISSENT, AND EARLY WHIG IDEOLOGY

2009 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 595-614
Author(s):  
K. R. P. CLARK
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Political Identity ◽  
Daniel Defoe ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
Religious Difference ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Revolution

ABSTRACTThe nature of Whig ideology at its formation in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries continues to attract the attention of historians of political thought. This article contends that prevalent understandings of the taxonomy of the subject nevertheless still often remain secular, and do not fully attend to the religious constituencies of the authors involved. One key author was Daniel Defoe, who was credited with several anonymous pamphlets published after the Revolution of 1688. The effect of these attributions is to reinforce a homogenized picture of early Whig political ideology that fails to identify differences between authors who used similar terms such as ‘contract’, ‘resistance’, and ‘natural law’. This article de-attributes certain of these pamphlets, outlines the consequences for the history of political thought of that de-attribution, re-establishes Defoe's own political identity, and proposes that such a taxonomy should give more attention to religious difference.

Philosophy, Rights and Natural Law

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The Political ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
German Empire ◽  
Modern Natural ◽  
History Of ◽  
Institutional Contexts

Honouring the work of Knud Haakonssen, this book consists of a series of studies that investigate the place of early modern natural law in the history of political thought. These studies follow Haakonssen’s lead in treating natural law as central to the formulation of doctrines of obligations and rights in accordance with the interests of early modern polities and churches. In doing so, they approach natural law less as a unified doctrine and much more as a field of cross-cutting idioms in which competing political and juridical programs were prosecuted for a variety of purposes. The studies thus investigate how natural law doctrines were formulated, received, and put to work in a wide array of cultural, political and institutional contexts, ranging from the political thought of the Dutch Arminians, Locke’s struggle with the concept of religious toleration, the political-jurisprudential thought of Pufendorf, Thomasius and Wolff in the German Empire, and the jurisprudential thought of Hume and Smith in the context of the Scottish Enlightenment.

American Interpretations of Natural Law

1926 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 524-547
Author(s):  
B. F. Wright
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
Natural Right ◽  
Law Of Nature ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Higher Law

When James Otis in 1764 declared that government “has an everlasting foundation in the unchangeable will of God, the author of nature, whose laws never vary,” and that “there can be no prescription old enough to supersede the law of nature and the grant of God Almighty, who has given to all men a natural right to be free,” he was at once making use of one of the oldest and most important conceptions in the history of political thought and giving to that concept a distinctly American meaning. His was merely one of the earliest examples in this country of a kind of political theory which was to find reflection in the Declaration of Independence in one generation, in the higher law doctrine in another, and in a famous trilogy of decisions of the Supreme Court in still a third. However, the natural-rights theory is by no means the only usage found for the natural-law concept in the political thought of this country, and it is the purpose of this paper to trace briefly the various interpretations placed upon it and the different forms through which it has passed.It is easy enough to say that natural law has meant just what the individual theorist desired to have it mean; for its content has varied from philosophical anarchy to paternalistic aristocracy, and from the assertion of strongly individualistic democracy to the defence of highly centralized government. But this statement does not dispose of the problem. It is necessary to know why and when these varying interpretations were advanced and what their exponents meant when they spoke so confidently of the laws of nature.

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