scholarly journals Machiavelli’s Political Thought and Its Inspiration—Text Analysis Based on the Prince

2022 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. p33
Author(s):  
Zhang Haokai

Machiavelli is one of the founders of modern bourgeois political theory. The birth of his masterpiece The Prince creates a new pattern of western political thought, which marks the first time that political science has escaped from the bondage of religion and ethics. At the same time, Machiavelli is also named “Machiavelliism”. The so-called “no means to achieve the purpose” has become the greatest misunderstanding of Machiavelli. Based on the prince analysis of Machiavelli’s political thought, around his national unity of Italy launched the national regime, military, monarchy and other aspects of thinking.

1988 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 419-422
Author(s):  
James Schleifer

Roger Boesche, Chair of the Department of Political Science at Occidental College in Los Angeles, lias already written several thoughtful articles about Tocqueville, each marked by clarity of thought and expression: ’The Prison: Tocqueville’s Model for Despotism,” Western Political Quarterly 33 (December 1980):550-63; “The Strange Liberalism of Alexis de Tocqueville,” History of Political Thought 2 (Winter 1981): 495-524; “Why Could Tocqueville Predict So Well?” Political Theory 11 (February 1983): 79-104; “Tocqueville and Le Commerce’. A Newspaper Expressing His Unusual Liberalism,” Journal of the History of Ideas 44 (April-June 1983): 277-92; and “Hedonism and Nihilism: The Predictions of Tocqueville and Nietzsche,” The Tocqueville Review 8 (1986/87): 165-84.


1956 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 475-487 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harry Eckstein

The issues which arose during the discussions of the conference fall fairly conveniently into three compartments.First, we obviously had to settle, with reasonable clarity, what we were talking about: what “political philosophy” is, what “political science” is, and whether they are really distinguishable. The basic issue of the conference was to determine the relevance of the one to the study of the other, and if we had decided that they were really the same thing, there would simply have been no problems for us to discuss. On the whole, we felt that a valid, if not necessarily sharp, distinction was to be made between the “philosophical” and the “scientific” approaches to the study of politics and that we were not discussing absurd or tautological issues. We agreed, however, that all types of political inquiry involve the construction of theory, implicit or explicit, and that the title “political theory” has been unjustifiably appropriated by the historians of political thought.


2006 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-262
Author(s):  
Quentin Taylor

Ernest Barker is best remembered for his study of Plato and his Predecessors (1918), yet his early efforts to mine Greek political theory for relevant insights centred on Aristotle.While not as original as his teacher, Aristotle represents a significant advance in political science, first, by avoiding Plato’s extremes, second, by forwarding a naturalistic and ethical vision of civic life, and finally, by adopting a pragmatic approach to improving ‘deviant’ regimes. Both thinkers serve as a foil for exposing the shortcomings of modern politics, particularly the atomistic individualism of Hobbes, Locke, and Bentham. Unlike Plato, Aristotle exhibits an ‘English spirit’ of compromise, moderation, and balance, although from a distinctly Burkean perspective. Barker’s sympathies did not, however, blind him to the ‘reactionary’, ‘primitive’, and ‘illiberal’ aspects of Aristotle’s teaching. His failure to reconcile these discordant elements—culminating in a quixotic call for an ‘aristocratic democracy’ — merely echoed the ambiguity and equivocation that marked his treatment of Plato. Barker maintained a grudging respect for Plato, but knew he was politically incorrigible. Aristotle showed farmore promise, but in the end could not be made to fit the mould of the Edwardian progressive.


1984 ◽  
Vol 78 (4) ◽  
pp. 985-999 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel R. Sabia

Texts designed to introduce political science students to the history of political thought or to past political theories have been commonplace in the discipline, as have disputes about their pedagogical utility or justifiability, and methodological debates concerning their adequacy or legitimacy. In an effort to address these disputes and some of these debates, I construct three models of historiographical inquiry. Each model represents a particular approach, and each is defined in terms of three common features. The methodological debates are joined both indirectly and directly: indirectly by identifying clearly the major features and purposes of these approaches, and directly by consideration of such issues as the nature of a historical tradition, the legitimacy of certain interpretive strategies and presuppositions, and the viability of certain conceptions of past political theory. I conclude that each approach can make significant contributions to the education of political science students.


Author(s):  
Aurelian Craiutu

Political moderation is the touchstone of democracy, which could not function without compromise and bargaining, yet it is one of the most understudied concepts in political theory. How can we explain this striking paradox? Why do we often underestimate the virtue of moderation? Seeking to answer these questions, this book examines moderation in modern French political thought and sheds light on the French Revolution and its legacy. The book begins with classical thinkers who extolled the virtues of a moderate approach to politics, such as Aristotle and Cicero. It then shows how Montesquieu inaugurated the modern rebirth of this tradition by laying the intellectual foundations for moderate government. The book looks at important figures such as Jacques Necker, Germaine de Staël, and Benjamin Constant, not only in the context of revolutionary France but throughout Europe. It traces how moderation evolves from an individual moral virtue into a set of institutional arrangements calculated to protect individual liberty, and explores the deep affinity between political moderation and constitutional complexity. The book demonstrates how moderation navigates between political extremes, and it challenges the common notion that moderation is an essentially conservative virtue, stressing instead its eclectic nature. Drawing on a broad range of writings in political theory, the history of political thought, philosophy, and law, the book reveals how the virtue of political moderation can address the profound complexities of the world today.


Author(s):  
Dominic Scott

This chapter presents a reading of Plato’s Republic. The Republic is among Plato’s most complex works. From its title, the first-time reader will expect a dialogue about political theory, yet the work starts from the perspective of the individual, coming to focus on the question of how, if at all, justice contributes to an agent’s happiness. Only after this question has been fully set out does the work evolve into an investigation of politics—of the ideal state and of the institutions that sustain it, especially those having to do with education. But the interest in individual justice and happiness is never left behind. Rather, the work weaves in and out of the two perspectives, individual and political, right through to its conclusion. All this may leave one wondering about the unity of the work. The chapter shows that, despite the enormous range of topics discussed, the Republic fits together as a coherent whole.


Author(s):  
Stuart Gray

How can scholars critically engage premodern Indic traditions without falling prey to Hindu conservatism or Brahmanical-Hindu apologism? This question is pressing for Indic political theory and contemporary Indian democracy because of ethnically exclusivist, Hindu nationalist movements that have emerged in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. This chapter argues that a positive answer to the question must begin by taking seriously the tremendous pluralism in India’s political and philosophical history, which requires systematically engaging with premodern source material and uncovering the internal pluralism within a longer and larger Brahmanical-Hindu tradition of political thought. The author explains how it is both possible and politically necessary to internally subvert Brahmanical-Hindu political thought, which can help diffuse essentialist and exclusivist arguments coming from the Hindu right. Locating such plurality and engaging in internal subversion can help challenge historical justifications for Indian nationalism and contribute to decolonization, thus contesting the Hindu right on its own conceptual and genealogical turf. To advance this argument, the author provides a critical reinterpretation of the infamous “Puruṣa Sūkta,” which is often viewed as the locus classicus of the modern caste system, providing a novel interpretation that challenges caste hierarchy and supplies new resources for democratic thought and practice in India.


Elenchos ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-232
Author(s):  
Christian Vassallo

AbstractSince the editio princeps, PSI XI 1215 has been recognized as a fragment of a Socratic dialogue. After the first studies on its philological aspects and probable authorship, however, the text has not drawn the attention of historians of ancient philosophy, and this important Socratic evidence has long been totally neglected. This paper reviews the history of scholarship on the Florentine fragment and presents a new critical edition, on the basis of which it tries to give for the first time a historico-philosophical reading of the text. This interpretation aims to demonstrate: a) that the Socratic philosopher who is writing had not a low cultural level, and the fragment presupposes an accurate knowledge of Plato’s political thought, as Medea Norsa and Girolamo Vitelli already supposed with regard to Book 8 of Plato’s Republic; b) that the fragment in question can be attributed to a Socratic dialogue which was most likely composed in the first half of the 4th century BC; c) that both philosophical and textual arguments support the attribution of the fragment to a dialogue of Antisthenes.


2020 ◽  
Vol 83 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-114
Author(s):  
Adrian Blau

AbstractThis paper proposes a new framework for categorizing approaches to the history of political thought. Previous categorizations exclude much research; political theory, if included, is often caricatured. And previous categorizations are one-dimensional, presenting different approaches as alternatives. My framework is two-dimensional, distinguishing six kinds of end (two empirical, four theoretical) and six kinds of means. Importantly, these choices are not alternatives: studies may have more than one end and typically use several means. Studies with different ends often use some of the same means. And all studies straddle the supposed empirical/theoretical “divide.” Quentin Skinner himself expertly combines empirical and theoretical analysis—yet the latter is often overlooked, not least because of Skinner's own methodological pronouncements. This highlights a curious disjuncture in methodological writings, between what they say we do, and what we should do. What we should do is much broader than existing categorizations imply.


2021 ◽  
pp. 009059172199807
Author(s):  
Liam Klein ◽  
Daniel Schillinger

Political theorists have increasingly sought to place Plato in active dialogue with democracy ancient and modern by examining what S. Sara Monoson calls “Plato’s democratic entanglements.” More precisely, Monoson, J. Peter Euben, Arlene Saxonhouse, Christina Tarnopolsky, and Jill Frank approach Plato as both an immanent critic of the Athenian democracy and a searching theorist of self-governance. In this guide through the Political Theory archive, we explore “entanglement approaches” to the study of Plato, outlining their contribution to our understanding of Plato’s political thought and to the discipline of political theory.


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