Conceptualising Corruption in Office

This chapter tracks the evolution of the word and concept of ‘corruption’. Having explored personal, institutional and systemic types of corruption, the next two sections outline key influences on pre-modern ways of thinking about it, highlighting the role of religion and civic humanism or the ‘republican tradition’. These influences put different emphases on personal, institutional, and systemic corruption, even if they shared a common moral purpose. Focus on that moral dimension leads to a discussion about the relationship between corruption and sexual immorality, and between anti-corruption and campaigns for the reformation of manners. The second half of the chapter focuses on the legal framework to show changes in the legal definitions of corruption, which increasingly defined corruption in terms of various forms of monetary forms of crime.

Robespierre y el humanismo cívico.

La distinción entre el lenguaje del humanismo cívico y el republicanismo resulta una aclaración conceptual adecuada para comprender las acciones de Robespierre ante la apertura de una nueva concepción de la política. En el humanismo cívico es posible encontrar elementos que responden a los presupuestos del comunitarismo, en tanto problemas que se circunscriben a una región limitada, y el republicanismo responde a exigencias que son susceptibles de universalidad. Ahora bien, esta distinción no es clara, ya que, durante la Revolución francesa, en especial en el caso de Robespierre, encontramos una mezcla entre la exigencia de la virtud cívica clásica con la búsqueda de un fundamento de legitimidad política con un enfoque social. Así, la anomalía ideológica de Robespierre solo puede esclarecerse a través de la comprensión de las peculiaridades del lenguaje de la virtud y el universalismo moral Palabras clave Republicanismo, comunitarismo, lenguaje político, mentalidades. Referencias Baron, H. (1966). The crisis of the early Italian Renaissance. Civic humanism and republican liberty in an age of classicism and tyranny. Princeton, Estados Unidos: Princeton University Press.Benjamin, W. (2013). Über den Begriff der Geschichte. En R. Tiedemann (Ed.).Walter Benjamin. Sprache und Geschichte. Philosophische Essays (pp. 141-154). Stuttgart, Alemania: Reclam.Bergeron, L., Furet, F. y Koselleck, R. (2012). La época de las revoluciones europeas, 1780-1848. Ciudad de México, México: Siglo xxi.Bernal, R. (2016). Fraternidad y democracia en el origen de nuestra modernidad política. En G. Ambriz Arévalo y R. Bernal Lugo (Coords.). El derecho contra el capital. Reflexiones desde la izquierda contemporánea (pp. 36-71). Chilpancingo, México: Contraste.Castro Gómez, S. (2019). Republicanismo transmoderno. En El tonto y los canallas. Notas para un republicanismo transmoderno (pp. 161-220). Bogotá, Colombia: Editorial Pontificia Universidad Javeriana.Dubiel, H., Frankenberg, G. y Rödel, U. (1997). El dispositivo simbólico de la democracia. En La cuestión democrática (pp. 137-192). Madrid, España: Huerga y Fierro Editores.Gauthier, F. (2005, 23 de julio). Robespierre: por una república democrática social. Sin Permiso. Recuperado de http://www.sinpermiso.info/textos/robespierre- por-una-repblica-democrtica-y-social.Gaytán, F. (2016). Hacia los nuevos testamentos jacobinos: los decálogos normativos para la laicidad. En Manual de redentores: laicidad y derechos, entre populismo y neojacobinismo (pp. 57-101). Ciudad de México, México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México-Instituto de Investigaciones Jurídicas.Gilroy, P. (2014). El Atlántico negro. Modernidad y doble conciencia. Madrid, España: Akal.James, C. L. R. (2003). Los jacobinos negros. Toussaint L’Overture y la Revolución de Haití. Ciudad de México, México: Turner-Fondo de Cultura Económica.Kant, I. (1900 s.). Kant’s Gesammelte Schriften (Editado por la Real Academia Prusiana de las Ciencias). Berlín, Alemania: Reimer [hoy De Gruyter]. Koselleck, R. (2017). Erfahrungsraum und Erwartungshorizont zwei historischen Kategorien. En Vergangene Zukunft. Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten (pp. 349-375). Fráncfort, Alemania: Suhrkamp Verlag.Mandeville, B. (1983). La fábula de las abejas. Ciudad de México, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica.Maquiavelo, N. (2015). Discursos sobre la primera década de Tito Livio. Madrid, España: Alianza.McPherson, C.B. (1962). The political theory of possessive individualism: Hobbes to Locke. Nueva York, Estados Unidos: Oxford University Press.

Seeing What Is Said: Teaching Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince Through Its Images

ABSTRACTThis multidisciplinary pedagogy offers eight allegorical images in support of a visually contextual reading of The Prince. Responding to the pedagogical problem of students treating the text as an ahistorical manual for action addressed to them, our approach resituates The Prince in its visual cultural context. This allows us to specify Machiavelli’s innovations as a theorist in terms of the importance of plurality and particularity in regard to political action. An online supplemental appendix provides access to databases and additional resources. Exploring Machiavelli’s politicized moral concepts of prudence, parsimony, liberality, fortune, and impetuosity using these images, we show his masterful invocation and redeployment of the cultural codes of his time. In presenting a visual history of concepts, we hope to move students beyond common contemporary ideological biases and literal readings and to alert them to the complex stories and relationships evident in the visual history of civic humanism.

Sights and Sounds of Characters

Images are a key tool in the creation of public characters. The bulging biceps of a hero’s sculpture, a line that makes a villain squint slightly in a political poster, the high-pitched squeak of a minion: a few tiny visual or aural details can suggest a character in the blink of an eye. Florence launched civic humanism and republican ideology with an extensive program of public sculpture in the new squares it built in the fifteenth century, using David as a republican hero against tyranny. Artists have refined our visual vocabulary for character work ever since. This chapter also shows how music suggests power or morality in the characters it portrays.

Florence 1438: The Encomium of the Florentina Libertas Sent by Poggio Bracciolini to Duke Filippo Maria Visconti

This article presents the critical editions of two texts: a letter by the Duke of Milan Filippo Maria Visconti (but written on his behalf by Pier Candido Decembrio) sent to Poggio Bracciolini on 28 July 1438; and the response written by Poggio on 15 September. Poggio’s letter contains a brief treatise in praise of Florence and of the Florentina libertas. The documents illuminate a crucial episode in the history of Italian Humanism. The article opens with the discussion of these two letters in their wider historical and intellectual context: on the one hand, the characteristically Florentine «civic humanism» which constitutes the background of Poggio’s positions; on the other, the political and cultural competition between Florence and Milan during the first half of the 15th century.