|
Showing 1 - 2 of
2 matches in All Departments
Niccolo Machiavelli, though best known as a teacher of princes, is
also a teacher of republics. In his Discourses on Livy, he argues
that republican liberty depends upon a contentious mixture of
elitism and populism. Only the elite's wily pursuit of domination,
combined with the people's spirited resistance to such domination,
can produce that compromise between servitude and license known as
liberty. The task of the founder and the statesman is to construct
and maintain the appropriate "orders and modes" within which each
party to the conflict can make its appropriate contribution. The
elite, at its best, contributes prudence, military virtue, and the
capacity to innovate, while the people contributes moral and
political stability. David Levy explains and defends Machiavelli's
conception of liberty as conflict, and then uses that conception as
the lens through which to understand his views on religion, war and
imperialism, goodness and corruption, and the relation between
republics and princes. Also discussed is Machiavelli's own kind of
wiliness: his artful and often ironic mode of writing. Levy shows
that Machiavelli's republican teaching as a whole remains
persuasive today, and deserves careful consideration by all those
concerned with the survival and the success of liberty. This book
will be of interest both to beginning and more advanced students of
Machiavelli, as well as to students of modern republicanism and of
the history of ideas.
Wily Elites and Spirited Peoples in Machiavelli's Republicanism is
one of few books that explicitly proposes Machiavelli's
republicanism, understood as a contentious mixture of elitism and
populism, as a model for our time. Based on a careful study of his
Discourses on Livy, this book shows how Machiavelli's principles
can provide both support for and constructive criticism of modern
liberal democracy. Recent scholars sympathetic to Machiavelli have
described him as an advocate of civic virtue or democracy, but
these interpretations are incomplete and insufficiently
Machiavellian. Machiavelli relies less on civic virtue than on
self-interest, properly channeled through an antagonism between the
elite (the great or grandi) and the people. Only the elite's wily
pursuit of domination, combined with the people's spirited
resistance to such domination, can produce that compromise between
servitude and license known as liberty. Machiavelli is not exactly
a democrat, since he believes that a prudent and far-seeing elite
is indispensable for counteracting dangerous popular enthusiasms.
On the other hand, he emphasizes that the people must vigorously
contest the elite's aggrandizements.And he explains how to
construct and maintain a political framework that will allow each
side to make its appropriate contribution. Machiavelli's arguments
should be particularly appealing today, when many of us distrust
the motives of our political and economic elites without being
ready to embrace untrammeled populism. This book uses the conflict
between the elite and the people as the lens through which to
understand the other major features of Machiavelli's republicanism:
his views on religion, war and imperialism, goodness and
corruption, and the relation between republics and princes. In sum,
this book demonstrates that still today, Machiavelli's principles
are extremely relevant to the survival and success of liberty.
|
You may like...
Kill Joy
Holly Jackson
Paperback
R240
R192
Discovery Miles 1 920
The Expendables 2
Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, …
Blu-ray disc
(1)
R64
Discovery Miles 640
|