Be Like the Fox: Machiavelli In His World

Be Like the Fox: Machiavelli In His World PDF Author: Erica Benner
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393609731
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
“Remarkable, engaging.… Be Like the Fox can be read with pleasure by anyone interested in the craft of politics and the life of ideas.”—New York Times Book Review In the five hundred years since he wrote The Prince, Machiavelli’s name has been linked to tyranny and the doctrine that “the ends justify the means.” But that is not what he stood for. In Be Like the Fox, Erica Benner takes us back to Renaissance Florence, where newly liberated citizens fought to build a free republic after the Medici princes were exiled. Machiavelli dedicated his life to this struggle for freedom. But despite his heroic efforts, the Medici soon swept back into power. Forced out of politics and prevented from speaking freely, Machiavelli had to use his skills of foxlike dissimulation to defend democracy in an era of tyrannical princes. Drawing on his letters, political writings, hard-hitting satirical dramas, and conversations with kings and popes, Be Like the Fox reveals Machiavelli as an unlikely hero for our times.

Be Like the Fox: Machiavelli In His World

Be Like the Fox: Machiavelli In His World PDF Author: Erica Benner
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393609731
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
“Remarkable, engaging.… Be Like the Fox can be read with pleasure by anyone interested in the craft of politics and the life of ideas.”—New York Times Book Review In the five hundred years since he wrote The Prince, Machiavelli’s name has been linked to tyranny and the doctrine that “the ends justify the means.” But that is not what he stood for. In Be Like the Fox, Erica Benner takes us back to Renaissance Florence, where newly liberated citizens fought to build a free republic after the Medici princes were exiled. Machiavelli dedicated his life to this struggle for freedom. But despite his heroic efforts, the Medici soon swept back into power. Forced out of politics and prevented from speaking freely, Machiavelli had to use his skills of foxlike dissimulation to defend democracy in an era of tyrannical princes. Drawing on his letters, political writings, hard-hitting satirical dramas, and conversations with kings and popes, Be Like the Fox reveals Machiavelli as an unlikely hero for our times.

Be Like the Fox

Be Like the Fox PDF Author: Erica Benner
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 9780141974859
Category : Authors, Italian
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Niccol Machiavelli lived in a fiercely competitive world, one where brute wealth, brazen liars and ruthless self-promoters seemed to carry off all the prizes and a new breed of leaders - super-rich dynasties like the Medici or military strongmen like Cesare Borgia - promised radical alternatives to the status quo. In the republic of Florence, Machiavelli and his contemporaries faced a choice- should they capitulate to these new princes, or fight to save the city's democratic freedoms? In this book, Erica Benner follows Machiavelli's dramatic quest for political and human freedom through his own eyes. Far from the cynical henchman people think he was, Machiavelli emerges as his era's staunchest champion of liberty, a profound ethical thinker who refused to compromise his ideals to fit corrupt times. But he did sometimes have to mask his true convictions, becoming a great artist of fox-like dissimulation- a master of disguise in dangerous times.

Machiavelli's Ethics

Machiavelli's Ethics PDF Author: Erica Benner
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400831849
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 543

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Book Description
Machiavelli's Ethics challenges the most entrenched understandings of Machiavelli, arguing that he was a moral and political philosopher who consistently favored the rule of law over that of men, that he had a coherent theory of justice, and that he did not defend the "Machiavellian" maxim that the ends justify the means. By carefully reconstructing the principled foundations of his political theory, Erica Benner gives the most complete account yet of Machiavelli's thought. She argues that his difficult and puzzling style of writing owes far more to ancient Greek sources than is usually recognized, as does his chief aim: to teach readers not how to produce deceptive political appearances and rhetoric, but how to see through them. Drawing on a close reading of Greek authors--including Thucydides, Xenophon, Plato, and Plutarch--Benner identifies a powerful and neglected key to understanding Machiavelli. This important new interpretation is based on the most comprehensive study of Machiavelli's writings to date, including a detailed examination of all of his major works: The Prince, The Discourses, The Art of War, and Florentine Histories. It helps explain why readers such as Bacon and Rousseau could see Machiavelli as a fellow moral philosopher, and how they could view The Prince as an ethical and republican text. By identifying a rigorous structure of principles behind Machiavelli's historical examples, the book should also open up fresh debates about his relationship to later philosophers, including Rousseau, Hobbes, and Kant.

Machiavelli: The Prince

Machiavelli: The Prince PDF Author: Niccolo Machiavelli
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521349932
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description
Professor Skinner presents a lucid analysis of Machiavelli's text as a response to the world of Florentine politics.

The Prince

The Prince PDF Author: Niccolo Machiavelli
Publisher: Wyatt North Publishing, LLC
ISBN: 164798145X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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Book Description
Written in the 16th century, The Prince remains one of the most influential books on political theory. Its author, Niccolo Machiavelli was an Italian diplomat and political theorist, and is considered the father of modern political thought.

The Lion and the Fox

The Lion and the Fox PDF Author: Sylvia Prince
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781544764641
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
A ruthless prince, a political traitor, and a dead Medici. What could possibly go wrong? Exiled, isolated, and depressed, Niccolo Machiavelli longs to return to power at any cost-but with the threat of torture still hanging over his head, Niccolo must bend to the will of the powerful Medici family. When a mysterious letter sends him to investigate the murder of a Medici, Niccolo stumbles into a dangerous world of rich young patricians, mysterious prostitutes, and shocking violence. Set against the vibrant backdrop of Renaissance Florence, Machiavelli must rely on his wits to navigate the currents of power and brutality, never knowing who he can trust. Niccolo thinks he can play the fox to outwit his enemies-but has he underestimated the lion?

The Hedgehog and the Fox

The Hedgehog and the Fox PDF Author: Isaiah Berlin
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400846633
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 143

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Book Description
"The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." This ancient Greek aphorism, preserved in a fragment from the poet Archilochus, describes the central thesis of Isaiah Berlin's masterly essay on Leo Tolstoy and the philosophy of history, the subject of the epilogue to War and Peace. Although there have been many interpretations of the adage, Berlin uses it to mark a fundamental distinction between human beings who are fascinated by the infinite variety of things and those who relate everything to a central, all-embracing system. Applied to Tolstoy, the saying illuminates a paradox that helps explain his philosophy of history: Tolstoy was a fox, but believed in being a hedgehog. One of Berlin's most celebrated works, this extraordinary essay offers profound insights about Tolstoy, historical understanding, and human psychology. This new edition features a revised text that supplants all previous versions, English translations of the many passages in foreign languages, a new foreword in which Berlin biographer Michael Ignatieff explains the enduring appeal of Berlin's essay, and a new appendix that provides rich context, including excerpts from reviews and Berlin's letters, as well as a startling new interpretation of Archilochus's epigram.

Foxes and Lions

Foxes and Lions PDF Author: Wayne A. Rebhorn
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
Winner of the Modern Language Association's Howard R. Marraro Prize for 1988-90 This book connects Machiavelli's literary works with his political and historical writings, and relates all of them to his life history, his concerns with power and powerlessness, and his characteristic modes of self-representation.

The Prince

The Prince PDF Author: Niccolò Machiavelli
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 3387010257
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
Reproduction of the original. The publishing house Megali specialises in reproducing historical works in large print to make reading easier for people with impaired vision.

Machiavelli

Machiavelli PDF Author: Miles Unger
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1416556303
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Book Description
Few philosophers are more often referred to and more often misunderstood than Machiavelli. He was truly a product of the Renaissance, and he was as much a revolutionary in the field of political philosophy as Leonardo or Michelangelo were in painting and sculpture. He watched his native Florence lose its independence to the French, thanks to poor leadership from the Medici successors to the great Lorenzo (Il Magnifico). Machiavelli was a keen observer of people, and he spent years studying events and people before writing his famous books. Descended from minor nobility, Machiavelli grew up in a household that was run by a vacillating and incompetent father. He was well educated and smart, and he entered government service as a clerk. He eventually became an important figure in the Florentine state but was defeated by the deposed Medici and Pope Julius II. He was tortured but eventually freed by the restored Medici. No longer employed, he retired to his home to write the books for which he is remembered. Machiavelli had seen the best and the worst of human nature, and he understood how the world operated. He drew his observations from life, and he was appropriately cynical in his writing, given what he had personally experienced. He was an outstanding writer, and his work remains fascinating nearly 500 years later.