Machiavelli's Politics
Machiavelli is popularly known as a teacher of tyrants, a key proponent of the unscrupulous "Machiavellian" politics laid down in his landmark political treatise "The Prince". Others cite the "Discourses on Livy" to argue that Machiavelli is actually a passionate advocate of republican politics who saw the need for occasional harsh measures to maintain political order. Which best characterizes the teachings of the prolific Italian philosopher? With "Machiavelli's Politics", Catherine H. Zuckert turns this question on its head with a major reinterpretation of Machiavelli's prose works that reveals a surprisingly cohesive view of politics. Starting with Machiavelli's two major political works, Zuckert persuasively shows that the moral revolution Machiavelli sets out in "The Prince" lays the foundation for the new form of democratic republic he proposes in the "Discourses". Distrusting ambitious politicians to serve the public interest of their own accord, Machiavelli sought to persuade them in "The Prince" that the best way to achieve their own ambitions was to secure the desires and ambitions of their subjects and fellow citizens. In the "Discourses", he then describes the types of laws and institutions that would balance the conflict between the two in a way that would secure the liberty of most, if not all. In the second half of her book, Zuckert places selected later works – "La Mandragola", "The Art of War", "The Life of Castruccio Castracani", "Clizia", and "Florentine Histories" – under scrutiny, showing how Machiavelli further developed certain aspects of his thought in these works. In "The Art of War", for example, he explains more concretely how and to what extent the principles of organization he advanced in "The Prince and the Discourses" ought to be applied in modern circumstances. Because human beings act primarily on passions, Machiavelli attempts to show readers what those passions are and how they can be guided to have productive rather than destructive results. A stunning and ambitious analysis, "Machiavelli's Politics" brilliantly shows how many conflicting perspectives do inform Machiavelli's teachings, but that one needs to consider all of his works in order to understand how they cohere into a unified political view. This is a magisterial work that cannot be ignored if a comprehensive understanding of the philosopher is to be obtained.
About the Author
Catherine H. Zuckert is the Nancy R. Dreux Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. She is the author of several books and the co-author, with Michael P. Zuckert, of "Leo Strauss and the Problem of Political Philosophy", also published by the University of Chicago Press.
Reviews
"'Machiavelli's Politics' is an exceedingly ambitious book – comparable in many ways with Zuckert's magnum opus on Plato. In the case of Machiavelli, the devil is in the details, and this is one of the few scholarly works to carefully and thoroughly tackle Machiavelli's entire corpus. But the book is much more than an indispensable scholarly resource. It is a work of controversy that scholars and others interested in Machiavelli will find challenging and exciting, regardless of whether one is persuaded by her claims" – Paul A. Rahe, Hillsdale College
"There is no book on Machiavelli quite like this one, with exposition and analysis of every major work. Zuckert's writing is admirably clear, the depth of her knowledge about the history and background of the texts amply evident. In establishing the coherence of Machiavelli's work, her interpretations of particular passages are surprising and enlightening" – Harvey C. Mansfield, Harvard University
