Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 27, 2025
The Duke Valentino, therefore, who is at one and the same time Machiavelli's ideal of prudence and courage in the conduct of affairs, and also his chief instance of the instability of fortune, supplies the philosopher with all he needed for the guidance of his princely pupil.
The somewhat negative good qualities of Lorenzo, his prudence and parsimony, his freedom from despotic ambition, and dislike of dangerous service, combined with his deference to the powerful members of his own family, are very unlike Machiavelli's ideal of the founder of a state. Cesare Borgia was almost the exact opposite.
There we feel the power of the poet's creation; and in the sharp light of that sudden turn the humanity is livelier than any realistic work can make it. Italian Comedy gives many hints for a Tartuffe; but they may be found in Boccaccio, as well as in Machiavelli's Mandragola. Frate Timoteo has a fine Italian priestly pose. DONNA: Credete voi, che'l Turco passi questo anno in Italia?
His ideal happens, however, to be the aim of most foreign offices, politicians and "princes of finance." Machiavelli's morals are not one bit worse than the practices of the men who rule the world to-day.
Morley, said of this, it is an argument which should be headed, "The Circumstances under which it is right for a Prince to be a Scoundrel." Caesar Borgia, the fiend, was Machiavelli's model, a man who rivalled all the atrocities of the worst Roman emperors. But Borgia failed. That matters not to Machiavelli. His failure was "due to the extreme malignity of fortune." Mr.
For three centuries all the evils of all political systems and policies have been attributed to the evils of Machiavelli's logic. Church and State alike have claimed he was the champion of the other's cause. He was Jesuit and atheist as it suited the turn of any vituperative polemist. He was Reformer and "Romanist" as the advocates of Rome or Reformation happened to interpret him.
There is, in fact, a whole literature of masculine babbling, ranging from Machiavelli's appalling confession of political theory to the egoistic confidences of such men as Nietzsche, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Casanova, Max Stirner, Benvenuto Cellini, Napoleon Bonaparte and Lord Chesterfield.
Were this figure placed there alone, on a simple and massive pedestal, it would be more in keeping with his fame than the lumbering heaviness of the present monument. Machiavelli's tomb is adorned with a female figure representing History, bearing his portrait. The inscription, which seems to be somewhat exaggerated, is: tanto nomini nullum par elogium.
Declining the various solutions which have been offered to explain how a man supposed to be so great could have lent his genius to the doctrine of 'the Prince, he has advanced a hypothesis of his own, which may or may not be true, as an interpretation of Machiavelli's character, but which, as an exposition of a universal ethical theory, is as questionable as what it is brought forward to explain.
See Machiavelli's critique of Lionardo d'Arezzo and Messer Poggio, in the Proemio to his Florentine History. His own conception of history, as the attempt to delineate the very spirit of a nation, is highly philosophical. Accuracy, patience, love of truth, sincerity in criticism, and laborious research, have all their proper place assigned to them.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking