Download Legends of the Renaissance: The Life and Legacy of Niccolo Machiavelli AudioBook Free
- Points out the historical backdrop of Machiavelli's life and the politics framework within which he published The Prince.
- Discusses lingering controversies encompassing Machiavelli and his work, including whether The Prince was expected as a satire or an effort to spark a rebellion.
"The assumptions of the whole Western political tradition from Plato onward were called into question by the era of radical thinkers, of whom the greatest & most radical was Niccolò Machiavelli." (Adam Hankins) "No epitaph can match so excellent a name," reads the inscription on Niccolò Machiavelli's tomb in the chapel of Santa Croce in Florence. Such compliment of the notorious writer of
The Prince, the "tutor of bad" according to Leo Strauss, may appear misplaced to people that have only a passing knowledge of one of history's most famous politics philosophers and theorists. Ever since Machiavelli penned his 1513 treatise on princely rule and the politics of actuality, a work that infamously advises rulers to abandon virtue and morality when necessary, his name has been synonymous with deceit, duplicity, and amoral pragmatism. In 1559 the written text was unsurprisingly authorized in the
Index Librorum Prohibitorum, the Catholic Church's set of banned books, on the grounds of immorality. Shakespeare dubbed him the "murderous Machiavel" in the 1590s, only six generations after his fatality in 1527. Since then a sinister reputation has posthumously plagued the controversial Florentine, and the accusation to be "Machiavellian", an overused and typically misapplied adjective, is a charge of behaving in a cunning, scheming, and unscrupulous way. But is this depiction of Machiavelli as wicked and immoral accurate?
