The Radical Machiavelli

The Radical Machiavelli: Politics, Philosophy and Language offers a partial and even partisan reading of Machiavelli, whose thought continues to divide interpreters, forcing them to confront their responsibility as contemporary thinkers in a global society.

From a leading expert on the life and works of Niccolò Machiavelli, a superb overview of the pivotal Renaissance philosopher, writer, and historian. “Machiavellian” can signify duplicity and amorality in politics, but Machiavelli himself was far more complex than this cliché. A high-ranking Florentine government official and prolific writer of hugely influential political, military, and historical works, Machiavelli was also a vernacular poet, first-rank dramatist, and religious radical, rejecting not only the contemporary Catholic Church but Christianity itself. From champion of Florentine popular republicanism to political radical to conservative, Machiavelli explores the many facets of the man described as the father of modern political philosophy and political science.

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.

"We do not publish our own drafts, that is, our own mistakes, but we do sometimes publish other people's," Louis Althusser once observed of Marx's early writings. Among his own posthumously released drafts, one, at least, is incontestably neither mistake nor out-take: the text of his lecture course on Machiavelli, originally delivered at the cole Normale Suprieure in 1972, intermittently revised up to the mid-1980s, and carefully prepared for publication after his death in 1990. Though only appearing as an occasional reference in the Marxist philosopher's oeuvre, Machiavelli was an unseen constant presence. For together with Spinoza and Marx, Machiavelli was a veritable Althusserian passion. Machiavelli and Us reveals why, and will be welcomed for the light it sheds on the richly complex thought of its author.

A new reading of Machiavelli’s major works that demonstrates how he has been previously misread To what extent was Niccolò Machiavelli a “Machiavellian”? Was he an amoral adviser of tyranny or a stalwart partisan of liberty? A neutral technician of power politics or a devout Italian patriot? A reviver of pagan virtue or initiator of modern nihilism? Reading Machiavelli answers these questions through original interpretations of Machiavelli’s three major political works—The Prince, Discourses, and Florentine Histories—and demonstrates that a radically democratic populism seeded the Florentine’s scandalous writings. John McCormick challenges the misguided understandings of Machiavelli set forth by prominent thinkers, including Jean-Jacques Rousseau and representatives of the Straussian and Cambridge schools, and he emphasizes the fundamental, often unacknowledged elements of a vibrant Machiavellian politics. Advancing fresh readings of Machiavelli’s work, this book presents a new outlook on how politics should be conceptualized and practiced.

Uncovers clues regarding the inner life of Machiavelli's political leaders. The political statesman, Machiavelli tells us, must love his country more than his own soul. Political leaders must often transgress clear moral principles, using means that are typically wrong, even horrifying. What sort of inner life does a leader who “uses evil well” experience and endure? The conventional view held by most scholars is that a Machiavellian statesman lacks any “inwardness” because Machiavelli did not delve into the state of mind one might find in a politician with “dirty hands.” While such a leader would bask in his glory, the argument goes, we can only wonder at the condition of the soul they have presumably risked in discharging their duties. In Machiavelli’s Secret, Raymond Angelo Belliotti uncovers a range of clues in Machiavelli’s writings that, when pieced together, reveal that the Machiavellian hero most certainly has “inwardness” and is surely deeply affected by the evil means he must sometimes employ. Belliotti not only reveals the nature of this internal condition, but also provides a springboard for the possibility of Machiavelli’s ideal statesman. Raymond Angelo Belliotti is SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Fredonia. He is the author of several books, including Jesus or Nietzsche: How Should We Live Our Lives? and Jesus the Radical: The Parables and Modern Morality.

Original scholarly essays by leading philosophers, which bring to life Machiavelli’s lengthiest and most challenging work.

Machiavelliana is the first comprehensive study of the uses and abuses made of Niccolò Machiavelli’s name in management, primatology, leadership, power, as well as in novels, plays, commercial enterprises, television dramas, operas, rap music, children’s books, and more.