Description
Book SynopsisIn The Radical Machiavelli: Politics, Philosophy and Language, some of the finest Machiavellian scholars explore the Florentine’s thought five hundred years after the composition of his masterpiece, The Prince. Their analysis, however, goes past The Prince, extending to Machiavelli’s entire corpus and shining new light on his political, historical, and military works, with a special focus on their heritage in modern Marxist thought, the arena in which they reverberate most profoundly and originally. Rather than a neutral, comprehensive, and safe interpretation, this book offers a partial and even partisan reading of Machiavelli, the 16th-century thinker who continues to divide scholars and interpreters, forcing them to confront their responsibility as contemporary thinkers in a global society where Machiavelli's ideas and the issues they address still matter. Contributors are: Etienne Balibar, Banu Bargu, Jérémie Barthas, Thomas Berns, Alison Brown, Filippo Del Lucchese, Romain Descendre, Jean-Louis Fournel, Fabio Frosini, Giorgio Inglese, Mikko Lahtinen, Jacques Lezra, John P. McCormick, Warren Montag, Vittorio Morfino, Mohamed Moulfi, Gabriele Pedullà, Tania Rispoli, Peter D. Thomas, Sebastian Torres, Miguel Vatter, Stefano Visentin, Yves Winter, and Jean-Claude Zancarini.
Trade Review"These papers cohere very well, often speaking to each other and sometimes disagreeing. They underscore the truism that The Prince remains a battlefield and that no consensus on it is likely ever to be reached. But these papers, with their carefully constructed arguments, extensive documentation, and nuanced evaluations, as well as their forty-seven pages of bibliography, do much to clear away old smoke." - John H. Geerken (Scripps College, emeritus), in Renaissance Quarterly, vol. LXX, no. 2 (summer 2017)
Table of ContentsList of Figures viii List of Contributors ix Introduction 1 Part 1: Language, Text and Context of The Prince 1 Il genere e il tempo delle parole: dire la guerra nei testi machiavelliani 23 Jean-Louis Fournel 2 ‘Uno piccolo dono’: A Software Tool for Comparing the First Edition of Machiavelli’s The Prince to Its Sixteenth Century French Translations 39 Jean-Claude Zancarini 3 Of ‘Extravagant’ Writing: The Prince, Chapter IX 56 Romain Descendre 4 ‘Italia’ come spazio politico in Machiavelli 73 Giorgio Inglese 5 Machiavelli the Tactician: Math, Graphs, and Knots in The Art of War 81 Gabriele Pedulla Part 2: Machiavelli and Philosophy 6 Lucretian Naturalism and the Evolution of Machiavelli’s Ethics 105 Alison Brown 7 Corpora Caeca : Discontinuous Sovereignty in The Prince 128 Jacques Lezra 8 The Five Theses of Machiavelli’s ‘Philosophy’ 144 Vittorio Morfijino 9 Tempo e politica: Una lettura materialista di Machiavelli 174 Sebastian Torres 10 Imitation and Animality: On the Relationship between Nature and History in Chapter XVIII of The Prince 190 Tania Rispoli Part 3: Politics, Religion, and Prophecy 11 Prophetic Efficacy: The Relationship between Force and Belief 207 Thomas Berns 12 Prophecy, Education, and Necessity: Girolamo Savonarola between Politics and Religion 219 Fabio Frosini 13 ‘Uno Mero Esecutore’: Moses, Fortuna, and Occasione in The Prince 237 Warren Montag 14 Machiavelli and the Republican Conception of Providence 250 Miguel Vatter Part 4: Radical Democracy beyond Republicanism 15 Machiavelli, Public Debt, and the Origin of Political Economy: An Introduction 273 Jeremie Barthas 16 Plebeian Politics: Machiavelli and the Ciompi Uprising 306 Yves Winter 17 Machiavelli’s Greek Tyrant as Republican Reformer 337 John P. McCormick 18 Essere Principe, Essere Populare: The Principle of Antagonism in Machiavelli’s Epistemology 349 Etienne Balibar 19 The Different Faces of the People: On Machiavelli’s Political Topography 368 Stefano Visentin Part 5: Machiavelli and Marxism 20 Machiavelli Was Not a Republicanist – Or Monarchist: On Louis Althusser’s ‘Aleatory’ Interpretation of The Prince 393 Mikko Lahtinen 21 Lectures machiavéliennes d’Althusser 406 Mohamed Moulfiji 22 Machiavelli after Althusser 420 Banu Bargu 23 Gramsci’s Machiavellian Metaphor: Restaging The Prince 440 Peter D. Thomas Index 457
