Machiavelli's Florentine Republic

Machiavelli believes republicans must be prepared to defend strict limits on elite power even when elites are 'good'.

Michelle T. Clarke (Author)

9781107125506, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 8 March 2018

202 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 1.6 cm, 0.42 kg

'… this is by far the best book-length treatment in English of Machiavelli's longest work. Intelligent, erudite, and spirited, it should command the attention of diverse scholars and is sure to help revive interest in Machiavelli's Florentine Histories.' Christopher Lynch, The Review of Politics

What do modern republics have to fear? Machiavelli's Florentine Republic reconstructs Machiavelli's answer to this question from the perspective of the Florentine Histories, his most probing meditation on the fate of republican politics in the modern age. It argues that his principle goal in narrating the defeat of Florentine republicanism is to debunk the views of leading humanists concerning the overall health of republican politics in modernity and the distinctive challenges that modern republics should expect to face. The Medici family had exposed these vulnerabilities better than anyone else, and Machiavelli reconstructs their political strategy to show how conventional ideas of moral and political virtue are the most potent instruments of princely ambition in a city that wants to be free.

Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
1. Introduction
2. Another republicanism
3. Italy after the inundation
4. The questionable virtues of the Medici
5. Republican virtue, reconsidered
6. Conclusion
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Socialism & left-of-centre democratic ideologies [JPFF], Political ideologies [JPF], Politics & government [JP], Social & political philosophy [HPS], Philosophy [HP], Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH], History [HB]