Tag Archives: machiavelli

A Quick Note on Machiavelli’s Discourses, I.7 and I.8

It is rare that reading classical history or philosophy overlaps with anything we’re going through today. In fact, I want to eliminate many of the entries where I’ve contended that something is wrong because it doesn’t match up with some older example of how things should work. These are very tricky issues to sort through, …

September 1, 2010 – 3:58 pm | By ashok | Posted in politics | Tagged | Comments (1)

An Introduction to Machiavelli’s “The Prince,” Part 1

Note: References below are to Harvey Mansfield’s translation of The Prince,  Second Edition, University of Chicago Press. I am a student of Leo Paul de Alvarez and cannot recommend his (de Alvarez’s) work highly enough: if you can buy his edition of The Prince, do so, especially as the essay he has written introducing the …

July 7, 2009 – 5:16 am | By ashok | Posted in philosophy, politics | Tagged | Comments (11)

When in Rome…

1. New friends: mosaic artist Julie Richey not only does some amazing work, but is even blogging about the Collegium Rome trip I’m still on. Cherie Peacock’s (who’s on the trip) Catholic Answers site explains the piety of many on the trip, even though she’s not blogging about this publicly (or at least, not that …

January 1, 2009 – 2:18 am | By ashok | Posted in personal | Tagged | Comments (2)

Where Exactly Does the Cruelty of The Prince Reside?

What is below is subject to being revised entirely at a later date. Allowing man to acquire all he wants is the unleashing of vice. We know moderation is key in some form to all the virtues. But to see the uses of virtue and vice, one has to move beyond the individual, as in …

February 22, 2008 – 1:32 pm | By ashok | Posted in politics | Tagged | Comments (1)

Defending Mansfield: Why the Executive is Not Entirely Defined by the Rule of Law

Energy is an ambivalent term in this kind of political philosophy – but its worth again being very precise by what we mean here. Mansfield takes both the word energy and the Machiavellian word, virtu, to be attributes that only tyrants or those acting extra legally can have. Its an interesting case- but in my …

May 3, 2007 – 5:44 pm | By ashok | Posted in politics | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Innovation in Politics and the Potential of the Internet

To reach an electorate bombarded with messages from the new and old media, politicians will have to make more use of online journals or blogs, and sites such as Facebook and MySpace. They also need to move into video-sharing sites and forums where ideas and policies can be challenged online. “They haven’t been very innovative,” …

April 22, 2007 – 9:52 am | By ashok | Posted in lincoln, media, politics | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Learning the Hard Way

When reading the phrase “acquire grace” in the first sentence of the Epistle Dedicatory to Machiavelli’s “Prince,” I wondered for a while at the nature of my own “love,” and every bad memory regarding a relationship or would-be relationship flooded my skull. With those memories came challenges to my assumption that I might have loved. …

March 17, 2007 – 6:12 pm | By ashok | Posted in love | Tagged | Comments (0)

Is Politics Reducible to Rhetoric?

The following is only a summary (with some purposely loaded comments) of an aspect of Leo Strauss’ essay “On Aristotle’s Politics,” found in The City and Man, pg. 17-24 Machiavelli held that it was possible for tyrannical power to come about from a “deep knowledge of political things.” The conclusion of the essay on Macbeth …

February 13, 2007 – 3:50 pm | By ashok | Posted in aristotle, politics | Tagged , , | Comments (3)