Politics
1469 to 1527, Florence
Power, virtue, and the realities of rule.
Start learning Niccolo →Machiavelli’s revolution: to study politics by how people actually behave, not how moralists wish they would - the birth of political realism.
Machiavelli’s drama of the human will against chance: virtù , the ruler’s skill and boldness, struggling to master fortuna , the fickle goddess of luck.
Machiavelli’s most notorious question - whether a ruler should be loved or feared - and his cold, careful answer that fear is the safer foundation.
Machiavelli’s teaching that a ruler must master both force and fraud, keep faith only when it serves him, and above all appear virtuous whatever he truly is.
Beyond the cynic of The Prince lies a passionate republican who praised liberty, popular government, and even the value of political conflict.
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