On Machiavelli: The Search for Glory

On Machiavelli: The Search for Glory (Liveright Classics) [Kindle Edition]

Alan Ryan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 18, 2013

An essential, comprehensive, and accessible guide to the life and works of Machiavelli.

In On Machiavelli: The Search for Glory, Alan Ryan illuminates the political and philosophical complexities of the often-reviled godfather of realpolitik. Thought by some to be the founder of Italian nationalism, regarded by others to be a reviver of the Roman Republic as a model for the modern Western world, Machiavelli remains a contentious figure. Often outraging popular opinion with his insistence on the amoral nature of power, Machiavelli eschewed the world as it ought to be in favor of a forthright appraisal of the one that is. Perhaps more than any other thinker, Machiavelli has suffered from being taken out of context, and Ryan places him squarely within his own time and the politics of a Renaissance Italy riven by near-constant warfare among rival city-states and the papacy.

A well-educated son of Florence, Machiavelli was originally in charge of the Florentine Republic’s militia, but in 1512 the city fell to papal forces led by Cardinal Giovanni de Medici, who thus restored the Medici family to power. Machiavelli was accused of conspiracy, imprisoned, tortured, and eventually exiled from his beloved Florence, and it was during this period that he produced his most famous works. While attempting to ingratiate himself to the Medicis, the historically minded Machiavelli looked to the imperial ambitions and past glories of the Roman Republic as a contrast to the perceived failures of his contemporaries.

For Machiavelli, the hunger for power and glory was inextricable from human nature, and any serious attempt to rule must take this into account. In his revolutionary The Prince and Discourses—both excerpted here—Machiavelli created the first truly modern analysis of power.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Ryan’s On Politics (2012) presented the entire history of Western political thought in two spirited and accessible volumes that emphasized the relevance of past political thought to the challenges of the present. Here, he presents a brief and pithy summary of the contributions of Niccolò Machiavelli, a pivotal figure in modern political thought who is nevertheless often misunderstood. The misunderstandings, suggests Ryan, occur when we take the sixteenth-century Florentine writer’s works out of context, or reduce them to epigrams (It is better to be feared than to be loved, and the like). The Prince, Ryan reminds us, was part of a failed job application, written following the collapse of Machiavelli’s cherished Florentine Republic. Machiavelli’s overall project, he suggests, may not have been that of shocking the sensibilities of later ages but, rather, reflecting upon the difficulties of instituting political order, whether princely or republican. Ryan’s summary is accompanied by fairly substantial extracts from Machiavelli’s key texts, allowing this book to serve as a teaching resource as well as a concise and readable introduction to its subject. A similar work by Ryan on Aristotle is reviewed above. –Brendan Driscoll

Review

“A brief and pithy summary of the contributions of Niccolò Machiavelli, a pivotal figure in modern political thought who is nevertheless often misunderstood…. Ryan’s summary is accompanied by fairly substantial extracts from Machiavelli’s key texts, allowing this book to serve as a teaching resource as well as a concise and readable introduction to its subject.” (Booklist)

“Alan Ryan captures Machiavelli’s hold on the modern moral imagination when he says, “The staying power of The Prince comes from…its insistence on the need for a clear-sighted appreciation of how men really are as distinct from the moralizing claptrap about how they ought to be.” This moral clarity remains bracing in an era like our own, when politicians hide the necessary ruthlessness of political life behind the rhetoric of family values and Christian principles …. We are still drawn to Machiavelli because we sense how impatient he was with the equivalent flummery in his own day, and how determined he was to confront a problem that preoccupies us too: when and how much ruthlessness is necessary in the world of politics.” (Michael Ignatieff – The Atlantic)

About the Author

Alan Ryan was warden of New College, Oxford University, and professor of political theory. The author of On Politics, John Dewey and the High Tide of American Liberalism and Bertrand Russell: A Political Life, he currently teaches politics at Princeton University.