Machiavelli's ethics /
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| Author / Creator: | Benner, Erica. |
|---|---|
| Imprint: | Princeton : Princeton University Press, c2009. |
| Description: | xv, 527 p. ; 24 cm. |
| Language: | English |
| Subject: | |
| Format: | Print Book |
| URL for this record: | http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/7892382 |
Table of Contents:
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Arguments: Philosophical ethics and the rule of law
- Sources: Greek ethics
- I. Contexts
- 1. Civil Reasonings: Machiavelli's Practical Filosofia
- 1.1. Florentine Histories: Decent words, indecent deeds
- 1.2. Flawed remedies: Rhetoric and power politics
- 1.3. Flawed analyses: Self-celebratory versus self-critical histories
- 1.4. Philosophy and the vita activa in Florentine humanism
- 1.5. What is, has been, and can reasonably be: Machiavelli's correspondence
- 1.6. The Socratic tradition of philosophical politics
- 1.7. Forming republics in writing and in practice: The Discursus
- 2. Ancient Sources: Dissimulation in Greek Ethics
- 2.1. Constructive dissimulation: Writing as civil "medicine"
- 2.2. Inoculation for citizens: Words and deeds in Xenophon's Cyropaedia
- 2.3. Conversations with rulers: Plutarch and Xenophon on purging tyranny
- 2.4. Dissimulating about deception: Xenophon's Cambyses
- 2.5. Dissimulating about justice: Thucydides' Diodotus
- II. Foundations
- 3. Imitation and Knowledge
- 3.1. The ancient tradition of imitating ancients
- 3.2. Inadequate imitation: The "unreasonable praise of antiquity"
- 3.3. Historical judgment: Criticism of sources and self-examination
- 3.4. The Socratic metaphor of hunting
- 3.5. Ethical judgment: The "true knowledge of histories"
- 3.6. Machiavelli's dangerous new reasonings
- 4. Necessity and Virtue
- 4.1. The rhetoric of necessity
- 4.2. Necessita as an excuse
- 4.3. Necessita as a pretext
- 4.4. Imposing and removing necessita
- 4.5. Virtú as reflective prudence: Taking stock of ordinary constraints
- 4.6. Under- and overassertive responses to necessity
- 4.7. Virtú as self-responsibility: Authorizing constraints on one's own forces
- 4.8. Virtú as autonomy: Imposing one's own orders and laws
- 4.9. Necessità and fortuna
- 5. Human Nature and Human Orders
- 5.1. Fortune and free will
- 5.2. How to manage fortuna: Impetuosity and respetto
- 5.3. Practical theology: Heavenly judgments and human reasons
- 5.4. Practical prophecies: Foreseeing the future by "natural virtues"
- 5.5. Moral psychology: The malignitú of human nature and the discipline of virtü
- 5.6. Human zoology: The ways of men and beasts
- 5.7. Human cities, where modes are neither delicate nor too harsh
- 5.8. Who is responsible for the laws? Human reasoning and civilità
- III. Principles
- 6. Free Agency and Desires for Freedom
- 6.1. The Discourses on desires for freedom in and among cities
- 6.2. The Florentine Histories on freedom and the need for self-restraint
- 6.3. Are desires for freedom universal?
- 6.4. Inadequate conceptions of freedom
- 6.5. The rhetoric of libertà in republics
- 6.6. Free will and free agency
- 7. Free Orders
- 7.1. Priorities I: Respect for free agency as a condition for stable orders
- 7.2. Priorities II: Willing authorization as the foundation of free orders
- 7.3. Conditions I: Universal security
- 7.4. Conditions II: Transparency and publicity
- 7.5. Conditions III: Equal opportunity
- 7.6. Foundations of political freedom: Procedural constraints and the rule of law
- 7.7. Persuasions: Why should people choose free orders?
- 8. Justice and Injustice
- 8.1. Justice as the basis of order and libertà
- 8.2. Partisan accounts of justice
- 8.3. Non-partisan persuasions toward justice
- 8.4. Why it is dangerous to violate the law of nations
- 8.5. Forms of justice: Promises, punishments, and distributions
- 8.6. Ignorance of justice: Who is responsible for upholding just orders?
- 9. Ends and Means
- 9.1. Responsibility for bad outcomes: The dangers of giving counsel
- 9.2. Judging wars by post facto outcomes
- 9.3. Judging wars by anticipated outcomes
- 9.4. Reflective consequentialism or deontology?
- 9.5. Problem 1: Unjust means corrupt good ends
- 9.6. Problem 2: Who can be trusted to foresee effects?
- 9.7. Problem 3: Who can be trusted to identify good ends?
- 9.8. Problem 4: Corrupting examples
- 9.9. Corrupt judgments: Means and ends in the Prince
- IV. Politics
- 10. Ordinary and Extraordinary Authority
- 10.1. The antithesis between ordinary and extraordinary modes
- 10.2. Are conspiracies ever justified?
- 10.3. Extraordinary and ordinary ways to renovate corrupt cities
- 10.4. Unreasonable uses of religion: Easy ways to acquire authority
- 10.5. Reasonable uses of religion: Fear of God and fear of human justice
- 10.6. Folk religion and civil reasoning
- 11. Legislators and Princes
- 11.1. Spartan founders and refounders: Lycurgus, Agis, and Cleomeness
- 11.2. Roman founders and legislators: Romulus and Aeneas
- 11.3. God's executors and modes of free building: Moses
- 11.4. Ordinary mortals and the ancient ideal of the one-man legislator
- 11.5. Persuasion in the Prince: On maintaining one's own arms
- 11.6. Princely knowledge and the "knowledge of peoples"
- 12. Expansion and Empire
- 12.1. Why republics must expand: The defects of non-expansionist republics
- 12.2. Three modes: Equal partnership, subjection to one, and the Roman mode
- 12.3. The Roman "middle way": Making subjects or partners
- 12.4. Bad Roman modes, good Roman orders: The choice between extremes
- 12.5. Why Roman imperio became pernicious: The wars with Carthage
- 12.6. Expansion by partnership: The forgotten Tuscan league
- 12.7. Should Florence imitate Rome?
- Conclusions
- This interpretation and others
- Machiavelli and the ethical foundations of political philosophy
- Bibliography
- Index