The State in Machiavelli

Erscheinungsjahr 2026
ISBN: 978-1-009-63032-0
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, 500 Seiten

Reihe: Ideas in Context

While historical scholarship has often downplayed the importance of Machiavelli's theory of the state, this study reconstructs the question of lo stato as the conceptual crux of his political philosophy. Peter Stacey offers a detailed reconstruction of the historical context from which Machiavelli's theory emerges, demonstrating how the intellectual and ideological contours of Machiavelli's thinking, as well as much of its content, were decisively shaped by conceptual apparatuses drawn from Roman philosophical, rhetorical and aesthetic discourse. Stacey further provides a sustained analysis of the development of Machiavelli's picture of the state from his earliest writings onwards, underlining the extent to which the Florentine draws deeply upon several key aspects of this intellectual inheritance in hitherto unacknowledged ways, while calling into question some of its cherished assumptions about the character of collective political entities. As Machiavelli's thinking unfolds across The Prince and the Discourses, Stacey illustrates how a strikingly novel conception of the body politic marks him out as the author of a distinctively new philosophy of the state.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Stacey, Peter

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction: the problem of lo stato in Machiavelli; Part I. The Concepts: 1. Definition, division and difference; 2. Forma and materia; 3. Freedom, slavery and the res publica; 4. The persona civitatis; 5. On benefits; 6. The fortuna of fortuna; Part II. The Theory: 7. The formation of the theory from the Discorso sopra Pisa to Il Principe; 8: The development of the theory in the Discorsi (i); 9. The development of the theory in the Discorsi (ii); Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.

Über Autor(innen)

Stacey, Peter
Peter Stacey is Associate Professor in the Department of History, University of California, Los Angeles, and is the current holder of the Reill Chair in European History. His research focuses on the development of Renaissance political thought between the thirteenth and the sixteenth centuries. Stacey is the author of Roman Monarchy and the Renaissance Prince (Cambridge, 2007) and of numerous articles on ancient, medieval, Renaissance, and early modern political thought.