Machiavelli's Virtue

by Harvey Mansfield Jr.

Book Overview

Uniting thirty years of authoritative scholarship by a master of textual detail, Machiavelli's Virtue is a comprehensive statement on the founder of modern politics. Harvey Mansfield reveals the role of sects in Machiavelli's politics, his advice on how to rule indirectly, and the ultimately partisan character of his project, and shows him to be the founder of such modern and diverse institutions as the impersonal state and the energetic executive...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226503690
• ISBN13: 9780226503691
• Release Date: March 1998
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 460 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.9" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

The few must be deferred, the many impressed or How I learned to live with the effectual truth.

Machiavelli studies in English appear to have at least one major bifurcation. On one side are the studies that are largely influenced by the civic humanism school started by Hans Baron and continued by such scholars as Quentin Skinner, J.G.A. Pocock and Maurizio Viroli. On the other side are those scholars influenced by Leo Strauss which include scholars like Harvey Mansfield and Vickie Sullivan. I should make some differences from the previous reviewers clear. I am not going to tell you which side is right. I lean toward the Straussian view of Machiavelli but I have learned a lot from reading Skinner and Baron. I am certainly not going to claim that this is the second- or third- or nth-best book ever written about Machiavelli. I am not qualified to make such a claim and, considering my ignorance of foreign languages, never will be. What I will state is that this is the best intro to the Straussian interpretation of Machiavelli that I have yet to read. I found it a fairly easy book to read which is not true of Strauss' Thoughts on Machiavelli (ToM). It is also a little less quirky than ToM. Many scholars have far too quickly dismissed Strauss because of some of the quirkiness. If you are interested in studying Machiavelli with a Straussian lens then I recommend you start with this book and go on to ToM. Everyone who fancies political philosophy should welcome a chance to wrestle with both Machiavelli and Strauss. Why study Machiavelli with a Straussian lens? I have found that Strauss and Mansfield interpret Machiavelli in a way that makes him far more challenging and more disturbing than the interpretation offered up by the civic humanist school. I also find the Straussians more successful in dealing with all the difficulties of the Machiavellian body of writings. What we have here in Mansfield's book is a collection of writings that were published from 1967 to 1995. They were either stand alone essays and the introductions to some of his translations of Machiavelli's writings. The only new essay is the title essay and some connecting introductions. What is remarkable is how well this all works. There is some repetition but less than I expected. He speaks to all of the major works of Machiavelli, he goes over the history of scholarly reaction to ToM, and he explores what he sees as some of the major themes of Machiavelli's thought. Besides the obvious themes of the meaning of virtue and the common good in Machiavelli, Mansfield also examines the way Machiavelli's proposes to manage sects within a government and how he proposes to check the pursuit of glory of one individual within a republic with the pursuit of glory of another. So what are the main points of the Straussian reading of Machiavelli? (Please read the following with two things in mind. Whenever I say Machiavelli, please add "according to Mansfield or Strauss". Secondly, this is my first attempt at such a summary. It is undoubtably wrong. Feel free to point out my errors in the co

Masterpiece

Nowhere easy to read, occasionally repetitive, but a masterpiece nonetheless. The second best book ever written about Machiavelli. Mansfield makes a claim so bold as to seem reckless. But the more time one spends checking it out, the truer it appears.Some ideas and themes that Mansfield elucidates seem to have never been discovered by other scholars, much less elucidated. And no one does a better job of explaining the details of Machiavelli's politics and the actual institutions he recommends.