Democratizing Machiavelli? A Critique.
Appropriating Machiavelli for a political camp is tempting, and appropriations by all sorts of political leanings have rendered his body of thought as contradictory at best. John McCormick, in two relatively recent works, tries to cut through this by portraying Machiavelli as a populist and a democr...
| Publicado en: | KRITIKE: An Online Journal of Philosophy Vol. 19; no. 1; pp. 100 - 129 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
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KRITIKE: An Online Journal of Philosophy
Mar2025
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=186141683&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 186141683 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 19087330 B0CZ jtl: KRITIKE: An Online Journal of Philosophy issn: 19087330 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Mar2025 vid: 19 iid: 1 pid: 58723 pub: KRITIKE: An Online Journal of Philosophy artinfo: ui: 186141683 10.25138/19.1.a4 ppf: 100 ppct: 29 formats: fmt: @attributes: type: P size: 4.2MB tig: atl: Democratizing Machiavelli? A Critique. aug: au: Borja, Anthony Lawrence A. affil: Department of Political Science and Development Studies De La Salle University, The Philippines. su: Social conflict Sovereignty Practical politics Democracy Discourse sug: subj: Social conflict Sovereignty Practical politics Democracy Discourse keyword: democracy Gadamer Machiavelli politics ab: Appropriating Machiavelli for a political camp is tempting, and appropriations by all sorts of political leanings have rendered his body of thought as contradictory at best. John McCormick, in two relatively recent works, tries to cut through this by portraying Machiavelli as a populist and a democrat. Despite his insights, McCormick tries to end the conversation with the hopes of making his appropriation of Machiavelli conclusive. In response, I take a Gadamerian hermeneutical approach towards him and Machiavelli in order to keep the conversation open by asking two questions: (1) What is the relationship between popular sovereignty and statecraft? (2) What is the relationship between class conflict and statecraft? I will illustrate that Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy and The History of Florence do not contain any notion of popular sovereignty along populist or even democratic lines despite exposing the strengths and limitations of the People in relation to the life of the republic and to other sectors within it. Overall, democratizing Machiavelli casts aside his gift of being sensitive to the internal problems facing a democratic project—a sensitivity to the weaknesses of the People and the complexities of factional conflict beyond binary oppositions and in relation to statecraft. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of KRITIKE: An Online Journal of Philosophy is the property of KRITIKE: An Online Journal of Philosophy and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: KRITIKE: An Online Journal of Philosophy holder: KRITIKE: An Online Journal of Philosophy dt: @attributes: year: 2025 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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