Exemplarism and political virtues in Machiavelli’s The Prince.

Journal title RIVISTA DI STORIA DELLA FILOSOFIA
Author/s Mario De Caro
Publishing Year 2023 Issue 2023/1
Language Italian Pages 14 P. 56-69 File size 151 KB
DOI 10.3280/SF2023-001005
DOI is like a bar code for intellectual property: to have more infomation click here

Below, you can see the article first page

If you want to buy this article in PDF format, you can do it, following the instructions to buy download credits

Article preview

FrancoAngeli is member of Publishers International Linking Association, Inc (PILA), a not-for-profit association which run the CrossRef service enabling links to and from online scholarly content.

Machiavelli’s The Prince is, at the same time, the most famous example of the Specula principum genre and its nemesis. Inspired by classical models, the Specula were didactic moral treatises for rulers, sometimes with a propaganda goal. From a formal point of view, The Prince falls within that genre for three reasons. First, Machiavelli openly presents his work as a manual of instructions for a prince. Second, in the Machiavellian treatise one finds, as was proper in the mirror tradition, many historical exempla pointed to as models (positive or negative) by which princes in search of glory should be inspired or from which they should shy away. Third, Machiavelli makes extensive use of classic moral terminology, as was the case with the Specula. However, if we turn from the form to the content, we see how The Prince empties the specular tradition from within. It bends the traditional moral language to explain politics iuxta propria principia: far from trying to bridge the gap between politics and morality as much as possible, Machiavelli justifies its existence and accentuates its relevance. Thus, in the very work that represents its culmination, the mirror tradition, which for centuries had set out to reconcile politics and morality, sanctions their final divorce.

Keywords: Machiavelli, exemplarism, Specula principum, The Prince, virtue politics, exempla.

  1. -­ Ceron 2011a: Annalisa Ceron, Chi sono gli amici del principe? L’amicizia in quattro specula principum del XV secolo, «Rinascimento», 51, 111-­137.
  2. -­ Aristotele 1979: Aristotele, Etica Nicomachea, a cura di C. Mazzarelli, Rusconi, Milano 1979.
  3. -­ Boccaccio 1983: Giovanni Boccaccio, Del casibus vivorum illustrium, in Tutte le opere, vol. 9, Milano, Mondadori 1983.
  4. -­ Brenk 2008: Frederick E. Brenk, Setting a Good Exemplum. Case Studies in the Mo-­ ralia, the Lives as Case Studies, in Anastasios G. Nikolaidis (ed.), The Unity of Plutar-­ ch’s Work, De Gruyter, Berlin -­ New York 2008, pp. 237-­254.
  5. -­ Cappelli 2017: Guido Cappelli, Machiavelli e l’umanesimo politico del Quattrocento, in «Res Publica. Revista de Historia de las Ideas Políticas», 20 (1), 2017, pp. 81-­92.
  6. -­ Ceron 2011b: Annalisa Ceron, L’amicizia civile e gli amici del principe: lo spazio politico dell’amicizia nel pensiero del Quattrocento, Eum, Macerata 2011.
  7. -­ Cherchi 2015: Paolo Cherchi, L’orazione parenetica e profetica di Abdal·∙là Salomó: Tirant lo Blanc, eHumanista/IVITRA, 7, 2015, pp. 227-­239.
  8. -­ De Caro 1969: Gaspare De Caro (a cura di), Istituzione del principe cristiano. Avvertimenti e istruzioni di Carlo V al figlio Filippo, Zanichelli, Bologna 1969.
  9. -­ De Caro e Vaccarezza 2019: Mario De Caro e Maria Silvia Vaccarezza, Phronesis as Ethical Expertise: Naturalism of Second Nature and the Unity of Virtue, «The Journal of Value Inquiry», 52, 2019, pp. 287-­305.
  10. -­ De Caro 2021: Mario De Caro, Machiavelli’s Lucretian View of Free Will, in Philip R. Hardie, Valentina Prosperi, Diego Zucca (eds.), Lucretius: Poet and Philosopher, De Gruyter, Berlin 2020, pp. 201-­217.
  11. -­ De Caro, Marraffa e Vaccarezza 2021: Mario De Caro, Massimo Marraffa, Maria Silvia Vaccarezza, The Priority of Phronesis: How To Rescue Virtue Theory from Its Critics, in Mario De Caro e Maria Silvia Vaccarezza (eds.), Practical Wisdom, Routledge, London 2021, pp. 29-­51.
  12. -­ Foresta 2013: Patrizio Foresta, Specula principum in età moderna, in AA.VV., Enciclope-­ dia Costantiniana, Istituto dell’Enciclopedia, Roma 2013, -- https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/specula-­principum-­in-­eta-­moderna_%28Enciclopedia-­Costantiniana%29/.
  13. -­ Ginzburg 2009: Carlo Ginzburg, Pontano, Machiavelli and prudence. Some further reflections, in Diogo Ramada Curto, Eric R. Dursteler, Julius Kirshner, Francesca Tri-­ vellato (eds.), From Florence to the Mediterranean and beyond. Essays in Honour of Anthony Molho, Olschki, Firenze 2009, pp. 117-­25.
  14. -­ Hankins 2019: James Hankins, Virtue Politics. Soulcraft and Statecraft in Renaissan-­ ce Italy, Belknap Press, Cambridge (MA) 2019.
  15. -­ Inglese 2014, Giorgio Inglese, Machiavelli e Plutarco, in Gennaro Sasso (a cura di), En-­ ciclopedia Machiavelliana, Treccani, -- https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/plutarco_%28 Enciclopedia-­machiavelliana%29/.
  16. -­ Machiavelli 1949: Niccolò Machiavelli, La vita di Castruccio Castracani da Lucca, in Tutte le opere di Niccolò Machiavelli, vol. I, a cura di Francesco Flora e Carlo Cor-­ dié, Mondadori, Verona 1949.
  17. -­ Machiavelli 2000: Niccolò Machiavelli, Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio, a cura di Corrado Vivanti, Einaudi, Torino 2000.
  18. -­ Machiavelli 2022: Niccolò Machiavelli, Il Principe, a cura di Gabriele Pedullà, Donzelli, Roma 2022.
  19. -­ Martelli 1989: Mario Martelli, Schede per Coluccio Salutati, in Interpres, 9, 1989, pp. 237-­252.
  20. -­ McCormick 2012: John McCormick, Machiavellian Democracy, Cambridge Univer-­ sity Press, Cambridge-­New York 2012, trad. it. Democrazia machiavelliana. Machia-­ velli, il potere del popolo e il controllo delle élites, Viella, Roma 2021.
  21. -­ McCormick 2015: John McCormick, Machiavelli’s Agathocles: from criminal example to princely exemplum, in M. Lowrie and S. Lüdemann (eds.), Exemplarity and Sin-­ gularity Thinking through Particulars in Philosophy, Literature, and Law, Routledge, London -­ New York 2015, pp. 123-­139.
  22. -­ Pedullà 2012: Gabriele Pedullà, Machiavelli in tumulto. Conquista, cittadinanza e conflitto nei «Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio», Bulzoni, Roma 2012.
  23. -­ Pedullà 2022: L’arte fiorentina dei nodi, in Machiavelli 2022, pp. V-­CCVI.
  24. -­ Quaglioni 1987: Diego Quaglioni, Il modello del principe cristiano. Gli «Specula principum» fra Medio Evo e prima Età Moderna, in Vittor Ivo Comparato (a cura di), Modelli nella storia del pensiero politico, vol. I, Olschki, Firenze 1987, pp. 103-­122.

Mario De Caro, Esemplarismo e virtù politiche nel Principe di Machiavelli in "RIVISTA DI STORIA DELLA FILOSOFIA" 1/2023, pp 56-69, DOI: 10.3280/SF2023-001005