Author Description

Machiavelli taught that political leaders must be prepared to do evil that good may come of it, and his name has been a byword ever since for duplicity and immorality. Is his sinister reputation really deserved?In answering this question, Quentin Skinner focuses on three major works, The Prince, the Discourses, and The History of Florence, and distills from them an introduction to Machiavelli's doctrines of exemplary clarity.He shows that Machiavelli's diplomatic career gave him many of the central ideas he developed after his enforced retirement. He emphasizes Machiavelli's indebtedness to Roman moral philosophy, and makes clear the extent to which his teachings can be understood as a reaction against this tradition of thought. And by placing Machiavelli in his exact social and intellectual context he reveals the extraordinary originality of Machiavelli's attack on the prevailing moral and political assumptions of his age.This is the first brief survey of Machiavelli's life and writings to appear in English for twenty years, and is itself a work of considerable originality.