Dean's Lecture Series: Maurizio Viroli on Machiavelli as a Good Teacher of Goodness

"Machiavelli: A Good Teacher of Goodness" by Maurizio Viroli
This lecture is a part of the Steiner Memorial Lecture Series
Against current scholarly trends that maintain that Niccolo Machiavelli was
an evil man and a teacher of evil, I claim that he was a good man and a
teacher of good. I also claim that his goodness was the foundation of his
republican political vision. Maurizio Viroli is Professor of Government at the University of Texas (Austin), Professor of Political Communication at the University of Italian Switzerland (Lugano), and Professor Emeritus of Politics at Princeton University. Among his publications are Prophetic Times. Visions of Emancipation in the History of Italy, Cambridge University Press (2022); The Quotable Machiavelli, Princeton, Princeton University Press (2016); and How to choose a leader. Machiavelli’s advice to citizens, Princeton, Princeton University Press (2016) just to name a few.
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[@pietroscarano8770]

The best mr viroli

[@satyricusm]

Leo Strauss did NOT claim that Machiavelli was evil or that he was a teacher of evil. Strauss merely suggested that the traditional view in question was not altogether unfounded or misguided, arguing further that M's patriotism was an Epicurean mask, standing at the dawn of modernity's Age of Ideology (involving secularism's abstraction/alienation of politics from all metaphysical QUESTIONS, or "Platonism"). As for "knowing the person," well, "the person" is a mask, a façade. The same applies to M's distinguished student, Spinoza. Raskolnikov knew something about it. ps M "enters into evil" from the clouds of Epicurean contemplation.

[@satyricusm]

No, Machiavelli does not diligently follow Cicero, who was a Platonist.