POL200Y1 Lecture Notes - Philopoemen, Social Contract, Girolamo Savonarola
Document Summary
On chapter eight: according to chapter one of the prince, all principalities are acquired by either virtue or fortune. Machiavelli suggests that in chapters eight and nine we"ll encounter kinds of principalities acquired by neither virtue nor fortune. Did machiavelli change his mind while he was writing his book, or remember something that he had forgotten, but was too lazy or careless to return to correct. Machiavelli offers agathocles as the poster boy for all who have ascended to a principality through crime rather than through virtue. Remember, when you take the lesson of moses from last class, you lose real morality. Therefore, virtue remains to be only defined as being good at whatever we re talking about: namely, making and keeping nations. The simplest way to criticize agathocles is to say all he did was wrong. Machiavelli doesn t say that, but says simply that his actions didn t give him the respect, honor of people after him.
