Glory in Machiavelli

David Owen 

University of Southampton
2013

APSA 2013 Annual Meeting Paper 
Abstract:      
This paper addresses the role of the concept of glory in Machiavelli's il Principe. It argues that love of glory serves as the pivot on which Machiavelli seeks to re-shape the ethical composition of his addressees and that it plays a crucial role in relation to the political education that Machiavelli's text aims to provide as an education in the conditions of realising world glory as an agent-specific trans-historical good. In doing so, it offers an argument concerning that relationship of il Principe to Machiavelli's own republican commitments as one in which the text of il Principe leads its reader-actor to an acknowledgement that the only secure way of achieving glory is through the foundation of a republic.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 21

Keywords: Machiavelli, the Prince, glory, rhetoric, humanism, republic

Full text available at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2299393