HIST 385 – Machiavelli Today: Politics, Sociability, Self-fashioning, Cinema, and Graphic Novels

Course description and Objectives

Machiavelli is considered the founding father of political science. However, his name has never been comfortably employed by politicians, even though we know that they are familiar with his ideas and teachings. The word ‘Machiavellian’ is associated with cynicism, ruthlessness, and cunning. Nevertheless, Machiavelli the man enjoyed the company of many friends from all walks of life and, as a typical Florentine, he enjoyed jokes, wrote comical texts and poems. At the same time, his life in politics was not easy, let alone successful. Today, though, editions of Machiavelli’s chief works are published throughout the world, while The Prince is an enduring bestseller, translated in all languages. Now, as then, in every decision that politicians make, they face the same or similar moral dilemmas that Machiavelli observed and explained, honestly and clearly, which made them impossible to forget.

The course will take students from the center of Florence, where Machiavelli was listening to a sermon by a theocratic leader, Girolamo Savonarola, and concluded that it was wrong to mix religion with politics. This principle was to guide Machiavelli’s political thought and remained at the core of his teachings. For this reason, Machiavelli has been, and still is, both reviled for the content of his observations, and admired for the clarity of his exposition. Both the author and his books have been a constant presence in Western civilization, with regular patterns of rejection and acceptance, since moral principles have always been sacrificed for a supposed better good. Throughout the course, students will be able to identify the myth behind Machiavelli and will appreciate his teachings in current political affairs, as well as in the representation of power that has been developed in movies, comics, and popular culture. While media propaganda continues to portray Machiavelli’s teachings in a particularly negative way, politics continues to work according to the fundamental principles that Machiavelli explained so clearly.

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