Subdue the Senate

Machiavelli’s “Way of Freedom” or Path to Tyranny

Bibliographic Data

ID6350907
AuthorsJohn P Mccormick (0000-0001-7305-186X, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA, corresponding author)
Year2012
Volume40
Issue6
Pages714-735
Publication date2012-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePolitical Theory (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0090-5917 • E-ISSN: 1552-7476
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0090591712460652
OpenAlexW2163030003
LanguageEN
Citations received9

This article analyzes Machiavelli’s accounts of the historical figures Agathocles, Clearchus, Appius and Pacuvius to (1) accentuate the Florentine’s distinction between tyranny and civic leadership, (2) identify the proper place of elite punishment and popular empowerment in his conception of democratic politics, and (3) criticize contemporary Straussian and “radical” interpreters of Machiavelli for profoundly underestimating the roles that popular judgment and popular rule play within his political thought

Democracy · Elite · Empowerment · Environmental ethics · Interpreter · Political science · Politics · Punishment (psychology · Sociology · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Renaissance and Early Modern Studies · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought · Social Psychology · Weber, Simmel, Sociological Theory

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