The Prince and Other Writings 君主论及其他作品 Barnes & Noble Classics ISBN=9781593083281 pdf snb 115盘 kindle 在线 下载 pmlz mobi

　　The Prince and Other Writings, by Niccolo Machiavelli, is part

of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality

editions at affordable prices to the student and the general

reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of

carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features

of Barnes & Noble Classics:

New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and

scholars Biographies of the authors Chronologies of contemporary

historical, biographical, and cultural events Footnotes and

endnotes Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems,

books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by

the work Comments by other famous authors Study questions to

challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations Bibliographies

for further reading Indices & Glossaries, when appropriateAll

editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior

specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest.

Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of

influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each

reader's understanding of these enduring works.

One of history’s greatest political philosophers, Niccolò

Machiavelli is notorious for his treatise The Prince, which has

become a cornerstone of modern political theory. Written in 1513

and published in 1532, after Machivelli’s death, The Prince

immediately provoked controversy that has continued unabated to

this day.

Defining human nature as inherently selfish, Machiavelli proposes

that social conflict and violence are natural phenomena that help

determine the ablest, most versatile form of government. Asserting

that idealism has no place in the political arena, The Prince

primarily addresses a monarch’s difficulties in retaining

authority. Considered the first expression of political realism, it

has often been accused of advocating a political philosophy in

which “the end justifies the means.” Indeed the emphasis in The

Prince on practical success, at the expense even of traditional

moral values, earned Machiavelli a reputation for ruthlessness,

deception, and cruelty. Many scholars contend, however, that the

author’s pragmatic views of ethics and politics reflected the

realities of his time, as exemplified by the Medici family of

Florence.

Debates about Machiavelli’s theories are as lively today as they

were 450 years ago, but no one questions the importance of his

fundamental contribution to Western political thought. This newly

translated edition also includes Machiavelli’s Letter to Francesco

Vettori, The Life of Castruccio Castracani, and excerpts from the

Discourses on Livy.

The World of NiccolO Machiavelli and The Prince

Introduction by Wayne A. Rebhorn

THE PRINCE

THE LIFE OF CASTRUCCIO CASTRACA)NI

OF LUCCA

A LETTER FROM NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI

TO FRANCESCO VETTORI

Excerpts from DISCOURSES ON THE FIRST TEN

BOOKS OF TITUS LIVY

Comments & Questions

For Further Reading

Index

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　　From Wayne Rebhorn’s Introduction to The Prince and Other

Writings

　　All of Machiavelli’s works, and especially The Prince, can be

read as a series of responses to the crises he was living through,

to the personal crisis he experienced when the Florentine republic

fell in 1512, and to the larger crises involving Italian and

international politics, the theoretical conception of the state,

and the vision of the ruler. Or perhaps it would be better to say

that his texts are not just passive responses to those crises, but

active attempts to define, to give voice to, what was happening in

the world around him, and indeed to promote action in that world as

well. In them Machiavelli is asking over and over the same

questions: why are we Italians so weak, so much unlike our Roman

ancestors? Why have we become the prey of the larger states around

us? And how can we remedy this situation? What sort of state and

what sort of ruler will allow us not just to maintain our

independence, but perhaps to regain some of the glory of ancient

Rome? Bound up with these questions was Machiavelli’s more personal

one: why did I fail, and how can I get back the political role I

once played in the republic? As he tries to answer these questions

in The Prince, the Discourses, and his other works, he also

grapples with the problem of how to make sense out of history, how

to extract useful lessons from it so that we can avoid the mistakes

of the past.

　　Although Machiavelli theorizes about politics throughout his

works, he takes pains to separate what he is doing from the work of

pure theorists. Thus, at the start of chapter 15 in The Prince, he

distinguishes himself from those who “have imagined republics and

principalities for themselves which have never been seen or known

to exist in reality.” Instead, he tells us, he writes about la

verità effetuale della cosa, “the effectual truth of the matter.”

By “effectual truth” he means a truth—about politics as well as

about human nature—that has an effect in the real world, rather

than something more purely speculative or contemplative. Although

More’s Utopia might seem to be the sort of work about an imaginary

republic that Machiavelli is objecting to here, it was written in

1515 and 1516, some two years or so after Machiavelli started

working on The Prince. Nevertheless, More’s thought-experiment

about the best of all possible states grows out of a long

tradition, which Machiavelli surely knew, of imagining ideal states

and rulers, a tradition that stretches back into antiquity and that

has Plato’s Republic as one of its clear progenitors. Moreover,

there was a genre of political writing to which both authors are

responding in their books, a genre called the speculum principis,

the “mirror for princes,” in which authors composed idealized

portraits of princes and their duties in order to offer instruction

to rulers and rulers in training. The great Dutch Humanist

Desiderius Erasmus had written just such a volume, the Institutio

principis christiani (The Education of a Christian Prince), for

Charles V, and published it in 1516. Like many works in this genre

that stretch back well into the Middle Ages, Erasmus’s book offers

sober advice stressing the importance of Judeo-Christian morality

as the basis for governing. While More’s Utopia fits quite

comfortably into this genre in many ways, Machiavelli’s Prince can

almost be read as a parody of its idealistic moralizing, for his

book repeatedly underscores the gap between morality and politics,

insisting that a prince who tries to do good in a world full of bad

people will inevitably come to grief. Machiavelli takes the name of

the genre seriously: he tries to reflect in the “mirror” of his

book what real princes really do—and must do—in the real world if

they are to obtain and maintain political power.

　　In keeping with his preference for an effectual truth that bears

fruit in the real world, Machiavelli stresses the importance of

judging human beings and their deeds in terms of how things turn

out in the end. This is not the same thing as saying that the end

justifies the means, although sometimes Machiavelli is interpreted

that way. Revealingly, in chapter 18 of The Prince, “How Princes

Must Keep Their Word,” he uses a phrase that shows just how

different his thought is on this subject. The phrase occurs just

after Machiavelli has declared that a prince must appear to be “all

mercy, all loyalty, all sincerity, all humanity, all religion,”

although he need not actually have any of these qualities. The

reason is that men in general judge things by appearances and that

the few who may perceive the truth will be overwhelmed by the many

who do not. Moreover, he continues, “in the actions of all men, and

especially of princes, where there is no court of appeal, one looks

at the outcome.” “One looks at the outcome”: si guarda al fine.

Machiavelli’s statement here may seem to suggest he is saying that

the end or outcome justifies whatever means the prince might use to

achieve it—in other words, that a good end makes even the most

wicked means morally acceptable. But what he is really saying is

that people will judge a prince’s means to be good as long as he

succeeds and the outcome is beneficial to them. Machiavelli admits,

both here and in his works generally, that morality may be a good

thing, but it is not what drives people’s behavior in the real

world. What he is not saying, however, is also important, for by

not declaring that the end justifies the means for the prince, he

is not offering the prince a convenient way out of the moral

dilemma he faces, which results from the fact that if he wants to

gain and keep political power, he has to do despicable things that

cannot really be justified morally by the end he pursues. If one

could argue that a prince who does evil does it simply in order to

bring about some greater moral good—defined as, say, political

stability or economic welfare— then this problem would vanish. Such

a move was precisely the one made by political theorists in

Machiavelli’s wake who came up with the idea of ragione di stato or

raison d’état—namely, that some serious and morally unimpeachable

“reason of state” could justify the most criminally culpable acts.

By contrast, what Machiavelli is saying is harder, more

uncomfortable, more thought-provoking, and more cynical: sometimes

the prince must do evil simply because he cannot gain or preserve

power otherwise, but as long as he succeeds and people benefit from

it, they will not be upset.

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书籍介绍

The Prince and Other Writings , by Niccolo Machiavelli , is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics : New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars Biographies of the authors Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events Footnotes and endnotes Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work Comments by other famous authors Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations Bibliographies for further reading Indices & Glossaries, when appropriateAll editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works. One of history’s greatest political philosophers, Niccolò Machiavelli is notorious for his treatise The Prince , which has become a cornerstone of modern political theory. Written in 1513 and published in 1532, after Machivelli’s death, The Prince immediately provoked controversy that has continued unabated to this day.

Defining human nature as inherently selfish, Machiavelli proposes that social conflict and violence are natural phenomena that help determine the ablest, most versatile form of government. Asserting that idealism has no place in the political arena, The Prince primarily addresses a monarch’s difficulties in retaining authority. Considered the first expression of political realism, it has often been accused of advocating a political philosophy in which “the end justifies the means.” Indeed the emphasis in The Prince on practical success, at the expense even of traditional moral values, earned Machiavelli a reputation for ruthlessness, deception, and cruelty. Many scholars contend, however, that the author’s pragmatic views of ethics and politics reflected the realities of his time, as exemplified by the Medici family of Florence.

Debates about Machiavelli’s theories are as lively today as they were 450 years ago, but no one questions the importance of his fundamental contribution to Western political thought. This newly translated edition also includes Machiavelli’s Letter to Francesco Vettori , The Life of Castruccio Castracani , and excerpts from the Discourses on Livy .

Wayne A. Rebhorn , Celanese Centennial Professor of English at the University of Texas, has authored numerous studies of Renaissance European literature. His Foxes and Lions: Machiavelli’s Confidence Men won the Howard R. Marraro Prize of the Modern Language Association of America in 1990.