Discourses

"The well-being of the community, not the well-being of the individual, is what makes cities great." Niccol Machiavelli is one of the most infamous and ambiguous figures in intellectual history. But although The Prince, his book, established him as a figure of brutal autocracy and cunning manipulation, The Discourses, published in 1517, presents a fundamentally different perspective on politics. Machiavelli proposed a form of government that would uphold civic freedom and security by instilling the virtues of active citizenship and that would also encourage citizens to put the needs of the state above selfish, personal interests in this carefully reasoned commentary on Livy's history of republican Rome. The Discourses develop a contemporary theory of republic politics that is ambitious in scope but also observant and practical.