On Machiavelli: The Search for Glory (Liveright Classics) PDF Download

Author: Alan Ryan
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0871407507
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
An essential, comprehensive, and accessible guide to the life and works of Machiavelli. In On Machiavelli: The Search for Glory, Alan Ryan illuminates the political and philosophical complexities of the often-reviled godfather of realpolitik. Thought by some to be the founder of Italian nationalism, regarded by others to be a reviver of the Roman Republic as a model for the modern Western world, Machiavelli remains a contentious figure. Often outraging popular opinion with his insistence on the amoral nature of power, Machiavelli eschewed the world as it ought to be in favor of a forthright appraisal of the one that is. Perhaps more than any other thinker, Machiavelli has suffered from being taken out of context, and Ryan places him squarely within his own time and the politics of a Renaissance Italy riven by near-constant warfare among rival city-states and the papacy. A well-educated son of Florence, Machiavelli was originally in charge of the Florentine Republic’s militia, but in 1512 the city fell to papal forces led by Cardinal Giovanni de Medici, who thus restored the Medici family to power. Machiavelli was accused of conspiracy, imprisoned, tortured, and eventually exiled from his beloved Florence, and it was during this period that he produced his most famous works. While attempting to ingratiate himself to the Medicis, the historically minded Machiavelli looked to the imperial ambitions and past glories of the Roman Republic as a contrast to the perceived failures of his contemporaries. For Machiavelli, the hunger for power and glory was inextricable from human nature, and any serious attempt to rule must take this into account. In his revolutionary The Prince and Discourses—both excerpted here—Machiavelli created the first truly modern analysis of power.

Author: Alan Ryan
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0871407493
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
An essential, comprehensive, and accessible guide to the life and works of Aristotle. In On Aristotle: Saving Politics from Philosophy, Alan Ryan examines Plato's most famous student and sharpest critic, whose writing has helped shape over two millennia of Western philosophy, science, and religion. The first thinker to posit that a society should be ruled by laws and not men, Aristotle was born in Stagira, Macedon, in 384 BCE. He would go on to join Plato's Academy and eventually become tutor to Alexander the Great. During his lifetime he would see the revival of Athens following its destruction in the Peloponnesian War, before the ultimate extinction of its radical form of democracy after the Macedonian conquest. Aristotle’s strongly empirical cast of mind was brought to bear on a stunning range of subjects, from rhetoric to physics, from the history of political institutions and mathematics to zoology and botany. The resulting system dominated European thought from the thirteenth to seventeenth centuries. In Nicomachean Ethics and Politics—both excerpted here—Aristotle attempted to delineate the ideal virtues of a both public and private life as well as critique the utopian antipolitics of his former teacher, Plato. For Aristotle, life in a polis was the natural state of man and provided the greatest opportunity for human beings to fulfill their potential. Unlike his scientific theories, which would eventually be displaced by Galileo, Newton, and Darwin, Aristotle’s meticulous thinking on the nature of human affairs, ethics, politics, citizenship, and virtue in a civil society remains as vital today as it was in his own time.

Author: Michael Jackson
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004365516
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Book Description
In Machiavelliana Michael Jackson and Damian Grace offer a comprehensive study of the uses and abuses of Niccolò Machiavelli’s name in society generally and in academic fields distant from his intellectual origins. It assesses the appropriation of Machiavelli in didactic works in management, social psychology, and primatology, scholarly texts in leaderships studies, as well as novels, plays, commercial enterprises, television dramas, operas, rap music, Mach IV scales, children’s books, and more. The book audits, surveys, examines, and evaluates this Machiavelliana against wider claims about Machiavelli. It explains the origins of Machiavelli’s reputation and the spread of his fame as the foundation for the many uses and misuses of his name. They conclude by redressing the most persistent distortions of Machiavelli.

Author: Alan Ryan
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0871408341
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 135

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A guiding light to America’s Founding Fathers, Hobbes created the first truly modern political philosophy. In Leviathan, one of the greatest works of political philosophy of all time, English philosopher Thomas Hobbes created the idea of a “social contract” and set out to explicate a doctrine for the foundation of states and legitimate forms of government. In On Hobbes, Alan Ryan explains how Hobbes created the secular conception of the state and politics in one of the first truly modern works of political philosophy. Inverting Aristotle’s view of politics, Hobbes argued that humans organize themselves into political communities not out of any sociable impulse to pursue the good life in common, but rather out of an unsociable fear of one another and for the sake of avoiding the greatest evil of all: death. Ryan explicates how modern notions of individual rights, sovereignty, representative government, and almost all liberal political theory find their foundation in the work of Hobbes. Excerpted here are: Leviathan, The Elements of Law.

Author: Alan Ryan
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 163149080X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 110

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No philosopher speaks more immediately to the excesses of our twenty-first-century world and the limits of human reason than Augustine. It would be almost impossible to exaggerate the influence of Augustine—the once-hedonistic pagan turned ascetic theologian and defender of the early Christian Church—over all the subsequent history of Europe. Augustine ’s political philosophy is pregnant with arguments that racked not only Christian Europe but also much of the modern world. Whether it was his essential skepticism about the value of earthly politics when contrasted with eternity, the role of a Christian within the State, or the nature of just war and the folly of imperial ambitions, Augustine articulated distinctive and long-lived thoughts on controversial subjects that remain embedded in our political discourse. In On Augustine: The Two Cities Alan Ryan carefully lays out the complicated political, philosophical, and religious context of Augustine and traces the history of his impact on Western thought both within and beyond the Christian tradition. Excerpted here are: The City of God, Confessions.

Author: Alan Ryan
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0871407051
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
Contains a chronology of Machiavelli's life, an introduction and text by Alan Ryan that provides context and analysis, and key excerpts from Machiavelli's The Prince and his Discourses.

Author: Alan Ryan
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0871408201
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 115

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Book Description
A lucid introduction to the philosophical complexities and the practical limits of the political thought of Karl Marx. When Karl Marx was buried at Highgate Cemetery in North London in 1883, his longtime friend and collaborator, Friedrich Engels, remarked that he was "above all a revolutionary." For Marx, the struggle to accurately describe or interpret the world in rational terms was not enough; the point of politics and philosophy was not to diagnose human society but to change it. According to Marx, history was defined by class conflict, with the state heretofore existing as a medium through which the ruling classes can exploit the labor of the productive classes. Only through revolution could true self-government be achieved with the ultimate goal of achieving a stateless, self-administering society free of coercive law, police, and military forces. Marx spent most of his adult life dedicated to uniting the radical working-class movements of Europe around this central idea. In On Marx, Alan Ryan examines Marx's political and economic philosophy within the Victorian context of Marx's own life and times as well as glancing forward to the uses and abuses of his ideas by his many successors. Tracing Marx's influences from Hegel to Feuerbach, from French socialism to British political economy, and documenting his ideological battles with his contemporaries, Ryan provides a sterling explication and critique of Marx’s theories of alienation, surplus value, class struggle, and revolution. Situating Marx into the framework of everyday politics is never easy, but this one volume provides the clearest, most accessible introduction to Marx's theories in recent years. On Marx: Revolutionary and Utopian features: • a chronology of Karl Marx's life • an introduction and text by Alan Ryan that provides crucial context and cogent analysis • key excerpts from: "Notes on James Mill," The German Ideology, "Theses on Feuerbach," The Communist Manifesto, Capital, The Civil War in France, and Critique of the Gotha Program

Author: Michael D'Antonio
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1250301203
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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"It presents an entirely damning portrait of Pence. You've seen his colors before, but not so vividly and in this detail." —Frank Bruni, The New York Times "Producing a biography of a living, controversial politician is always difficult. D'Antonio and Eisner have succeeded in this well-documented, damning book. Cue the outrage from Sean Hannity et al."—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) In this well-rounded, deeply-investigated biography, the first full look at the vice president, two award-winning journalists unmask the real Mike Pence. Little-known outside his home state until Donald Trump made him his running mate, Mike Pence—who proclaims himself a Christian first, a conservative second, and a Republican third—has long worn a carefully-constructed mask of Midwestern nice. Behind his self-proclaimed humility and self-abasing deference, however, hides a man whose own presidential ambitions have blazed since high school. Pence’s drive for power, perhaps inspired by his belief that God might have big plans for him, explains why he shocked his allies by lending Christian credibility to a scandal-plagued candidate like Trump. In this landmark biography, Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael D’Antonio and Emmy-nominated journalist Peter Eisner follow the path Pence followed from Catholic Democrat to conservative evangelical Republican. They reveal how he used his time as rightwing radio star to build connections with powerful donors; how he was a lackluster lawmaker in Congress but a prodigious fundraiser from the GOP’s billionaire benefactors; and how, once he locked in his views on the issues—anti-gay, pro-gun, anti-abortion, pro big-business—he became laser-focused on his own pursuit of power. As THE SHADOW PRESIDENT reveals, Mike Pence is the most important and powerful Christian Right politician America has ever seen. Driven as much by theology as personal ambition, Pence is now positioned to seize the big prize—the presidency—and use it to fashion a nation more pleasing to his god and corporate sponsors.

Author: Niccolo Machiavelli
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101128097
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 577

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Book Description
In the four and a half centuries since Machiavelli’s death, no single and unanimously accepted interpretation of his ideas has succeeded in imposing itself upon the lively debate over the meaning of his works. Yet there has never been any doubt about the fundamental importance of Machiavelli’s contribution to Western political theory.The Portable Machiavelli brings together the complete texts of The Prince, Belfagor, and Castruccio Castracani, newly translated by Peter Bondanella and Mark Musa especially for this volume. In addition, the editors include an abridged version of The Discourses; a play, The Mandrake Root, in its entirety; seven private letters; and selections from The Art of War and The History of Florence.

Author: Karl Marx
Publisher: Pattern Books
ISBN: 8111808739
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 190

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Book Description
Inspired by Mao's Little Red Book, this work is full of quotes to inspire and teach revolution. With quotes from the Combahee River Collective, Mao, Lenin, bell hooks, Assata Shakur, 2pac, Malcolm X, Stalin, Les Feinberg, Fred Hampton, Fanon, and more, this book is bound to inspire the revolutionary spirit inside you and your comrades to organize, educate, and revolt! Full list of authors: Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin Mumia Abu-Jamal Sundiata Acoli James Baldwin Amilcar Cabral Fidel Castro Che Guevara Combahee River Collective Angela Davis Dimitrov Frederick Douglass Friedrich Engels Frantz Fanon Les Feinberg Paulo Freire Anuradha Ghandy Fred Hampton Harry Haywood Ho Chi Min bell hooks Enver Hoxha Dolores Ibarruri Kim Il-Sung George Jackson Jonathan Jackson Marsha P. Johnson Claudia Jones Frida Kahlo Ghasson Kanafani Leila Khaled Martin Luther King, Jr. Alexandra Kollantai James and Grace Lee Boggs Vladimir Lenin Audre Lorde Rosa Luxemburg Nelson Mandela Mao Tse-Tung Sub Marcos José Mariátegui Carlos Marighella Karl Marx Chico Mendes Evo Morales Toni Morrison Huey P. Newton Kwame Nkrumah Michael Parenti Rashid Paul Robeson Walter Rodney Arundhati Roy Thomas Sankara Bobby Seale Chief Seattle Assata Shakur Tupac Shakur Nina Simone Bhagat Singh Joseph Stalin Sukarno Kwame Ture Malcolm X Xi Jinping Malala Yousafzai