The State in Machiavelli
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- Publisher:
- Cambridge University Press
- Publication date:
- 29 December 2025
- 19 February 2026
- ISBN:
- 9781009630351
- 9781009630320
- Dimensions:
- (229 x 152 mm)
- Weight & Pages:
- 0.932kg, 512 Pages
- Dimensions:
- Weight & Pages:
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Book description
While historical scholarship has often downplayed the importance of Machiavelli's theory of the state, this study reconstructs the question of lo stato as the conceptual crux of his political philosophy. Peter Stacey offers a detailed reconstruction of the historical context from which Machiavelli's theory emerges, demonstrating how the intellectual and ideological contours of Machiavelli's thinking, as well as much of its content, were decisively shaped by conceptual apparatuses drawn from Roman philosophical, rhetorical and aesthetic discourse. Stacey further provides a sustained analysis of the development of Machiavelli's picture of the state from his earliest writings onwards, underlining the extent to which the Florentine draws deeply upon several key aspects of this intellectual inheritance in hitherto unacknowledged ways, while calling into question some of its cherished assumptions about the character of collective political entities. As Machiavelli's thinking unfolds across The Prince and the Discourses, Stacey illustrates how a strikingly novel conception of the body politic marks him out as the author of a distinctively new philosophy of the state.
Reviews
‘The State in Machiavelli will certainly become a reference point for future studies of Machiavelli, as it not only advances its own thesis but also provides thorough discussions of the past century or so of scholarship on major points of Machiavelli interpretation. … The book is a rich resource for anyone approaching Machiavelli, whether as a historical or philosophical figure. … Essential.’
B. T. Harding Source: Choice
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