POL200Y5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: The Translator
Document Summary
Machiavelli"s political life: machiavelli"s writing and contemporary italy, italy worked through a balance/divided power within itself. There was a prominent banking family who were extremely influential in politics: florence was the home of some major artists at the time. One might be a prudent ruler only by learning the lessons that history has to offer: he says this is a new method, he wants to understand how politics works not how they ought to work. It has to be predicated on human nature that doesn"t change for this to work: humans don"t change. Not only does human nature remain constant, but history has a certain pattern of change to it: in most instances, they usually move from order to chaos then chaos to order; its cyclical. Through stable order we can do a lot of things; much like. He was with his brother and figured he needed to kill his brother to accomplish this task.