Political Science 2237E Lecture Notes - Individualism
8 Jul 2014
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What makes him modern : individualism is the individual actor against fortuna . Theories before machiavelli focused on how people, through politics, found their proper place. There was no individuality in plato, but about the order of things. These theorists did not believe that the individual had the right to choose, they did not believe that the individual was even self-sufficient. Machiavelli"s stories about glorious states are built on the activity of identifiable individuals. Machiavelli was a renaissance man in a time built on humanism. Individual human beings are the ones possessed of virtu , such as leonardo da vinci. Politics is an exciting game whose rules are provided by human beings rather than god, science, or philosophy. The rules of the game can be changed by human beings. The state cannot coast and become complacent-it takes determination, force, and virtu, as well as fortuna (which dictates 50% of all actions).
