This is the first English translation of Guicciardini's Dialogue on the Government of Florence, written in the 1520s. Like Machiavelli, his more famous contemporary and friend, Guicciardini rejects classical republican arguments in the name of the new political realism and acknowledges the important role of patronage and graft in contemporary politics and the illegitimacy of nearly all forms of political power, arguing for the priority of state interest over private morality and religion.
This is the first English translation of Guicciardini's Dialogue on the Government of Florence, written in the 1520s. Like Machiavelli, his more famou...
In this first comprehensive study of the effect of Lucretius's De rerum natura on Florentine thought in the Renaissance, Alison Brown demonstrates how Lucretius was used by Florentine thinkers--earlier and more widely than has been supposed--to provide a radical critique of prevailing orthodoxies.
To answer the question of why ordinary Florentines were drawn to this recently discovered text, despite its threat to orthodox Christian belief, Brown tracks interest in it through three humanists--the most famous of whom was Machiavelli--all working not as philologists but as...
In this first comprehensive study of the effect of Lucretius's De rerum natura on Florentine thought in the Renaissance, Alison Brown demons...
