{"id":340,"date":"2015-02-12T11:41:23","date_gmt":"2015-02-12T11:41:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/?p=340"},"modified":"2015-02-24T09:55:39","modified_gmt":"2015-02-24T09:55:39","slug":"how-machiavellian-was-machiavelli","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/2015\/02\/12\/how-machiavellian-was-machiavelli\/","title":{"rendered":"How Machiavellian was Machiavelli?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Professor Quentin Skinner<\/strong> will be\u00a0asking this question at our annual <strong>Renaissance Lecture<\/strong> on <strong>Tuesday, 24th March 2015<\/strong> at <strong>6pm<\/strong> in Lecture Theatre 1, Grimond Building. All are welcome to attend, and there will be a wine reception afterwards.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Abstract of the lecture<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>One of Machiavelli\u2019s aims in <em>The Prince<\/em> is to persuade us that the truly <em>virtuoso<\/em> prince should follow the virtues so far as possible, but should be ready to abandon them when this alternative seems necessary for the maintenance of the state. This is certainly what Machiavelli appears to claim about the virtue of justice. But if we turn to his examination of the so-called \u2018princely\u2019 virtues, especially clemency and liberality, we encounter a very different argument. Machiavelli complains that, in our corrupt modern world, some actions regarded as virtuous may in fact be instances of vice, while other actions condemned as vices may in fact be virtues. The aim of the lecture is to disentangle Machiavelli\u2019s complex views about the relationship between virtue and political success.<\/p>\n<p><strong>About the speaker<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Professor Quentin Skinner<\/strong> is Barber Beaumont Professor of the Humanities at Queen Mary, University of London.\u00a0His research centres on early-modern Europe, and one of his\u00a0principal interests lies in the Italian Renaissance.\u00a0He has\u00a0published books on Machiavelli, on early Renaissance political painting, on ideals of civic virtue, and\u00a0has edited Machiavelli\u2019s <em>The Prince<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><em>For more information about the 2015 Renaissance Lecture, please contact: Jacqueline Basquil<\/em> <a href=\"j.m.basquil@kent.ac.uk\">j.m.basquil@kent.ac.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Professor Quentin Skinner will be\u00a0asking this question at our annual Renaissance Lecture on Tuesday, 24th March 2015 at 6pm in Lecture Theatre 1, Grimond Building. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/2015\/02\/12\/how-machiavellian-was-machiavelli\/\">Read&nbsp;more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34306,"featured_media":341,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[124],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34306"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":345,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340\/revisions\/345"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}