Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×

Online ordering will be unavailable from 17:00 GMT on Friday, April 25 until 17:00 GMT on Sunday, April 27 due to maintenance. We apologise for the inconvenience.

  1. Home
  2. Books
  3. From Politics to Reason of State
  • Cited by 135
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
February 2010
Print publication year:
1992
Online ISBN:
9780511521485
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511521485
Subjects:
History of Ideas, History, History of Ideas and Intellectual History
Series:
Ideas in Context (22)
Information

Book description

Between the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries, the language of politics underwent a radical transformation. The author argues that this transformation amounted to a 'revolution of politics', global in scope, and wide-ranging in its intellectual and moral implications. Not only did the meaning and the range of application of the concept of politics change, but also the status of political science, the role of political education, and the value of political liberty. For three centuries politics had enjoyed the status of the noblest human science, but emerged from the revolution as an ignoble, sordid and depraved activity. It was no longer the means of fighting corruption, but the means of perpetuating it. This 'revolution of politics' has received little attention, despite its importance. This study fills a gap in the history of political thought, and attempts to return to a conception of politics as an activity worth committing ourselves to.

Reviews

"...an important contribution to the study of politics in the early-modern era." William V. Hudon, 16th Century Journal

"Hereby hangs a tale of ideological innovation and conceptual change told with considerable erudition and detailed scholarship by Maurizio Viroli....[T]here is no doubt that 'politics' in early modern Italy has received a first-rate chronicle. The memory it revives may yet assist the restoration of civil philosophy in our time." James Farr, American Political Science Review

Refine List

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

Contents

Contents

Metrics

Altmetric attention score

Full text views

Total number of HTML views: 0
Total number of PDF views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

Book summary page views

Total views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

* Views captured on Cambridge Core between #date#. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

Usage data cannot currently be displayed.