Harvard Historian James Hankins on what the great Renaissance humanists can teach us about virtue and statecraft. Plus: Why so many get Machiavelli wrong.
Published on January 9, 2020
PODCAST 70: Harvard history professor James Hankins talks about his new book on Renaissance Italy
Got the wrong name in the title - should be James Hankins!
On the topic of Machiavelli, wasn’t The Prince essentially a job application to the Medicis after they had dissolved the Florentine Republic? His works might have been subsequently taken up by political philosophers as a guide to how politics is really done behind the scenes, but it seems his main intention was to avoid being exiled for his role in the former Republic.