Machiavelli's City of God

Civic Humanism and Augustinian Terror

The A. argues that the political eschatology of Machiavelli's most provocative texts is at heart a volatile mixture of his peculiar classicism and Augustine's ambivalent relationship to the earthly city he would transcendend. Their overlapping anthropologies are reflected in Augustine's struggle to...

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Bibliographic Details
Author:Paul R. Wright
Published: 2005
Pages:297-336
Language:English
Format:Essay
Topic:- Influence and Survival > Early Modern Period (1453-1789) > [Machiavel]
Parent Work: Augustine and politics
Status:Active
Description
Summary:The A. argues that the political eschatology of Machiavelli's most provocative texts is at heart a volatile mixture of his peculiar classicism and Augustine's ambivalent relationship to the earthly city he would transcendend. Their overlapping anthropologies are reflected in Augustine's struggle to sustain a critique of Rome with language borrowed from it, and Machiavelli's failure to develop a misanthropy free of theological dimensions. Ultimately, Augustinian typology fuels the civil religion of Machiavelli, which in the Discourse on Remodeling Florence on its most ambitious, perilous, and strangely pragmatic form.