Teaching a new entrant on a class reading list is always a fraught business. It is especially so when the entrant is a well-established member of analogous canons and you have come late to the game. You are dimly aware you’ve ‘neglected a classic,’ and thus rendered your education–in several dimensions–incomplete; you are well awareContinue reading “The Shock Of The New (Entry On A Class Reading List)”
Tag Archives: Machiavelli
Machiavelli On The Unjust Republic’s Susceptibility To Treason
In Book I, Chapter VII of The Discourses on Livy, Machiavelli writes: [N]othing makes a republic so stable and strong as organizing it in such a way that the agitation of the hatreds which excite it has a means of expressing itself provided for by the laws….whenever one finds foreign forces being called in byContinue reading “Machiavelli On The Unjust Republic’s Susceptibility To Treason”
A Literary Semester To Look Forward To
This fall semester, I will teach three classes; all feature literary components. They are: ‘Political Philosophy,’ ‘Philosophical Issues in Literature,’ and ‘Existentialism.’ The following are their course descriptions: Political Philosophy: Shakespeare and Political Theory In this class, we will read Shakespeare’s famous ‘history plays’—Richard II, Henry IV, Parts I & II, Henry V–as political theoryContinue reading “A Literary Semester To Look Forward To”
Ambition, the ‘Dangerous Vice’ and ‘Compelling Passion’
In reviewing William Casey King‘s Ambition, a History: From Vice to Virtue (‘Wanting More, More, More‘, New York Review of Books, 11 July 2013), David Bromwich writes: Machiavelli thought ambition a dangerous vice…for Machiavelli ambition was also a compelling passion—a large cause of the engrossing changes of fortune that happen because “nature has created men soContinue reading “Ambition, the ‘Dangerous Vice’ and ‘Compelling Passion’”
Samir Chopra 