Machiavelli in Tumult: The Discourses on Livy and the Origins of Political Conflictualism

Gabriele Pedullà

aug 2018 · Cambridge University Press

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Among the theses that for centuries have ensured Niccolò Machiavelli an ambiguous fame, a special place goes to his extremely positive opinion of social conflicts, and, more in particular, to the claim that in ancient Rome 'the disunion between the plebs and the Roman senate made that republic free and powerful' (Discourses on Livy I.4). Contrary to a long tradition that had always highly valued civic concord, Machiavelli thought that - at least under certain conditions - internecine discord could be a source of strength and not of weakness, and built upon this daring proposition an original vision of political order. Machiavelli in Tumult (originally published in Italian in 2011) is the first book-length study entirely devoted to analyzing this idea, its ancient roots (never before identified), its enduring (but often invisible) influence up until the American and the French Revolution (and beyond), and its relevance for contemporary political theory.

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Gabriele Pedullà is professor of Italian and Comparative Literature at the University of Rome 3 and has been visiting professor at Stanford, University of California, Los Angeles, and the École Normale Supérieure, Lyon, Francesco De Dombrowski Fellow at 'Villa I Tatti', the Harvard University Center for the Italian Renaissance, Fellow at the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America, Columbia University, and Belknap Visiting Fellow in the Humanities Council at Princeton University. In English he has published In Broad Daylight. Movies and Spectators after the Cinema (2012) and many essays on Renaissance political thought. With Sergio Luzzatto, he edited a three volume Atlante della letteratura italiana (2010–12). His new edition and commentary on Machiavelli's Prince (2013) is forthcoming in English and is under translation in French, Spanish, and Portuguese. He is also the author of two prizewinning fiction books: the collection of short stories Lo spagnolo senza sforzo (2009: partially translated into English), and the novel Lame (2017, forthcoming in English as Blades).