Roundtable on John McCormick’s Reading Machiavelli (Princeton 2018)

Session Submission Type: Author meet critics

Session Description

John McCormick's Reading Machiavelli: Scandalous Books, Suspect Engagements, and the Virtue of Populist Politics (Princeton, 2018) builds on his groundbreaking scholarship on Machiavelli as a populist democrat, fundamentally challenging how scholars read the thought of the great Florentine republican. McCormick advances, not just new interpretations of Machiavelli’s three major works, but also a bracing critique of the failures of Machiavelli’s readers to discern his populist intentions. McCormick reveals the populist thread that weaves together The Prince, the Discourse on Livy, and the Florentine Histories. Moreover, he shows how major interpreters of Machiavelli—from Rousseau through to Strauss and the Cambridge School—neglect, downplay, or distort the fundamentally democratic purpose of his writings.

This author-meets-critics roundtable will gather a group of leading Machiavelli scholars to respond to McCormick’s argument in “Reading Machiavelli.” Robyn Marasco, Alison McQueen, Patrick Coby, Yves Winter, and Daniel Kapust will each address different facets of McCormick’s argument. They will consider McCormick’s reading of Machiavelli as a populist, his interpretation of Machiavelli’s different works, and his quarrel with other interpretive approaches to Machiavelli. Finally, the discussion will examine the enduring relevance of Machiavelli’s thought in an era of populist revolts against elite politics.

Sub Unit

• DIVISION 1: Political Thought and Philosophy: Historical Approaches

Chair

• Lisa Wedeen University of Chicago

Presenters

• Alison McQueen Stanford University

• Yves Winter McGill University

• Robyn Marasco CUNY, Hunter College

• Daniel J. Kapust University of Wisconsin, Madison

• J. Patrick Coby Smith College

• John P. McCormick University of Chicago