Reading Machiavelli as timeless political science distorts his situated meaning
Evidence
Beside the merits of modern Machiavelli studies derived from Croce, the exaggerations and distortions which they have inspired should also be noted. The habit has been formed of considering Machiavelli too much as the man of politics in general, as the “scientist of politics”, relevant in every period. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 637
Categorization
- XREF: Anticipates the anti-presentist method later applied to Orientalism: texts read as timeless universal science lose their conditioning history. — connects to: Machiavelli’s political concepts were worldly intuitions, not metaphysics — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1471; Machiavelli must be read as historically situated, not as a timeless political scientist; Machiavelli’s political writing embodies an original philosophy of praxis rather than utopia — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 931 (+5 more)
- QUESTION: Worth chasing: how does Gramsci himself avoid the same universalizing error even as he extracts the ‘modern Prince’ as a generalizable figure?
- yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Machiavelli’s political concepts were worldly intuitions, not metaphysics — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1471; Machiavelli must be read as historically situated, not as a timeless political scientist; Machiavelli’s political writing embodies an original philosophy of praxis rather than utopia — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 931 (+5 more)