Definition
Niccolò Machiavelli was a Florentine statesman, patriot, diplomat, military leader, and writer who lived from 1469 to 1527.
Description
His books include The Prince, Discourses on Livy, and the Florentine Histories. He is included in this encyclopedia because he inspired an unethical and cynical approach to politics and management, termed “Machiavellian” as discussed below. For further information see especially Berlin’s essay on Machiavelli (Berlin 1971) and, for example, Giorgini’s review of scholarship on Machiavelli’s Prince which details the different ways in which The Prince has been interpreted down the ages (Giorgini 2013; Zuckert 2013). The Cambridge Companion to Machiavelli and the essays within it is also a good source of material on Machiavelli (Atkinson 2010).
Born into a prominent, learned, and mainly wealthy family that was indebted at the time of his birth, Machiavelli was a diplomat for 14 years in Italy’s Florentine Republic during the Medici family’s...
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References
Atkinson JB (2010) Niccolo Machiavelli: a portrait. In: Najemy JM (ed) The Cambridge companion to Machiavelli. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 14–30
Barnett V (2006) Niccolo Machiavelli – the cunning critic of political reason. Hist Rev (56). On-line: Last Accessed 09 Feb 2017 at: http://www.historytoday.com/vincent-barnett/niccolo-machiavelli-%E2%80%93-cunning-critic-political-reason
Berlin I (1971) A special supplement: the question of Machiavelli. N Y Rev Books 17(7):1–31
Calhoon RP (1969) Niccolo Machiavelli and the twentieth century administrator. Acad Manag J 12(2):205–212
Giorgini G (2013) Five hundred years of Italian scholarship on Machiavelli’s prince. Rev Polit 75(4):625–640
Machiavelli N (1531) Il principe (the prince). Penguin Books, Florence/London. Translated 1961
McCormick JP (2011) Prophetic statebuilding: Machiavelli and the passion of the Duke. Representations 115(1):1–19
Zuckert CH (2013) Machiavelli’s prince – five hundred years later. Rev Polit 75(04):493–496
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Boddy, C.R. (2017). Machiavelli. In: Poff, D., Michalos, A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Business and Professional Ethics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23514-1_8-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23514-1_8-1
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Machiavelli- Published:
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23514-1_8-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23514-1_8-1