Machiavelli: A Very Short Introduction
Серия: Very Short Introductions
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The publisher and the author apologize for any errors or omissions in the above list. If contacted they will be pleased to rectify these at the earliest opportunity.
An earlier version of this introduction was published in the Past Masters series in 1981. I remain greatly indebted to Keith Thomas for inviting me to contribute to his series, to the staff of the Oxford University Press (especially Henry Hardy) for much editorial help at that time, and to John Dunn, Susan James, J. G. A. Pocock, and Keith Thomas for reading my original manuscript with meticulous care and providing me with many valuable comments. For expert help with the preparation of this new edition I am again very grateful to the editorial staff at the Press, and especially to Shelley Cox for much patience and encouragement.
For this new edition I have thoroughly revised my text and brought the bibliography up to date, but I have not altered my basic line of argument. I still think of Machiavelli essentially as the exponent of a neo-classical form of humanist political thought. I argue in addition that the most original and creative aspects of his political vision are best understood as a series of polemical — sometimes even satirical — reactions against the humanist assumptions he inherited and basically continued to endorse. While my principal aim has been to provide a straightforward introduction to Machiavelli’s views on statecraft, I hope that this interpretation may also be of some interest to specialists in the field.
