Nicolas, il filosofo (Italian Edition)

His work as bishop between and — trying to impose reforms and reclaim lost diocesan revenues — was opposed by Duke Sigismund of Austria. The duke imprisoned Nicholas in , for which Pope Pius II excommunicated Sigismund and laid an interdict on his lands. Nicholas of Cusa returned to Rome, but was never able to return to his bishopric. He died at Todi in Umbria on 11 August Sigmund's capitulation came a few days after Nicholas's death.

Upon his death, Cusanus's body was interred in the church of San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome, probably near the relic of Peter's chains; but it was later lost. His monument, with a sculpted image of the cardinal, remains. Two other tombstones, one medieval and one modern, also are found in the church. In accordance with his wishes, his heart rests within the chapel altar at the Cusanusstift in Kues. To this charitable institution that he had founded he bequeathed his entire inheritance: The Cusanusstift houses also many of his manuscripts.

Nicholas of Cusa was noted for his deeply mystical writings about Christianity , particularly on the possibility of knowing God with the divine human mind — not possible through mere human means — via "learned ignorance". Cusanus wrote of the enfolding of creation in God and their unfolding in creation.

He was suspected by some of holding pantheistic beliefs, but his writings were never accused of being heretical. The individual might rise above mere reason to the vision of the intellect, but the same person might fall back from such vision. Theologically, Nicholas anticipated the profound implications of Reformed teaching on the harrowing of Hell Sermon on Psalm He also wrote on squaring the circle in his mathematical treatises. From the Catholic Encyclopedia edition:. The astronomical views of the cardinal are scattered through his philosophical treatises.

They evince complete independence of traditional doctrines, though they are based on symbolism of numbers, on combinations of letters, and on abstract speculations rather than observation. The earth is a star like other stars, is not the centre of the universe, is not at rest, nor are its poles fixed. The celestial bodies are not strictly spherical, nor are their orbits circular. The difference between theory and appearance is explained by relative motion. Had Copernicus been aware of these assertions he would probably have been encouraged by them to publish his own monumental work.

Like Nicole Oresme , Nicholas of Cusa also wrote about the possibility of the plurality of worlds. Norman Moore , M. In medicine he introduced an improvement which in an altered form has continued in use to this day. This improvement was the counting of the pulse which up to his time had been felt and discussed in many ways but never counted. Nicholas of Cusa proposed to compare the rate of pulses by weighing the quantity of water run out of a water clock while the pulse beat one hundred times. The manufacture of watches with second-hands has since given us a simpler method of counting, but the merit of introducing this useful kind of observation into clinical medicine belongs to Nicholas of Cusa.

Although it was not adopted by the Church, his method was essentially the same one known today as the Borda count , which is used in many academic institutions, competitions, and even some political jurisdictions, in original form and a number of variations. His proposal preceded Borda 's work by over three centuries. Nicholas' opinions on the Empire, which he hoped to reform and strengthen, were cited against papal claims of temporal power in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Protestant writers were happy to cite a cardinal against Rome's pretensions.

Protestants, however, found his writings against the Hussites wrong. Nicholas seemed to Protestants to give the church too much power to interpret Scripture, instead of treating it as self interpreting and self-sufficient for salvation , the principle of sola scriptura. Nicholas' own thought on the church changed with his departure from Basel.

He tried arguing that the Basel assembly lacked the consent of the church throughout the world, especially the princes. Then he tried arguing that the church was unfolded from Peter explicatio Petri.

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Thus he was able to propose to Pius II reform of the church, beginning with the pope himself. Then it was to spread through the Roman curia and outward throughout Christendom. Nicolas of Cusa noted that government was founded on the consent of the governed:. This visionary work imagined a summit meeting in Heaven of representatives of all nations and religions. Islam and the Hussite movement in Bohemia are represented. The conference agrees that there can be una religio in varietate rituum , a single faith manifested in different rites, as manifested in the eastern and western rites of the Catholic Church.

The dialog presupposes the greater accuracy of Christianity but gives respect to other religions. While the arguments for the superiority of Christianity are still shown in this book, it also credits Judaism and Islam with sharing in the truth at least partially. Cusanus' attitude toward the Jews was not always mild; on 21 September he ordered that Jews of Arnhem were to wear badges identifying them as such.

The De pace fidei mentions the possibility that the Jews might not embrace the larger union of una religio in varietate rituum , but it dismisses them as politically insignificant. This matches the decrees from Cusanus' legation restricting Jewish activities, restrictions later canceled by Pope Nicholas V. Nicholas was widely read, and his works were published in the sixteenth century in both Paris and Basel.

In The Pursuit of God , A. Tozer refers to Nicholas as someone who had a vibrant Christian spirituality, stating in Chapter 7, "I should like to say more about this old man of God. He is not much known today anywhere among Christian believers, and among current Fundamentalists he is known not at all. I feel that we could gain much from a little acquaintance with men of his spiritual flavor and the school of Christian thought which they represent…".

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For the lunar crater, see Cusanus crater. For other uses, see CUSA disambiguation.

Nicholas of Cusa, by Master of the Life of the Virgin. Todi , Umbria , Papal States. The Legacy of Learned Ignorance". Duclow, "Life and Works", in Christopher M. Izbicki, Gerald Christianson Eds. Harvard University Press, Cambridge University Press June 29, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation. Retrieved 3 May The Legacy of the Fifteenth Century , ed.

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It existed both in the Catholicised form presented by Thomas Aquinas , and in the more controversial " Averroist " form of authors like Marsilius of Padua. Machiavelli was critical of Catholic political thinking and may have been influenced by Averroism. But he cites Plato and Aristotle very infrequently and apparently did not approve of them. Leo Strauss argued that the strong influence of Xenophon , a student of Socrates more known as an historian, rhetorician and soldier, was a major source of Socratic ideas for Machiavelli, sometimes not in line with Aristotle.

While interest in Plato was increasing in Florence during Machiavelli's lifetime, Machiavelli does not show particular interest in him, but was indirectly influenced by his readings of authors such as Polybius , Plutarch and Cicero. The major difference between Machiavelli and the Socratics, according to Strauss, is Machiavelli's materialism, and therefore his rejection of both a teleological view of nature and of the view that philosophy is higher than politics.

With their teleological understanding of things, Socratics argued that desirable things tend to happen by nature, as if nature desired them, but Machiavelli claimed that such things happen by blind chance or human action. Strauss argued that Machiavelli may have seen himself as influenced by some ideas from classical materialists such as Democritus , Epicurus and Lucretius.

Strauss however sees this also as a sign of major innovation in Machiavelli, because classical materialists did not share the Socratic regard for political life, while Machiavelli clearly did. Some scholars note the similarity between Machiavelli and the Greek historian Thucydides , since both emphasized power politics.

Yet Thucydides never calls in question the intrinsic superiority of nobility to baseness, a superiority that shines forth particularly when the noble is destroyed by the base.

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Therefore Thucydides' History arouses in the reader a sadness which is never aroused by Machiavelli's books. In Machiavelli we find comedies, parodies, and satires but nothing reminding of tragedy. One half of humanity remains outside of his thought.

There is no tragedy in Machiavelli because he has no sense of the sacredness of "the common. Amongst commentators, there are a few consistently made proposals concerning what was most new in Machiavelli's work. Machiavelli is sometimes seen as the prototype of a modern empirical scientist, building generalizations from experience and historical facts, and emphasizing the uselessness of theorizing with the imagination.

He emancipated politics from theology and moral philosophy. He undertook to describe simply what rulers actually did and thus anticipated what was later called the scientific spirit in which questions of good and bad are ignored, and the observer attempts to discover only what really happens. Machiavelli felt that his early schooling along the lines of a traditional classical education was essentially useless for the purpose of understanding politics.

Nevertheless, he advocated intensive study of the past, particularly regarding the founding of a city, which he felt was a key to understanding its later development. For example, Machiavelli denies that living virtuously necessarily leads to happiness.

10 FRASES DE NICOLÁS MAQUIAVELO

And Machiavelli viewed misery as one of the vices that enables a prince to rule. But since the two rarely come together, anyone compelled to choose will find greater security in being feared than in being loved. A related and more controversial proposal often made is that he described how to do things in politics in a way which seemed neutral concerning who used the advice—tyrants or good rulers. The Prince made the word "Machiavellian" a byword for deceit, despotism, and political manipulation.

Even if Machiavelli was not himself evil, Leo Strauss declared himself inclined toward the traditional view that Machiavelli was self-consciously a "teacher of evil," since he counsels the princes to avoid the values of justice, mercy, temperance, wisdom, and love of their people in preference to the use of cruelty, violence, fear, and deception. Machiavelli is generally seen as being critical of Christianity as it existed in his time, specifically its effect upon politics, and also everyday life. In his opinion, Christianity, along with the teleological Aristotelianism that the church had come to accept, allowed practical decisions to be guided too much by imaginary ideals and encouraged people to lazily leave events up to providence or, as he would put it, chance, luck or fortune.

While Christianity sees modesty as a virtue and pride as sinful, Machiavelli took a more classical position, seeing ambition, spiritedness, and the pursuit of glory as good and natural things, and part of the virtue and prudence that good princes should have. Famously, Machiavelli argued that virtue and prudence can help a man control more of his future, in the place of allowing fortune to do so. Najemy has argued that this same approach can be found in Machiavelli's approach to love and desire, as seen in his comedies and correspondence. Najemy shows how Machiavelli's friend Vettori argued against Machiavelli and cited a more traditional understanding of fortune.

On the other hand, humanism in Machiavelli's time meant that classical pre-Christian ideas about virtue and prudence, including the possibility of trying to control one's future, were not unique to him. But humanists did not go so far as to promote the extra glory of deliberately aiming to establish a new state, in defiance of traditions and laws. While Machiavelli's approach had classical precedents, it has been argued that it did more than just bring back old ideas and that Machiavelli was not a typical humanist.

Strauss argues that the way Machiavelli combines classical ideas is new. While Xenophon and Plato also described realistic politics and were closer to Machiavelli than Aristotle was, they, like Aristotle, also saw Philosophy as something higher than politics. Machiavelli was apparently a materialist who objected to explanations involving formal and final causation , or teleology.

Machiavelli's promotion of ambition among leaders while denying any higher standard meant that he encouraged risk-taking, and innovation, most famously the founding of new modes and orders. His advice to princes was therefore certainly not limited to discussing how to maintain a state. It has been argued that Machiavelli's promotion of innovation led directly to the argument for progress as an aim of politics and civilization. But while a belief that humanity can control its own future, control nature, and "progress" has been long-lasting, Machiavelli's followers, starting with his own friend Guicciardini, have tended to prefer peaceful progress through economic development, and not warlike progress.

As Harvey Mansfield , p. Machiavelli however, along with some of his classical predecessors, saw ambition and spiritedness, and therefore war, as inevitable and part of human nature. Strauss concludes his Thoughts on Machiavelli by proposing that this promotion of progress leads directly to the modern arms race. Strauss argued that the unavoidable nature of such arms races, which have existed before modern times and led to the collapse of peaceful civilizations, provides us with both an explanation of what is most truly dangerous in Machiavelli's innovations, but also the way in which the aims of his apparently immoral innovation can be understood.

Machiavelli explains repeatedly that he saw religion as man-made, and that the value of religion lies in its contribution to social order and the rules of morality must be dispensed with if security requires it. In The Prince, the Discourses, and in the Life of Castruccio Castracani , he describes "prophets", as he calls them, like Moses , Romulus , Cyrus the Great , and Theseus he treated pagan and Christian patriarchs in the same way as the greatest of new princes, the glorious and brutal founders of the most novel innovations in politics, and men whom Machiavelli assures us have always used a large amount of armed force and murder against their own people.

He estimated that these sects last from 1, to 3, years each time, which, as pointed out by Leo Strauss, would mean that Christianity became due to start finishing about years after Machiavelli. While fear of God can be replaced by fear of the prince, if there is a strong enough prince, Machiavelli felt that having a religion is in any case especially essential to keeping a republic in order. For Machiavelli, a truly great prince can never be conventionally religious himself, but he should make his people religious if he can. According to Strauss , pp. Machiavelli's judgment that democracies need religion for practical political reasons was widespread among modern proponents of republics until approximately the time of the French Revolution.

This therefore represents a point of disagreement between himself and late modernity. Despite the classical precedents, which Machiavelli was not the only one to promote in his time, Machiavelli's realism and willingness to argue that good ends justify bad things, is seen as a critical stimulus towards some of the most important theories of modern politics. Firstly, particularly in the Discourses on Livy, Machiavelli is unusual in the positive side he sometimes seems to describe in factionalism in republics.

For example, quite early in the Discourses, in Book I, chapter 4 , a chapter title announces that the disunion of the plebs and senate in Rome "kept Rome free. Similarly, the modern economic argument for capitalism , and most modern forms of economics, was often stated in the form of "public virtue from private vices. Mansfield however argues that Machiavelli's own aims have not been shared by those he influenced. Machiavelli argued against seeing mere peace and economic growth as worthy aims on their own, if they would lead to what Mansfield calls the "taming of the prince.

Machiavelli is most famous for a short political treatise, The Prince , written in but not published until , five years after his death. Although he privately circulated The Prince among friends, the only theoretical work to be printed in his lifetime was The Art of War , which was about military science. Since the 16th century, generations of politicians remain attracted and repelled by its apparently neutral acceptance, or even positive encouragement, of the immorality of powerful men, described especially in The Prince but also in his other works.

His works are sometimes even said to have contributed to the modern negative connotations of the words politics and politician , [35] and it is sometimes thought that it is because of him that Old Nick became an English term for the Devil. While Machiavellianism is notable in the works of Machiavelli, Machiavelli's works are complex and he is generally agreed to have been more than just "Machiavellian" himself. Pocock saw him as a major source of the republicanism that spread throughout England and North America in the 17th and 18th centuries and Leo Strauss , whose view of Machiavelli is quite different in many ways, agreed about Machiavelli's influence on republicanism and argued that even though Machiavelli was a teacher of evil he had a nobility of spirit that led him to advocate ignoble actions.

Whatever his intentions, which are still debated today, he has become associated with any proposal where " the end justifies the means ". For example, Leo Strauss , p. Machiavelli is the only political thinker whose name has come into common use for designating a kind of politics, which exists and will continue to exist independently of his influence, a politics guided exclusively by considerations of expediency, which uses all means, fair or foul, iron or poison, for achieving its ends—its end being the aggrandizement of one's country or fatherland—but also using the fatherland in the service of the self-aggrandizement of the politician or statesman or one's party.

To quote Robert Bireley: Three principal writers took the field against Machiavelli between the publication of his works and their condemnation in and again by the Tridentine Index in These were the English cardinal Reginald Pole and the Portuguese bishop Jeronymo Osorio , both of whom lived for many years in Italy, and the Italian humanist and later bishop, Ambrogio Caterino Politi. Machiavelli's ideas had a profound impact on political leaders throughout the modern west, helped by the new technology of the printing press.

During the first generations after Machiavelli, his main influence was in non-Republican governments. In fact, he was apparently influencing both Catholic and Protestant kings. One of the most important early works dedicated to criticism of Machiavelli, especially The Prince , was that of the Huguenot , Innocent Gentillet , whose work commonly referred to as Discourse against Machiavelli or Anti Machiavel was published in Geneva in This became the theme of much future political discourse in Europe during the 17th century.

This includes the Catholic Counter Reformation writers summarised by Bireley: They accepted the need for a prince to be concerned with reputation, and even a need for cunning and deceit, but compared to Machiavelli, and like later modernist writers, they emphasized economic progress much more than the riskier ventures of war.

These authors tended to cite Tacitus as their source for realist political advice, rather than Machiavelli, and this pretense came to be known as " Tacitism ". Modern materialist philosophy developed in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, starting in the generations after Machiavelli. This philosophy tended to be republican, more in the original spirit of Machiavellian, but as with the Catholic authors Machiavelli's realism and encouragement of using innovation to try to control one's own fortune were more accepted than his emphasis upon war and politics.

Not only was innovative economics and politics a result, but also modern science , leading some commentators to say that the 18th century Enlightenment involved a "humanitarian" moderating of Machiavellianism. Although he was not always mentioned by name as an inspiration, due to his controversy, he is also thought to have been an influence for other major philosophers, such as Montaigne , [54] Descartes , [55] Hobbes , Locke [56] and Montesquieu.

Although Jean-Jacques Rousseau is associated with very different political ideas, it is important to view Machiavelli's work from different points of view rather than just the traditional notion. For example, Rousseau viewed Machiavelli's work as a satirical piece in which Machiavelli exposes the faults of a one-man rule rather than exalting amorality.

In the seventeenth century it was in England that Machiavelli's ideas were most substantially developed and adapted, and that republicanism came once more to life; and out of seventeenth-century English republicanism there were to emerge in the next century not only a theme of English political and historical reflection—of the writings of the Bolingbroke circle and of Gibbon and of early parliamentary radicals—but a stimulus to the Enlightenment in Scotland, on the Continent, and in America. Scholars have argued that Machiavelli was a major indirect and direct influence upon the political thinking of the Founding Fathers of the United States due to his overwhelming favoritism of republicanism and the republic type of government.

According to John McCormick, it is still very much debatable whether or not Machiavelli was "an advisor of tyranny or partisan of liberty. The Founding Father who perhaps most studied and valued Machiavelli as a political philosopher was John Adams , who profusely commented on the Italian's thought in his work, A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America. For Adams, Machiavelli restored empirical reason to politics, while his analysis of factions was commendable.

Adams likewise agreed with the Florentine that human nature was immutable and driven by passions. He also accepted Machiavelli's belief that all societies were subject to cyclical periods of growth and decay. For Adams, Machiavelli lacked only a clear understanding of the institutions necessary for good government. The 20th-century Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci drew great inspiration from Machiavelli's writings on ethics, morals, and how they relate to the State and revolution in his writings on Passive Revolution , and how a society can be manipulated by controlling popular notions of morality.

Joseph Stalin read The Prince and annotated his own copy. In the 20th century there was also renewed interest in Machiavelli's La Mandragola , which received numerous stagings, including several in New York, at the New York Shakespeare Festival in and the Riverside Shakespeare Company in , as a musical comedy by Peer Raben in Munich's antiteater in , and at London's National Theatre in Machiavelli's best-known book Il Principe contains several maxims concerning politics.

Instead of the more traditional target audience of a hereditary prince, it concentrates on the possibility of a "new prince". To retain power, the hereditary prince must carefully balance the interests of a variety of institutions to which the people are accustomed. By contrast, a new prince has the more difficult task in ruling: He must first stabilise his newfound power in order to build an enduring political structure. Machiavelli suggests that the social benefits of stability and security can be achieved in the face of moral corruption.

Machiavelli believed that public and private morality had to be understood as two different things in order to rule well. As a result, a ruler must be concerned not only with reputation, but also must be positively willing to act immorally at the right times. Machiavelli believed as a ruler, it was better to be widely feared than to be greatly loved; A loved ruler retains authority by obligation while a feared leader rules by fear of punishment.

Scholars often note that Machiavelli glorifies instrumentality in state building, an approach embodied by the saying " The ends justify the means. Violence may be necessary for the successful stabilisation of power and introduction of new legal institutions. Force may be used to eliminate political rivals, to coerce resistant populations, and to purge the community of other men strong enough of a character to rule, who will inevitably attempt to replace the ruler. Machiavelli has become infamous for such political advice, ensuring that he would be remembered in history through the adjective, "Machiavellian".

Humanists also viewed the book negatively, including Erasmus of Rotterdam. As a treatise, its primary intellectual contribution to the history of political thought is the fundamental break between political realism and political idealism , due to it being a manual on acquiring and keeping political power. In contrast with Plato and Aristotle , Machiavelli insisted that an imaginary ideal society is not a model by which a prince should orient himself. Concerning the differences and similarities in Machiavelli's advice to ruthless and tyrannical princes in The Prince and his more republican exhortations in Discourses on Livy , many have concluded that The Prince , although written as advice for a monarchical prince, contains arguments for the superiority of republican regimes, similar to those found in the Discourses.

In the 18th century, the work was even called a satire , for example by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Other interpretations include for example that of Antonio Gramsci , who argued that Machiavelli's audience for this work was not even the ruling class but the common people because the rulers already knew these methods through their education. The Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livy , published in , written , often referred to simply as the "Discourses" or Discorsi , is nominally a discussion regarding the classical history of early Ancient Rome although it strays very far from this subject matter and also uses contemporary political examples to illustrate points.

Machiavelli presents it as a series of lessons on how a republic should be started and structured. It is a larger work than The Prince , and while it more openly explains the advantages of republics, it also contains many similar themes. Commentators disagree about how much the two works agree with each other, frequently referring to leaders of democracies as "princes". It includes early versions of the concept of checks and balances and asserts the superiority of a republic over a principality. It became one of the central texts of republicanism , and has often been argued to be a superior work to The Prince.

Besides being a statesman and political scientist, Machiavelli also translated classical works, and was a playwright Clizia , Mandragola , a poet Sonetti , Canzoni , Ottave , Canti carnascialeschi , and a novelist Belfagor arcidiavolo. Della Lingua Italian for "Of the Language" , a dialogue about Italy's language is normally attributed to Machiavelli. Machiavelli's literary executor, Giuliano de' Ricci, also reported having seen that Machiavelli, his grandfather, made a comedy in the style of Aristophanes which included living Florentines as characters, and to be titled Le Maschere.

It has been suggested that due to such things as this and his style of writing to his superiors generally, there was very likely some animosity to Machiavelli even before the return of the Medici. Christopher Marlowe 's play The Jew of Malta ca. It is a brilliant introduction to the people and events that gave us the word 'Machiavellian. Television dramas centering on the early Renaissance have also made use of Machiavelli to underscore his influence in early modern political philosophy.

Machiavelli has been featured as a supporting character in The Tudors — , [81] [82] Borgia — and The Borgias — Brotherhood , in which he is portrayed as a member of the secret society of Assassins.