Tag machiavelli

Eminent Biography: Donald Weinstein on Savonarola

What does it mean to be a prophet? In his new biography Savonarola: The Rise and Fall of a Renaissance Prophet, Donald Weinstein gives us one answer to this question, tracing the story of religious visionary Girolamo Savonarola from his early loss of faith in society to his later attempts

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Are the Humanities Slipping Away?

In a piece from the Chronicle of Higher Education, Frank Donoghue writes about the decline in humanities majors, a decline which is also paired with an increase in for-profit and two-year colleges.  He concludes that while humanities may lose their footing in the world of college and university, their place

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Happy birthday to a man who (may have) thought it better to be feared than loved

Niccolò Machiavelli, the Florentine public servant and political theorist best known for his brief yet highly influential work of political philosophy, The Prince, was born on this day in 1469. Though the man’s name may be now synonymous with cunning and deceitful political tactics, the debate as to whether Machiavelli’s

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