Speaker: John McCormick, University of Chicago
Title: Machiavellian Leadership, Class Conflict and Imperial Expansion
Topic: PT Workshop
Time: Friday, November 20th; 4:00pm PST
ZOOM LINK:
https://ucla.zoom.us/j/8217815316?pwd=dlU4enhrUTVBOVFSUFhRamJsd2dwdz09
Meeting ID: 821 781 5316
Passcode: 4289
One tap mobile
+12133388477,,8217815316#,,,,,,0#,,4289# US (Los Angeles)
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The password-protected paper is both attached and available on the PT website at
https://polisci.ucla.edu/events/workshops/political-theory-workshop
The password is (case-sensitive) UCLAtheory
Abstract:
Two seemingly minor figures from the Discourses, Marcus Menenius and Pacuvius Calanus, play fundamental roles in Machiavelli’s lessons on political leadership. Through these examples, Machiavelli instructs leaders on the proper role that capital trials should play within republics beset by class conflict, aristocratic conspiracies, and imperially exacerbated civic corruption. Machiavelli demonstrates that leaders must find suitable opportunities to prosecute oppressive elites before the common people in capital trials; and, moreover, that such leaders must demonstrate their own deference to the people by encouraging, at appropriate moments, the people to pass legal judgment on themselves as well. Menenius and Pacuvius appear in episodes involving Capua, a subject city of Rome, thus enabling Machiavelli to explore the interaction of leaderly prudence, domestic class conflict and imperial rule. Ultimately, Machiavelli’s Menenius and Pacuvius demonstrate how publicly spirited civic leaders can properly mobilize the people to expose, combat or resolve instances of foreign conspiracy, domestic tumult, and aristocratic corruption for the benefit of their polities.
