SOURCE: "The Question of Machiavelli's Modernity," in The Review of Politics, Vol. 53, No. 2, Spring, 1991, pp. 320–39.

In the essay below, Parel contends that the arguments which support Machiavelli's "new" ideas, are "based on premodern cosmology and anthropology"

That Machiavelli is an innovator of political philosophy is universally acknowledged. The program of innovation is outlined in The Prince, chapter 15: he wants to depart from the orders of his predecessors. The goal of the new philosophy is "effectual truth," and not the imagination of it. Actual states, not "imagined republics and kingdoms" are its real concerns. The distinction between how one lives and how one ought to live is still made, but only in order to point out that what is done should never be abandoned for what should be done. Preservation of the state has emerged as the new summum bonum, in the interest of which everything becomes permitted. The...