Practically nothing is known of Nicolo Machiavelli before he became a minorofficial in the Florentine Government. His youth, however, was passedduring some of the most tumultuous years in the history of Florence. He wasborn the year that Lorenzo the Magnificent came to power, subverting thetraditi...

The History of European Political Ideas What are the aims of Machiavelli in the Prince? The Prince was an incredible book written by Machiavelli. Even though it was written in the 1500s, much of it can be applied in the world today. Many philosophers credit the ideas of Nicolo Machiavelli, be...

CHAPTER I The setting for this book is in 1512 with the fall of Rome. The first chapter is titled "The kinds of principalities and the means by which they are acquired," because this is the first chapter and in order to understand the book you need to understand the most basic and ...

Social Contract Theorists Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau have many ideas in common, but like anyone else they disagree on quite a few things. In some writings one political philosopher will argue against another philosopher and in another writing they will be using another philosopher's argument ...

A nation is commonly known as a group of people whose common identity creates a psychological bond and a political community. Their political identity usually comprises such characteristics as a common language, culture, ethnicity, and history. What is it that shapes the nation's political inst...

The Origin and Expansion of the Italian Mafia Mafia. The word that continues to make many quake in fear at the mere mention of it. The Mafia is the longest lasting structured crime organization, it's origins dating back to the 1200's. In those early years the Mafia had...

Nietzsche "God Is Dead" Out of all the things I could have chosen to write about, for some reason "Twilight of the Idol's' caught my eye It was kind of a catchy title, and it was the last thing that Nietzsche wrote that had any merit before he went ...

Richard is difficult to understand psychologically because, while he is clearly pwer-hungry and sadistic, the deep-rooted motivations for his malevolent hatred are hard to pinpoint. Some critics feel that Richard is not really a fully developed character in the way that Shakespeare's later character...

IntroductionEDWARD B. MCLEANWestern man's pursuit of liberty has been constant. Indeed, the concept of liberty is central to Western political thought and history. The following essays, which were the first of the Goodrich Lecture Series at Wabash College, examine the concept of liberty as it has be...

*The soliloquy begins with Hamlet's thoughts on how time is running by and he still hasn't done anything. He says:And spur my dull revenge! What is a man,If his chief good and market of his time (Hamlet IV.iv. 32-35) *In these lines Hamlet is thinking about all the time he has wasted in not taking a...