Between Form and Event: Machiavelli's Theory of Political Freedom (Topoi Library, 2) - Hardcover

Vatter, M.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 079236533X ISBN 13: 9780792365334

Publisher: Springer, 2000

Synopsis

Before Machiavelli, political freedom was approached as a problem of the best distribution of the functions of ruler and ruled. Machiavelli changed the terms of freedom, requiring that its discourse address the demand for no-rule or non-domination. Political freedom would then develop only through a strategy of antagonism to every form of legitimate domination. This leads to the emergence of modern political life: any institution that wishes to rule legitimately must simultaneously be inscribed with its immanent critique and imminent subversion. For Machiavelli, the possibility of instituting the political form is conditioned by the possibility of changing it in an event of political revolution.
This book shows Machiavelli as a philosopher of the modern condition. For him, politics exists in the absence of those absolute moral standards that are called upon to legitimate the domination of man over man. If this understanding lies open to relativism and historicism, it does so in order to render effective the project of reinventing the sense of human freedom. Machiavelli's legacy to modernity is the recognition of an irreconcilable tension between the demands of freedom and the imperatives of morality.

About this title

About the Author

Miguel Vatter is Professor of Political Science at the University of New South Wales, Australia. He is the editor of Crediting God: Religion and Sovereignty in the Age of Global Capitalism (New York, 2010) and author of The Republic of the Living: Affirmative Biopolitics and Civil Society (New York, 2014). He is a founding member of the biopolitics research network BioPolitica.cl.

Review

"Miguel Vatter's systematic reinterpretation of Machiavelli is dense,difficult, demanding- and highly rewarding. Even those who are inclined to disagree, as I am, will find this book valuable. No one who works through Vatter's argument and digests it will ever again settle for a reading of Old
Nick that denies his radicalism and makes of him a Christian or a conventional moralist."

--Paul A. Rahe

"Miguel Vatter's astounding Between Form and Event represents the apotheosis of efforts by continental political philosophers to draw from Machiavelli a theory of revolutionary political action. Impressively synthesizing and moving far beyond the writings Gramsci, Althusser, Lefort, Foucault
and Arendt, Vatter formulates a radical Machiavellian model of politics; one emerging from the conflict between the popular impulse of "no-rule" and the state-centric logic of "rule" that he locates at the philosophical core of Machiavelli's The Prince and Discourses. Erudite, impassioned and
analytically sharp, Between Form and Event is a must-read for anyone hoping to understand Machiavelli's radical theory of republicanism."

--John P. McCormick, University of Chicago

Edition details

• Publisher: Springer
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 079236533X
• ISBN 13: 9780792365334
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 366