The following is excerpted from page 173 of Joseph Wood Krutch's book Human Nature and the Human Condition (1959):
Professor Leo Strauss, a present-day defender of the now usually discredited concept of natural right, has recently pointed out that the collapse of the eighteenth-century argument based upon "general Consent" does not logically invalidate the concept itself:
"'Consent of all mankind,'" he writes, " is by no means a necessary condition of the existence of natural right. Some of the greatest natural right teachers have argued that, precisely if natural right is rational, its discovery presupposes the cultivation of reason, and therefore natural right will not be known universally: one ought not even expect any real knowledge of natural right among savages. "
This defense is applicable, not only to the concept of natural right, but equally to all the other phases of the more general concept of the natural as some sort of reality. But it is not likely to be very effective with most contemporary relativists because it assumes that reason, as distinct from rationalization, is possible and because it rules out as irrelevant the opinions and practices of the savage, the uncultivated, and the stupid upon which the relativists lean so heavily in drawing their conclusions concerning what is "natural" and "normal"!
Leo Strauss came back into wide attention when the neoconservatives became the ideologues of the administration of President George W. Bush. Then Strauss was widely attacked as a defender of elitism; i.e., the theory that all societies by default, if not by purpose, are ruled by an elite. Of course, Strauss did not simply describe what he believed to be a reality, but was its defender. It is interesting that Krutch, usually considered to be a representative of liberalism of the ordinary garden variety drew upon the work of Leo Strauss, if only in this passing comment.
Sunday, December 30, 2012
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Some Thoughts on Jonah
[ Originally written and posted on December 25, 2011 ]
It is appropriate to look at Jonah on this day. Halley's Bible Handbook maintains the historicity of Jonah, citing Christ's reference to it in Matthew 12: 39-41. Central to the book is the theme of entombment and resurrection. Looking at Jonah as a parable, however, it offers much for analysis. The whale has always stolen the show, of course. Halley calls it a "sea monster," not truly a whale. As a beast more serpent-like than mammalian, it is central to the axis of falling into darkness and rising again to the light.
There is another axis within the book of Jonah, that of east and west. Jonah flees the Lord's command to go east to Nineveh, He boards a ship at Joppa and seeks to go as far west as possible in the then-known world, to Tarshish. According to Wigoder's dictionary of the Bible, Josephus interpreted Tarshish as being Tarsus in Celicia. Smith's dictionary of the Bible maintains that Tarshish is the Aramaic name for Tartessus, in Spain. If one dares to contradict Josephus, it is intriguing to think of Jonah as seeking to flee to Spain. Paul announced his intention of going to Spain.
The meaning of the whale is too big to take on as a topic of speculation here. Better it is to linger over that mysterious plant (4:6-10) that gives shelter to Jonah. The New Revised Standard Version calls it simply "a bush," but offers a footnote: "Heb. qiqayon, possibly the castor bean plant." Smith translates that Hebrew term as Ricinus communis, the castor bean plant. He notes that this grows to be a tall tree in India, but is only a bush in England, at most 3 or 4 feet in height. Luther's Bible translates the plant as "Rizinus," an obvious Germanization of the Latin name for the plant. In the New International Version, it is only "a vine." The King James Version preserves something of grandeur. Therein, it is "a gourd."
It is appropriate to look at Jonah on this day. Halley's Bible Handbook maintains the historicity of Jonah, citing Christ's reference to it in Matthew 12: 39-41. Central to the book is the theme of entombment and resurrection. Looking at Jonah as a parable, however, it offers much for analysis. The whale has always stolen the show, of course. Halley calls it a "sea monster," not truly a whale. As a beast more serpent-like than mammalian, it is central to the axis of falling into darkness and rising again to the light.
There is another axis within the book of Jonah, that of east and west. Jonah flees the Lord's command to go east to Nineveh, He boards a ship at Joppa and seeks to go as far west as possible in the then-known world, to Tarshish. According to Wigoder's dictionary of the Bible, Josephus interpreted Tarshish as being Tarsus in Celicia. Smith's dictionary of the Bible maintains that Tarshish is the Aramaic name for Tartessus, in Spain. If one dares to contradict Josephus, it is intriguing to think of Jonah as seeking to flee to Spain. Paul announced his intention of going to Spain.
The meaning of the whale is too big to take on as a topic of speculation here. Better it is to linger over that mysterious plant (4:6-10) that gives shelter to Jonah. The New Revised Standard Version calls it simply "a bush," but offers a footnote: "Heb. qiqayon, possibly the castor bean plant." Smith translates that Hebrew term as Ricinus communis, the castor bean plant. He notes that this grows to be a tall tree in India, but is only a bush in England, at most 3 or 4 feet in height. Luther's Bible translates the plant as "Rizinus," an obvious Germanization of the Latin name for the plant. In the New International Version, it is only "a vine." The King James Version preserves something of grandeur. Therein, it is "a gourd."
Saturday, November 24, 2012
The Ending of "Gorgias"
[ Originally written and posted on MySpace on June 22, 2008 ]
In Plato's dialogue "Gorgias," Socrates inquires of the Sophist Gorgias as to the meaning of rhetoric. This, however, is but one of at least two topics in the dialogue. Very quickly the focus of inquiry shifts, when Callicles comes on the scene. Callicles defends the tyrant and usurper Archelaus. For Callicles, right is might. The long winding argument of Socrates leads in an opposite direction. Socrates argues that men are good by nature, but do evil through a lack of knowledge of the good. Those who really know the good will not do evil because the attractions of evil will not possess their souls. (This is a somewhat cursory synopsis of his argument. I am the first to admit that I may not be presenting it adequately.)
What I find most compelling in "Gorgias" is the end. First, Socrates relates what he calls a myth regarding what happens to our souls after our death, the myth of the Blessed Isles, the abode of the good, and of Tartarus, the prison of the damned. All men upon their deaths are judged and sent to one place or the other. In the last paragraph of the "Gorgias," Socrates urges us not to return evil for evil. Even if we suffer evil, our good will live within us. His words suggest something of the Sermon on the Mount, although he lived more than three centuries before the time of Christ. The following, taken from Benjamin Jowett's translation, is the last paragraph of "Gorgias":
" Follow me then, and I will lead you where you will be happy in life and after death, as the argument shows. And never mind if some one despises you as a fool, and insults you, if he has a mind; let him strike you, by Zeus, and do you be of good cheer, and do not mind the insulting blow, for you will never come to any harm in the practice of virtue, if you are a really good and true man. When we have practised virtue together, we will apply ourselves to politics, if that seems desirable, or we will advise about whatever else may seem good to us, for we shall be better able to judge then. In our present condition we ought not to give ourselves airs, for even on the most important subjects we are always changing our minds; so utterly stupid are we! Let us, then, take the argument as our guide, which has revealed to us that the best way of life is to practise justice and every virtue in life and death. This way let us go; and in this exhort all men to follow, not in the way to which you trust and in which you exhort me to follow you; for that way, Callicles, is nothing worth. "
In Plato's dialogue "Gorgias," Socrates inquires of the Sophist Gorgias as to the meaning of rhetoric. This, however, is but one of at least two topics in the dialogue. Very quickly the focus of inquiry shifts, when Callicles comes on the scene. Callicles defends the tyrant and usurper Archelaus. For Callicles, right is might. The long winding argument of Socrates leads in an opposite direction. Socrates argues that men are good by nature, but do evil through a lack of knowledge of the good. Those who really know the good will not do evil because the attractions of evil will not possess their souls. (This is a somewhat cursory synopsis of his argument. I am the first to admit that I may not be presenting it adequately.)
What I find most compelling in "Gorgias" is the end. First, Socrates relates what he calls a myth regarding what happens to our souls after our death, the myth of the Blessed Isles, the abode of the good, and of Tartarus, the prison of the damned. All men upon their deaths are judged and sent to one place or the other. In the last paragraph of the "Gorgias," Socrates urges us not to return evil for evil. Even if we suffer evil, our good will live within us. His words suggest something of the Sermon on the Mount, although he lived more than three centuries before the time of Christ. The following, taken from Benjamin Jowett's translation, is the last paragraph of "Gorgias":
" Follow me then, and I will lead you where you will be happy in life and after death, as the argument shows. And never mind if some one despises you as a fool, and insults you, if he has a mind; let him strike you, by Zeus, and do you be of good cheer, and do not mind the insulting blow, for you will never come to any harm in the practice of virtue, if you are a really good and true man. When we have practised virtue together, we will apply ourselves to politics, if that seems desirable, or we will advise about whatever else may seem good to us, for we shall be better able to judge then. In our present condition we ought not to give ourselves airs, for even on the most important subjects we are always changing our minds; so utterly stupid are we! Let us, then, take the argument as our guide, which has revealed to us that the best way of life is to practise justice and every virtue in life and death. This way let us go; and in this exhort all men to follow, not in the way to which you trust and in which you exhort me to follow you; for that way, Callicles, is nothing worth. "
Friday, November 23, 2012
A Question About Origins from H. G. Wells
[ Originally written and posted on MySpace on August 16, 2008 ]
A battered, old, two-volume set of H. G. Wells's The Outline of History (1920, and subsequent editions up to 1949) is among one of the few books which I still own from more than 50 years ago. Back then is when I read The Outline of History, and I am just beginning now to read portions of it for a second time. Wells is today condemned by those on the right because he was a Fabian socialist (which was something quite other than being a Marxist) and condemned by those on the left because he favored eugenics and recognized inherent racial differences. He remains, despite these foes, in my opinion, the Voltaire of the 20th century. He was, though not infallible, a clear thinker as well as a freethinker. Consider, for example, the following question which he raises at the beginning of The Outline of History:
" The idea that life appeared on the earth as a natural and necessary chemical and physical process, without the intervention of any miraculous factor, seems to be very repugnant to many religious minds. But that repugnance is due, perhaps, rather to a confusion of thought in these minds than to any essential irreligiosity in the conception itself. They think of 'life' as being in a way already 'soul,' they ascribe all sorts of moral qualities to it; they side with it against 'dead matter.' But it is difficult to see why a slug or a toadstool, a louse or a cancerous parasite growth upon the bark of a tree, should be treated as though it and the processes of its existence were in some mysterious way 'higher' than, for example, the beautifully marshalled elements in a crystalline group, or in a gem, or in a slab of patterned marble, or the lovely patternings of rippled water in the sunlight, or the undulations of wind-blown sand. Why should the maker of the universe take sides between the almost inanimate and the altogether inanimate? "
Similarly, here in the Bible Belt, one often hears the objection that Darwin taught that we are descended from the apes. The fact is that Darwin maintained only that apes and humans have a common ancestor. Far from being ancestors of humans, the apes might be considered to be a regression from that common ancestor. At best, apes might be in a kind of evolutionary cul de sac, but one might suspect that such is also the situation of humans.
A battered, old, two-volume set of H. G. Wells's The Outline of History (1920, and subsequent editions up to 1949) is among one of the few books which I still own from more than 50 years ago. Back then is when I read The Outline of History, and I am just beginning now to read portions of it for a second time. Wells is today condemned by those on the right because he was a Fabian socialist (which was something quite other than being a Marxist) and condemned by those on the left because he favored eugenics and recognized inherent racial differences. He remains, despite these foes, in my opinion, the Voltaire of the 20th century. He was, though not infallible, a clear thinker as well as a freethinker. Consider, for example, the following question which he raises at the beginning of The Outline of History:
" The idea that life appeared on the earth as a natural and necessary chemical and physical process, without the intervention of any miraculous factor, seems to be very repugnant to many religious minds. But that repugnance is due, perhaps, rather to a confusion of thought in these minds than to any essential irreligiosity in the conception itself. They think of 'life' as being in a way already 'soul,' they ascribe all sorts of moral qualities to it; they side with it against 'dead matter.' But it is difficult to see why a slug or a toadstool, a louse or a cancerous parasite growth upon the bark of a tree, should be treated as though it and the processes of its existence were in some mysterious way 'higher' than, for example, the beautifully marshalled elements in a crystalline group, or in a gem, or in a slab of patterned marble, or the lovely patternings of rippled water in the sunlight, or the undulations of wind-blown sand. Why should the maker of the universe take sides between the almost inanimate and the altogether inanimate? "
Similarly, here in the Bible Belt, one often hears the objection that Darwin taught that we are descended from the apes. The fact is that Darwin maintained only that apes and humans have a common ancestor. Far from being ancestors of humans, the apes might be considered to be a regression from that common ancestor. At best, apes might be in a kind of evolutionary cul de sac, but one might suspect that such is also the situation of humans.
Thursday, November 22, 2012
Anticipations by H. G. Wells Back in Print
[ Originally written and posted on MySpace on September 1, 2008 ]
Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress Upon Human Life and Thought, a book by H. G. Wells which was first published in 1901, has been reprinted by Dover Publications with an introduction by Martin Gardner. Anticipations is an attempt to predict major developments, both sociological and technical, to come in the 20th century.
In some areas, Wells seems to be overly cautious, writing that "long before the year A.D. 2000, and very probably before 1950, a successful aeroplane will have soared and come home safe and sound. Directly that is accomplished the new invention will be most assuredly applied to war." He foresaw little future for use of the submarine in warfare or otherwise.
Also, Wells did not foresee the computer. He does, however, predict that there will be a device in most homes which will enable people to receive updated news every hour: "One will subscribe to a news-agency which will wire all the stuff one cares to have . . . . into a phonographic recorder perhaps, in some convenient corner. There the thing will be in every house, beside the barometer, to hear or ignore."
Wells also foresees what James Burnham, writing in 1940, calls "the managerial revolution," though he does not use that term. He believes that the educated people -- scientists, engineers, doctors -- will rise to become the new ruling class. Again, this has not come to pass, at least not in the USA, a nation still largely run by lawyers and financiers. It will become apparent, one day, he writes, "that the whole apparatus of power in the country is in the hands of a new class of intelligent and scientifically-educated men." If it has become so apparent, the implications of that fact have not become apparent to much of anyone.
H. G. Wells was a socialist, but he was a Fabian socialist, not a Marxist. As such, he believed that the new discoveries of science should be incorporated into the understanding of humanity. He stresses the significance of Malthus's population studies and Darwin's theory of evolution. He explicitly rejects the Marxist dogma according to which all individuals and groups of people will become equal in their intellectual abilities once they are all subjected to a uniform environment. Wells also supports eugenics, a stance for which Gardner upbraids him in his introduction.
One must wonder what Wells would say about China today. China is approaching being a state in which the apparatus of power is in the hands of scientifically educated men. The evidence is just not there that China is about to become simply one more capitalist-dominated state. China, moreover, now has a eugenics program established by its government.
Wells believed that a world state would emerge sometime after 2000. It seems more likely, however, that for many more decades the world will be dominated by great powers. My surmise is that those great powers will include Germany, Russia, China, and Japan. The survival of the USA, at least as one nation, is in doubt.
Wells, of course, offers no such predictions. He believes that the USA and Britain will draw more closely together, but does not predict a merger of the two countries. While it is true that the USA and Britain were allies in two world wars, both nations seem to have been drifting apart for at least sixty years. Of all the foreign nations of the world, the USA now seems to be most closely linked to Israel.
Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress Upon Human Life and Thought, a book by H. G. Wells which was first published in 1901, has been reprinted by Dover Publications with an introduction by Martin Gardner. Anticipations is an attempt to predict major developments, both sociological and technical, to come in the 20th century.
In some areas, Wells seems to be overly cautious, writing that "long before the year A.D. 2000, and very probably before 1950, a successful aeroplane will have soared and come home safe and sound. Directly that is accomplished the new invention will be most assuredly applied to war." He foresaw little future for use of the submarine in warfare or otherwise.
Also, Wells did not foresee the computer. He does, however, predict that there will be a device in most homes which will enable people to receive updated news every hour: "One will subscribe to a news-agency which will wire all the stuff one cares to have . . . . into a phonographic recorder perhaps, in some convenient corner. There the thing will be in every house, beside the barometer, to hear or ignore."
Wells also foresees what James Burnham, writing in 1940, calls "the managerial revolution," though he does not use that term. He believes that the educated people -- scientists, engineers, doctors -- will rise to become the new ruling class. Again, this has not come to pass, at least not in the USA, a nation still largely run by lawyers and financiers. It will become apparent, one day, he writes, "that the whole apparatus of power in the country is in the hands of a new class of intelligent and scientifically-educated men." If it has become so apparent, the implications of that fact have not become apparent to much of anyone.
H. G. Wells was a socialist, but he was a Fabian socialist, not a Marxist. As such, he believed that the new discoveries of science should be incorporated into the understanding of humanity. He stresses the significance of Malthus's population studies and Darwin's theory of evolution. He explicitly rejects the Marxist dogma according to which all individuals and groups of people will become equal in their intellectual abilities once they are all subjected to a uniform environment. Wells also supports eugenics, a stance for which Gardner upbraids him in his introduction.
One must wonder what Wells would say about China today. China is approaching being a state in which the apparatus of power is in the hands of scientifically educated men. The evidence is just not there that China is about to become simply one more capitalist-dominated state. China, moreover, now has a eugenics program established by its government.
Wells believed that a world state would emerge sometime after 2000. It seems more likely, however, that for many more decades the world will be dominated by great powers. My surmise is that those great powers will include Germany, Russia, China, and Japan. The survival of the USA, at least as one nation, is in doubt.
Wells, of course, offers no such predictions. He believes that the USA and Britain will draw more closely together, but does not predict a merger of the two countries. While it is true that the USA and Britain were allies in two world wars, both nations seem to have been drifting apart for at least sixty years. Of all the foreign nations of the world, the USA now seems to be most closely linked to Israel.
Monday, November 19, 2012
Edgar Allan Poe on America’s Name
[ Originally written and posted on MySpace on November 9, 2008 ]
Among the works of Edgar Allan Poe, the "Marginalia" are all but forgotten. These straightforward non-fiction prose pieces present Poe's thoughts on various books that he has read. The "Marginalia" are much more readable than the sketches in his "Literati," mostly commentary on contemporary authors long ago forgotten. Not infrequently, the "Marginalia" address questions that are still unanswered today.
One of the latter is what should be the name of the United States of America. While the United States of Mexico refers to Mexico, and the United States of Brazil to Brazil, does it make sense to say that the United States of America refers to America? Poe points out that "America" refers to the entirety of the Western Hemisphere. It lacks specificity, although most of us sensed that we knew to what Sarah Palin referred when she expressed her delight in visiting the "pro-America" areas of the USA. For Palin, "America" is something much less in its extent than the USA, a kind of counter-expression to "America" as an entire hemisphere.
What is fascinating today is Poe's election of Appalachia as a name for the USA. Appalachia has accrued all sorts of negative connotations since Poe wrote more than 160 years ago. Today it is the region of the USA which proved to be most opposed to the election of Barack Obama. It is also the one region which is ridiculed in the mass media. Does anyone still recall the name of the young woman who was blamed for the irregularities which occurred at the Abu Ghraib prison in USA-occupied Iraq? She was characterized as a trailer-dweller from Appalachia.
The following is Poe's argument for Appalachia as the true name of the USA:
It is a thousand pities that the puny witticisms of a few professional objectors should have power to prevent, even for a year, the adoption of a name for our country. At present we have, clearly, none. There should be no hesitation about "Appalachia." In the first place, it is distinctive. "America"* is not, and can never be made so. We may legislate as much as we please, and assume for our country whatever name we think right--but to us it will be no name, to any purpose for which a name is needed, unless we can take it away from the regions which employ it at present. South America is "America," and will insist upon remaining so. In the second place, "Appalachia" is indigenous, springing from one of the most magnificent and distinctive features of the country itself. Thirdly, in employing this word we do honor to the Aborigines, whom, hitherto, we have at all points unmercifully despoiled, assassinated and dishonored. Fourthly, the name is the suggestion of, perhaps, the most deservedly eminent among all the pioneers of American literature. It is but just that Mr. Irving should name the land for which, in letters, he first established a name. The last, and by far the most truly important consideration of all, however, is the music of"Appalachia" itself; nothing could be more sonorous, more liquid, or of fuller volume, while its length is just sufficient for dignity. How the guttural "Alleghania" could ever have been preferred for a moment is difficult to conceive. I yet hope to find "Appalachia" assumed.
* Mr. Field, in a meeting of "The New York Historical Society," proposed that we take the name of "America," and bestow "Columbia" upon the continent.
Sunday, November 18, 2012
A Stupid Question About Machiavelli
[ Originally written and posted on MySpace on September 14, 2008 ]
The current issue (Sept. 15, 2008) of The New Yorker has an interesting review of a new translation of the major works of Machiavelli. The reviewer presents salient biographical facts about the notorious political theorist and also points to the significant differences among translations, especially the often-quoted chapter 17 of Machiavelli's best-known work The Prince.
Reading this chapter again and comparing translations forces one to think again about what Machiavelli really advocated as an answer to the question of whether a prince should seek to be feared or to be loved. The prince, Machiavelli advises, should seek to be feared if only because of the deficiencies of human nature. People being what they are, they will not appreciate a ruler who has the reputation of being easygoing and permissive (to employ contemporary terms not appearing in any of the three translations at hand).
The reviewer closes The New Yorker article by indicating the wide range of reactions to Machiavelli. Not everyone saw in him a villain. The reviewer cites Leo Strauss as a defender of Machiavelli. I must doubt this, after having read Strauss's Thoughts on Machiavelli. In that work, Strauss argues effectively that it was Machiavelli who overthrew the tradition of classical political philosophy, that he was the founder of evil modernism in political thought.
Of all the books that have been written on Machiavelli, one well worth reading again is James Burnham's The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom, especially in its original edition of 1943. There, Burnham demonstrates that Machiavelli was the founder of a scientific approach to the study of political phenomena. The idealist Dante, on the contrary, is derided by Burnham as a scheming hypocrite.
Burnham maintains that Machiavelli and the theorists of elitism who followed him, such as Pareto, Mosca, and Michels, are defenders of freedom because they warn one and all against the evil lurking within even those princes who may claim to be benign idealists.
I find Burnham's reading of Machiavelli to be convincing because it provides the best answer to another of his stupid questions; i.e. for what readership was Machiavelli's The Prince intended? Machiavelli dedicated The Prince to Lorenzo di Medici, a prince, of course, and expected that other princes would read it. It was, however, published as a book in the language of the common folk, Italian, not Latin. Certainly, it was intended by Machiavelli to have a readership far beyond the ranks of princes. Assuming a print run of only a thousand copies, the book would obviously circulate far beyond the ranks of all the princes of Italy. Had he intended a more cosmopolitan readership, Machiavelli would have written in Latin, a language known to all the educated people of Europe. Obviously, the book would come into the hands of a goodly number of common folk, a fact that Machiavelli must have realized. Was Machiavelli, in fact, writing a warning against the tyranny of princes, as Burnham maintains?
The current issue (Sept. 15, 2008) of The New Yorker has an interesting review of a new translation of the major works of Machiavelli. The reviewer presents salient biographical facts about the notorious political theorist and also points to the significant differences among translations, especially the often-quoted chapter 17 of Machiavelli's best-known work The Prince.
Reading this chapter again and comparing translations forces one to think again about what Machiavelli really advocated as an answer to the question of whether a prince should seek to be feared or to be loved. The prince, Machiavelli advises, should seek to be feared if only because of the deficiencies of human nature. People being what they are, they will not appreciate a ruler who has the reputation of being easygoing and permissive (to employ contemporary terms not appearing in any of the three translations at hand).
The reviewer closes The New Yorker article by indicating the wide range of reactions to Machiavelli. Not everyone saw in him a villain. The reviewer cites Leo Strauss as a defender of Machiavelli. I must doubt this, after having read Strauss's Thoughts on Machiavelli. In that work, Strauss argues effectively that it was Machiavelli who overthrew the tradition of classical political philosophy, that he was the founder of evil modernism in political thought.
Of all the books that have been written on Machiavelli, one well worth reading again is James Burnham's The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom, especially in its original edition of 1943. There, Burnham demonstrates that Machiavelli was the founder of a scientific approach to the study of political phenomena. The idealist Dante, on the contrary, is derided by Burnham as a scheming hypocrite.
Burnham maintains that Machiavelli and the theorists of elitism who followed him, such as Pareto, Mosca, and Michels, are defenders of freedom because they warn one and all against the evil lurking within even those princes who may claim to be benign idealists.
I find Burnham's reading of Machiavelli to be convincing because it provides the best answer to another of his stupid questions; i.e. for what readership was Machiavelli's The Prince intended? Machiavelli dedicated The Prince to Lorenzo di Medici, a prince, of course, and expected that other princes would read it. It was, however, published as a book in the language of the common folk, Italian, not Latin. Certainly, it was intended by Machiavelli to have a readership far beyond the ranks of princes. Assuming a print run of only a thousand copies, the book would obviously circulate far beyond the ranks of all the princes of Italy. Had he intended a more cosmopolitan readership, Machiavelli would have written in Latin, a language known to all the educated people of Europe. Obviously, the book would come into the hands of a goodly number of common folk, a fact that Machiavelli must have realized. Was Machiavelli, in fact, writing a warning against the tyranny of princes, as Burnham maintains?
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