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Australia Could Use a Machiavelli
Niccolò Machiavelli’s name is mud. Any scribbler vilifying a dodgy politician or lying lobbyist will reach for the poisoned descriptor Machiavellian. It suggests everything devious and cynical.
When I bought a copy of The Prince—Machiavelli’s most famous work—I braced myself, anticipating counsels of devilish sophistry on every page. But The Prince is far better than I imagined. Perhaps I was fortunate to read the Penguin Classics translation by Tim Parks with his illuminating introduction. Parks explores The Prince and Machiavelli’s scandalous reputation. Published in Italy in 1532 after Machiavelli’s death, it was placed on Pope Paul IV’s Index of Prohibited Books in 1559. Then time and chance intervened; they, Machiavelli had understood, multiplied the unpredictable. The Protestant Reformation and Catholicism’s Counter-Reformation were splintering Europe. Religious propaganda abounded, helped by that useful invention, the printing press. And Machiavelli…
Madam: Archbishop Fisher (July-August 2024) does not resist the attacks on his church by the political, social or scientific atheists and those who insist on not being told what to do.
Aug 29 2024
6 mins
To claim Aborigines have the world's oldest continuous culture is to misunderstand the meaning of culture, which continuously changes over time and location. For a culture not to change over time would be a reproach and certainly not a cause for celebration, for it would indicate that there had been no capacity to adapt. Clearly this has not been the case
Aug 20 2024
23 mins
A friend and longtime supporter of Quadrant, Clive James sent us a poem in 2010, which we published in our December issue. Like the Taronga Park Aquarium he recalls in its 'mocked-up sandstone cave' it's not to be forgotten
Aug 16 2024
2 mins