This is a repeating event- Event 1 / 623 April 2026 5:30 pm
Niccolo Machiavelli - The Prince
Event Details
“Since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved.”
Since it was first written and circulated in 1513, Niccolo Machiavelli’s treatise on statecraft and how the often brutal politics of his time and place – Florence in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries – really worked has remained notorious. Intended as a guide for rulers whose political fortunes could rise and fall with alarming speed and devastating consequences, Machiavelli examined questions that echo down the centuries. How to acquire power? How to keep it? How to inspire loyalty? Is it better to be feared than loved?
Over six meetings we will explore Machiavelli’s often harrowing calculations and consider how alive and controversial they may seem today. To what extent do his ideas remain relevant to our own politically turbulent and uncertain times? How much has really changed over the last five hundred years?
JOINING DETAILS:
- Six-week live online study of Machiavelli’s The Prince, led by Vivien Kogut on Zoom
- Thursdays, 5.30-7.30pm GMT
- 16 April – 21 May 2026
- £210 for six two-hour meetings, to include background materials and opening notes
- Recommended edition: The Prince: A Norton Critical Edition, with introduction by Wayne A. Rebhorn, ISBN 978-0393936919
