Kudos

Kudos to the first who can name all the people in the collage above.

Luther and a bipartite man

Central to Luther's thought on the Christian and the Sword is the division between spiritual and temporal government and a corresponding division between the "true believer" and the pagan. To what degree are these distinctions helpful? To what degree to are they necessary?

Martin Luther

Luther assumes that Romans and Peter provide a justification for the belief that all temporal power is given by G-d and as such the Christian is obligated to obey those powers. Yet, it seems odd that Paul would be writing to the believers in Rome to tell them they must submit to the decrees of Nero. Do these verses that he uses really establish the legitimacy of the temporal powers that be?

Machiavelli Quiz

Answer the following Question on your own blog --

"The Prince is a concise statement of Machiavell's belief that classical and Christian political theory is unworkable in a world that defines politics as the exercise of power and the struggle for power. It is also implicitly a rejection of a nihilistic counterethic, that only power and brute force matter."

Discuss to what extent you agree or disagree with this statement. What evidence can you bring to support your position?

1. (Dante Germino, Machiavelli to Marx: Modern Western Political Thought, p. 32)

New Blog Links

When you have created your blogs, post the link as a response to this post. I will then transfer the links to the front page of the blog. You do not need to include your name with the posting. I will collect that info later. Keep in mind that you must choose a blog title that is acceptable to me.

Machiavelli Question 1

Overall, The Prince seems to be simply an ancient version of "The Idiot's Guide to being a Monarch". Dealing almost exclusively with questions of efficacy and expediency, Machiavelli ignores questions about whether the advocated policies are "moral" or "immoral." "just" or "unjust."

Is there a moral standard for "the prince"? What might it be? How do/would we know what it was? Is the moral standard for a prince different than the moral standard for a subject? What might the implications be for the answer(s) you offer?

Machiavelli 1

Here are two links to Machiavelli resources. . .

The first is the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's entry on Machiavelli (optional).


The second is an article by Isaiah Berlin on Machiavelli (required).