1. What place do general moral principles have in Machiavelli’s analysis? How do they figure in political strategy, and how in becoming a moral person? What would he say to the torture the US used in Guantanamo, or the bombings and beheadings by the Islamic State in Syria?
2. What is the goal towards which Machiavelli’s advice to the Prince is directed? Is it personal power of the kind that Aristotle attributed to tyrants?
3. Is it true (as some argue) that The Prince is totally different in intention, philosophy, and goals from the Discourses?
4. In what sense does Machiavelli perceive the Prince as an ideal person? (Or, if somebody is a prince, what makes him a good one?)
5. What does it mean to ‘master fortune’?
6. What role does history play in Machiavelli’s rhetoric and epistemology?
Application: What would Machiavelli say about our all-volunteer military?
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