TITLE -- COPYRIGHT -- CONTENTS -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- ABBREVIATIONS -- INTRODUCTION -- Arguments: Philosophical ethics and the rule of law -- Sources: Greek ethics -- I: CONTEXTS -- 1 Civil Reasonings: Machiavelli's Practical Filosofia -- 1.1. Florentine Histories: Decent words, indecent deeds -- 1.2. Flawed remedies: Rhetoric and power politics -- 1.3. Flawed analyses: Self-celebratory versus self-critical histories -- 1.4. Philosophy and the vita activa in Florentine humanism -- 1.5. What is, has been, and can reasonably be: Machiavelli's correspondence -- 1.6. The Socratic tradition of philosophical politics -- 1.7. Forming republics in writing and in practice: The Discursus -- 2 Ancient Sources: Dissimulation in Greek Ethics -- 2.1. Constructive dissimulation: Writing as civil "medicine" -- 2.2. Inoculation for citizens: Words and deeds in Xenophon's Cyropaedia -- 2.3. Conversations with rulers: Plutarch and Xenophon on purging tyranny -- 2.4. Dissimulating about deception: Xenophon's Cambyses -- 2.5. Dissimulating about justice: Thucydides' Diodotus -- II: FOUNDATIONS -- 3 Imitation and Knowledge -- 3.1. The ancient tradition of imitating ancients -- 3.2. Inadequate imitation: The "unreasonable praise of antiquity" -- 3.3. Historical judgment: Criticism of sources and self-examination -- 3.4. The Socratic metaphor of hunting -- 3.5. Ethical judgment: The "true knowledge of histories" -- 3.6. Machiavelli's dangerous new reasonings -- 4 Necessity and Virtue -- 4.1. The rhetoric of necessity -- 4.2. Necessità as an excuse -- 4.3. Necessità as a pretext -- 4.4. Imposing and removing necessità -- 4.5. Virtú as reflective prudence: Taking stock of ordinary constraints -- 4.6. Under- and overassertive responses to necessity -- 4.7. Virtú as self-responsibility: Authorizing constraints on one's own forces.

4.8. Virtú as autonomy: Imposing one's own orders and laws -- 4.9. Necessità and fortuna -- 5 Human Nature and Human Orders -- 5.1. Fortune and free will -- 5.2. How to manage fortuna: Impetuosity and respetto -- 5.3. Practical theology: Heavenly judgments and human reasons -- 5.4. Practical prophecies: Foreseeing the future by "natural virtues" -- 5.5. Moral psychology: The malignità of human nature and the discipline of virtú -- 5.6. Human zoology: The ways of men and beasts -- 5.7. Human cities, where modes are neither delicate nor too harsh -- 5.8. Who is responsible for the laws? Human reasoning and civilità -- III: PRINCIPLES -- 6 Free Agency and Desires for Freedom -- 6.1. The Discourses on desires for freedom in and among cities -- 6.2. The Florentine Histories on freedom and the need for self-restraint -- 6.3. Are desires for freedom universal? -- 6.4. Inadequate conceptions of freedom -- 6.5. The rhetoric of libertà in republics -- 6.6. Free will and free agency -- 7 Free Orders -- 7.1. Priorities I: Respect for free agency as a condition for stable orders -- 7.2. Priorities II: Willing authorization as the foundation of free orders -- 7.3. Conditions I: Universal security -- 7.4. Conditions II: Transparency and publicity -- 7.5. Conditions III: Equal opportunity -- 7.6. Foundations of political freedom: Procedural constraints and the rule of law -- 7.7. Persuasions: Why should people choose free orders? -- 8 Justice and Injustice -- 8.1. Justice as the basis of order and libertà -- 8.2. Partisan accounts of justice -- 8.3. Non-partisan persuasions toward justice -- 8.4. Why it is dangerous to violate the law of nations -- 8.5. Forms of justice: Promises, punishments, and distributions -- 8.6. Ignorance of justice: Who is responsible for upholding just orders? -- 9 Ends and Means.

9.1. Responsibility for bad outcomes: The dangers of giving counsel -- 9.2. Judging wars by post facto outcomes -- 9.3. Judging wars by anticipated outcomes -- 9.4. Reflective consequentialism or deontology? -- 9.5. Problem 1: Unjust means corrupt good ends -- 9.6. Problem 2: Who can be trusted to foresee effects? -- 9.7. Problem 3: Who can be trusted to identify good ends? -- 9.8. Problem 4: Corrupting examples -- 9.9. Corrupt judgments: Means and ends in the Prince -- IV: POLITICS -- 10 Ordinary and Extraordinary Authority -- 10.1. The antithesis between ordinary and extraordinary modes -- 10.2. Are conspiracies ever justified? -- 10.3. Extraordinary and ordinary ways to renovate corrupt cities -- 10.4. Unreasonable uses of religion: Easy ways to acquire authority -- 10.5. Reasonable uses of religion: Fear of God and fear of human justice -- 10.6. Folk religion and civil reasoning -- 11 Legislators and Princes -- 11.1. Spartan founders and refounders: Lycurgus, Agis, and Cleomenes -- 11.2. Roman founders and legislators: Romulus and Aeneas -- 11.3. God's executors and modes of free building: Moses -- 11.4. Ordinary mortals and the ancient ideal of the one-man legislator -- 11.5. Persuasion in the Prince: On maintaining one's own arms -- 11.6. Princely knowledge and the "knowledge of peoples" -- 12 Expansion and Empire -- 12.1. Why republics must expand: The defects of non-expansionist republics -- 12.2. Three modes: Equal partnership, subjection to one, and the Roman mode -- 12.3. The Roman "middle way": Making subjects or partners -- 12.4. Bad Roman modes, good Roman orders: The choice between extremes -- 12.5. Why Roman imperio became pernicious: The wars with Carthage -- 12.6. Expansion by partnership: The forgotten Tuscan league -- 12.7. Should Florence imitate Rome? -- CONCLUSIONS -- This interpretation and others.

Machiavelli and the ethical foundations of political philosophy -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- INDEX -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- X.