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About This Book
Flattery is an often overlooked political phenomenon, even though it has interested thinkers from classical Athens to eighteenth-century America. Drawing a distinction between moralistic and strategic flattery, this book offers new interpretations of a range of texts from the history of political thought. Discussing Cicero, Pliny, Castiglione, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Mandeville, Smith, and the Federalist/Anti-Federalist debates, the book engages and enriches contemporary political theory debates about rhetoric, republicanism, and democratic theory, among other topics. Flattery and the History of Political Thought shows both the historical importance and continued relevance of flattery for political theory. Additionally, the study is interdisciplinary in both subject and approach, engaging classics, literature, rhetoric, and history scholarship; it aims to bring a range of disciplines into conversation with each other as it explores a neglected - and yet important - topic.
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Table of contents
- Cover
- Half-title
- Title page
- Copyright information
- Table of contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 ââSuffer No Man to Be Kingââ: Friendship, Liberty, and Status in Roman Political Thought
- 2 Without ââSuperfluous Ornamentââ: Castiglione, Machiavelli, and the Performance of Counsel
- 3 ââThe Monarchâs Plagueââ: The Problem of Flattery and Hobbesâ Contingently Unitary Sovereign
- 4 ââThe Bewitching Engineââ: Mandeville and Smith on Flattery, Praise, and the Origins of Language
- 5 ââFlattering to Young Ambitious Mindsââ: Representing America in the Ratification Debates
- Conclusion
- Works Cited
- Index