Republican Realism in Renaissance Florence: Francesco Guicciardini’s Discorso Di Logrogno

In this exciting book, Athanasios Moulakis makes available, for the first time in English, the important essay How to Bring Order to Popular Government, by Renaissance thinker Francesco Guicciardini. In addition to his valuable and lucid translation of the essay, Moulakis provides an engaging analysis of this important work. He shows that, far from representing a revival of ancient republicanism, the long maturation of Florentine constitutional thought_brought to lucid expression by Guicciardini_points to a distinctly modern idea of the republican state. Republican Realism in Renaissance Florence is a unique and important book which will be of great value to historians and political theorists alike.

Athanasios Moulakis is director of the Herbst Program of Humanities, Herbst Professor of Humanities, and professor of political science at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He is the author of Beyond Utility: Liberal Education for a Technological Age.