The Garments of Court and Palace: Machiavelli and the World That He Made (Phillip Bobbitt)

Phillip Bobbitt's interpretation of Machiavelli's world view and attempted synthesis of his works, along with the unlikely use of Machiavelli to claim virtue for the the modern neoliberal, consumerist state. (The written version of this review was first published August 23 2018. Written versions are available here: https://theworthyhouse.com/2018/08/23/book-review-garments-court-palace-machiavelli-world-made-philip-bobbitt/)

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"Philip Bobbitt is best known for his earlier work 'The Shield of Achilles,' a thousand-page work tracing the development of the modern state. This book, 'The Garments of Court and Palace,' focuses more narrowly on the inception of the modern state, through the prism of Niccolò Machiavelli’s writings. At the same time it claims to be a new interpretation and synthesis of Machiavelli’s thought, rejecting many widely held beliefs about it, including that he denied the importance of virtue and morality in politics. Bobbitt posits that Machiavelli instead had a specific conception of virtue, and he wrote with a precise constitutional purpose: he was the midwife of the European princely state, superseding the feudal state, and therefore the herald of the modern Western state, in all its versions." . . .