Fortune Is a Woman: Gender and Politics in the Thought of Niccolo Machiavelli / Edition 1

by Hanna Fenichel Pitkin

Overview

"Fortune is a woman, and if you want to keep her under, you've got to knock her around some."—Niccolò Machiavelli

Hanna Pitkin's provocative and enduring study of Machiavelli was the first to systematically place gender at the center of its exploration of his political thought. In this edition, Pitkin adds a new afterword, in which she discusses the book's critical reception and situates the book's arguments in the context of recent interpretations of Machiavelli's thought.

"A close and often brilliant exegesis of Machiavelli's writings."—The American Political Science Review

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226669922
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	10/15/1999
Edition description:	1
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Hanna Fenichel Pitkin is a professor emerita of political science at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of The Concept of Representation, Fortune is a Woman, and Wittgenstein and Justice. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Part I. Introduction
1. Autonomy—Personal and Political
Part II. Manhood
2. The Fox and the Forefathers
3. The Founder
4. The Citizen and His Rivals
Part III. Women
5. ". . . Because of Women"
6. Fortune
Part IV. Families and Foundings
7. Psychological Theory
8. Sociological History
9. Family Origins: Rome and "Beginnings"
10. Family Origins: Florence and the "Return to Beginnings"
Part V. Meditations on Machiavelli
11. Action and Membership
12. Judgment and Autonomy
Afterthoughts, 1999
Bibliography of Works Cited
Index