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Douglas_Knight comments on [Link] Machiavelli in historical context - Less Wrong
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When I read the article, it struck me that the author talked about Machiavelli founding utilitarianism/consequentialism at the beginning, but never really came back to it. And then you took a passage and labeled it the origin of consequentialism. Why did you distinguish that passage from the other? It is not clear to me what either you or she means by these things, in particular how to distinguish two innovations. It seems to me that the claimed innovation is realism, having a model of the world and using history to tune it.
I suppose that when Machiavelli considers the moral choice and rejects it because of its consequences, that is consequentialism, but that is scandalous not because of his choice, but because of the factual claim.
It's actually the passage immediately following the one I quoted which exemplifies consequentialism, in sharp contrast to the classically influenced, religiously founded deontology that public figures in Europe claimed to espouse if they wanted to avoid the wrath of the Church.
If he is making public that which everyone is thinking, but afraid to say, then his historical importance is not in any of the passages you quote, but that he writes a book about it.
Yup. From the OP:
One of the claims Dietz makes is that Machiavelli made no attempt at all to publicize The Prince; he wrote & delivered it to the respective palace, and that was it.
So what if he meant to do it gently in the Discourses on Livy rather than brazenly in the Prince?
Added: note that the Discourses were also banned. Subtracted: actually, that might have been a blanket ban, providing no evidence.
It seems entirely plausible to me that it was written with no other goal than gaining patronage. I'll update the post.
The post I linked is the first of three; the second and third posts are still to be written.
I was only surprised because the author did come back to political science and pinpoint it in time. You restored a symmetry which the author broke. Either you are correcting an oversight or you disagree with her. In neither case are the future posts relevant.