Student wanting to research Nietzsche

[lawstudent1]

I'm a law student who has read Nietzsche and wants to write a research paper on his influence on American law and jurisprudence. The topic has to be narrow enough for 60 pages, so I must find some original aspect of this issue to work on that's not too broad. Does anyone here have suggestions for topics, or suggestions for what I might read to find one? If so, please e-mail me at:

earlym2000-bmn@yahoo.com

[FactorusTenInfinity]

Nietzsche said something about "...a community which is strong enough to neglect to punish it's criminals" (para). I can't remember where and have much to do so you'll have to search for it yourself.

[Barbarian]

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[Barbarian]

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[Onasander]

Influence on american law? 60 Pages? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

It's just not happening, for not only was Nietzsche about a hundred years too late, John Adams said everything Nietzsche could ever saw negative about democracy (much more even) and republicanism, as well as monarchical, dictatorial, and tyrannical government- what qualifies as culture and civilization- while also possessing the clarity and insight to its note not just how men associate in vice, but also in the cultivation of needed virtues- Nietzsche in comparision when compared to the superior mind of Adams comes off as a simpleton, a man child blathering and moaning, and failing in his exhortations and whining about things he poorly knows nor understands.

There is not much area of interchange- we already had several generations of independence- as well as centuries of common law tradition, to ever concern ourselves with a hairy, ignorant, back water hillbilly living in a cottage promoting prussian values while pretending to be his own man- it's like asking what was the influence of Mao or Lenin on American law- too late, and not of the right stuff to infuence american law directly- beyond perhaps the anti-red movements of McCarthyism- but no Nietzschean has managed to shake the boat and no one sincerely cares. He had a bit of influence on Ayn Rand, who thus had a bit of influence on america- but she didn't really influence NEW laws but rather enforced a stance we already were in- in America we already had atheism and backwards thinking prussians- so Nietzsche didn't do a whole lot ever here. He did help make little bitches feel better about themselves for a time- but beyond forestalling a few suicides (and I am sure he drove a equal number to it, nulling that net effect) I most severly doubt his effect is real in the Judicial or Legislative area of lawmaking. This is not to say he hasn't influenced the Executive cliques from time to time- we have strong Machiavellian tendencies in government in every administration, and apparently among some of the more fraternal, Nitz snuck in, though from what I've read it looked more like a stupid fraternity than a tong withing government running stuff behind the scenes.

We in America come from a superior and clearly more noble lineage of philosophical insight based on authors like Machiavelli, Sullust, Plutarch, Tacitus, Petronius, Locke, Alfred the Great, Richard II- the lessons learned from the Magna Carta, The War for the English Republic, and The Glorious Revolution- as well as colonial experiences.

I would recommend doing your paper on Machiavellias Nietzsche was a kind of Machiavellian (he never read him in depth, but the influence of 'The Prince' is clearly there on Nitz: there is a 1900 page long book quoting sources used since the 1600s that quote or advocate Machiavelli's position for the creation of government in English Speaking Lands- it focuses heavily on the US founding fathers. There is a dearth of information on the net, and many consider him (I among them) a american founding father.

Ain't no way in hell your getting 60 pages on Nietzsche though- maybe 5 with you double space, and use large font. Here's a listing from wiki of books and links on Machiavelli:

Further reading

* Anglo, Sydney, Machiavelli - the First Century: Studies in Enthusiasm, Hostility, and Irrelevance, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0199267766, 9780199267767
* Baron, Hans (1961). "Machiavelli: the Republican Citizen and Author of The Prince". English Historical Review lxxvi (76): 217–253. doi:10.1093/ehr/LXXVI.CCXCIX.217.
* Bock, Gisela; Quentin Skinner and Maurizio Viroli, ed. (1990). Machiavelli and Republicanism. Cambridge University Press.
* Constantine, Peter (2007). The Essential Writings of Machiavelli. New York: Random House Modern Library.
* Donaldson, Peter S. (1989). Machiavelli and Mystery of State. Cambridge University Press.
* Everdell, William R. (1983, 2000). The End of Kings: A History of Republics and Republicans. University of Chicago Press.
* Hoeges, Dirk. Niccolò Machiavelli. Dichter-Poeta. Mit sämtlichen Gedichten, deutsch/italienisch. Con tutte le poesie, tedesco/italiano, Reihe: Dialoghi/Dialogues: Literatur und Kultur Italiens und Frankreichs, Band 10, Peter Lang Verlag, Frankfurt/M. u.a. 2006, ISBN 3-631-54669-6.
* Ingersoll, David E. (December 1968). "The Constant Prince: Private Interests and Public Goals in Machiavelli". Western Political Quarterly (21): 588–596.
* Magee, Brian (2001). The Story of Philosophy. New York: DK Publishing. pp. 72–73.
* Marriott, W. K. (2008). The Prince. Red and Black Publishers. ISBN 978-0-934941-003
* Roger Masters (1996). Machiavelli, Leonardo and the Science of Power. University of Notre Dame Press. ISBN 0-268-01433-7. See also NYT book review.
* Roger Masters (1998). Fortune is a River: Leonardo Da Vinci and Niccolo Machiavelli's Magnificent Dream to Change the Course of Florentine History. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-452-28090-7. Also available in Chinese (ISBN 9789572026113), Japanese (ISBN 9784022597588), German (ISBN 9783471794029), Portuguese (ISBN 9788571104969), and Korean (ISBN 9788984070059). See also NYT book review.
* Mattingly, Garrett (Autumn 1958). "Machiavelli's Prince: Political Science or Political Satire?". The American Scholar (27): 482–491.
* Najemy, John M. (1996). "Baron's Machiavelli and Renaissance Republicanism". American Historical Review 101 (101,1): 119–129. doi:10.2307/2169227.
* Parel, Anthony (1972). "Introduction: Machiavelli's Method and His Interpreters". The Political Calculus: Essays on Machiavelli's Philosophy. Toronto. pp. 3–28.
* Pocock, J.G. A.. The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition. Princeton.
* Soll, Jacob (2005). Publishing The Prince: History, Reading and the Birth of Political Criticism. University of Michigan Press.
* Strauss, Leo (1978). Thoughts on Machiavelli. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0226777022.
* Sullivan, Vickie B., ed. (2000). The Comedy and Tragedy of Machiavelli: Essays on the Literary Works. Yale U. Press.
* Sullivan, Vickie B. (1996). Machiavelli's Three Romes: Religion, Human Liberty, and Politics Reformed. Northern Illinois University Press.
* Seung, T. K. (1993). Intuition and Construction: The Foundation of Normative Theory, New Haven: Yale University Press. See pp. 133–43.
* Stefano Zen, Veritas ecclesiastica e Machiavelli, in Monarchia della verità. Modelli culturali e pedagogia della Controriforma, Napoli, Vivarium, 2002 (La Ricerca Umanistica, 4), pp. 73–111.
* von Vacano, Diego, "The Art of Power: Machiavelli, Nietzsche and the Making of Aesthetic Political Theory," Lanham MD: Lexington: 2007.
* Viroli, Maurizio (2000). Niccolò's Smile: A Biography of Machiavelli. Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
* Whelan, Frederick G. (2004). Hume and Machiavelli: Political Realism and Liberal Thought. Lexington.
* Wootton, David, ed. (1994). Selected political writings of Niccolò Machiavelli. Indianapolis: Hackett Pubs..
* Mascia Ferri, L'opinione pubblica e il sovrano in Machiavelli, in «The Lab's Quarterly»,n.2 aprile-giugno,Università di Pisa,2008, pp. 420–433.
* Giuseppe Leone,"Silone e Machiavelli: una scuola... che non crea prìncipi", Prefazione di Vittoriano Esposito, Centro Studi Ignazio Silone, Pescina, 2003.

[edit] Specialized studies
[edit] Biographies

* Burd, L. A., "Florence (II): Machiavelli" in Cambridge Modern History (1902), vol. I, ch. vi. pp 190-218 online Google edition
* de Grazia, Sebastian. Machiavelli in Hell (1989), highly favorable intellectual biography; won the Pulitzer Prize; excerpt and text search
* Hale, J. R. Machiavelli and Renaissance Italy (1961) online edition
* Hulliung, Mark. Citizen Machiavelli (1983)
* Ridolfi, Roberto. The Life of Niccolò Machiavelli (1963), a standard scholarly biography
* Schevill, Ferdinand. Six Historians (1956), pp. 61-91
* Skinner, Quentin. Machiavelli: A Very Short Introduction (2000) online edition
* Villari, Pasquale. The Life and Times of Niccolò Machiavelli (2 vol 1892), good older biography; online Google edition vol 1; online Google edition vol 2
* Viroli, Maurizio. Niccolo's Smile : A Biography of Machiavelli (2000) excerpt and text search
* Viroli, Maurizio. Machiavelli (1998) online edition, good place to start

[edit] Political thought

* Arciniegas, Germán. "Savonarola, Machiavelli, and Guido Antonio Vespucci: Totalitarian and Democrat 500 Years Ago," Political Science Quarterly, (1954) 69:184-201, argues that modern totalitarianism is a blending of Machiavelli's theories and Savonarola's techniques of rabble rousing. in JSTOR
* Ball, Terence. "The Picaresque Prince: Reflections on Machiavelli and Moral Change," Political Theory, Vol. 12, No. 4 (Nov., 1984), pp. 521-536 in jstor
* Baron, Hans. The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance: Civic Humanism and Republican Liberty in an Age of Classicism and Tyranny (2 vol 1955), highly influential, deep study of civic humanism (republicanism); 700 pp. excerpts and text search; ACLS E-books; also vol 2 in ACLS E-books
* Baron, Hans. In Search of Florentine Civic Humanism (2 vols. 1988).
* Baron Hans, "Machiavelli: The Republican Citizen and the Author of The Prince" in The English Historical Review 76 (1961), pp. 217-53. in JSTOR
* Bock, Gisela; Skinner, Quentin; and Viroli, Maurizio, ed. Machiavelli and Republicanism. (1990). 316 pp. excerpt and text search
* Butterfield, Herbert. The Statecraft of Machiavelli (1940).
* Chabod, FedericoMachiavelli & the Renaissance (1958) online edition; online from ACLS E-Books
* Colish, Marcia L. "Republicanism, Religion, and Machiavelli's Savonarolan Moment," Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 60, No. 4 (Oct., 1999), pp. 597-616 in JSTOR
* Colish, Marcia L. "Machiavelli's Art of War: A Reconsideration," Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 51, No. 4 (Winter, 1998), pp. 1151-1168 in JSTOR
* Fischer, Markus. "Machiavelli's Political Psychology," The Review of Politics, Vol. 59, No. 4 (Autumn, 1997), pp. 789-829 in JSTOR
* Gilbert, Felix. Machiavelli and Guicciardini: Politics and History in Sixteenth-Century Italy (2nd ed. 1984) online from ACLS-E-books
* Gilbert, Felix. "Machiavelli: The Renaissance of the Art of War," in Edward Mead Earle, ed. The Makers of Modern Strategy (1944)
* Jensen, De Lamar, ed. Machiavelli: Cynic, Patriot, or Political Scientist? (1960) essays by scholars online edition
* Lukes, Timothy J. "Lionizing Machiavelli," The American Political Science Review, Vol. 95, No. 3 (Sep., 2001), pp. 561-575 in JSTOR
* Lukes, Timothy J. "Martialing Machiavelli: Reassessing the Military Reflections," The Journal of Politics, Vol. 66, No. 4 (Nov., 2004), pp. 1089-1108 in JSTOR
* Femia, Joseph V. Machiavelli Revisited (2004) online edition, 140pp, good place to start
* McCormick, John P. "Machiavelli against Republicanism: On the Cambridge School's 'Guicciardinian Moments,'" Political Theory, Vol. 31, No. 5 (Oct., 2003), pp. 615-643 in JSTOR
* Mansfield, Harvey C. Machiavelli's New Modes and Orders: A Study of the Discourses on Livy (2001) excerpt and text search
* Mansfield, Harvey C. Machiavelli's Virtue (1996), 371pp
* Mansfield, Harvey C. "Machiavelli's Political Science," The American Political Science Review, Vol. 75, No. 2 (Jun., 1981), pp. 293-305 in JSTOR
* Mindle, Grant B. "Machiavelli's Realism," The Review of Politics, Vol. 47, No. 2 (Apr., 1985), pp. 212-230 in JSTOR
* Najemy, John M. "Baron's Machiavelli and Renaissance Republicanism." American Historical Review 1996 101(1): 119-129. ISSN 0002-8762 Fulltext in Jstor.
* Nederman, Cary J. "Amazing Grace: Fortune, God, and Free Will in Machiavelli's Thought," Journal of the History of Ideas 60: 617-638. in JSTOR
* Parel, A. J. "The Question of Machiavelli's Modernity," The Review of Politics, Vol. 53, No. 2 (Spring, 1991), pp. 320-339 in JSTOR
* Pellerin, Daniel. "Machiavelli's Best Fiend." History of Political Thought 2006 27(3): 423-453. Issn: 0143-781x on Pope Alexander VI
* Pocock, J.G.A. The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (1975; new ed. 2003), a highly influential study of Discourses and its vast influence; excerpt and text search; also online 1975 edition
* Pocock, J. G. A. "The Machiavellian Moment Revisited: a Study in History and Ideology.: Journal of Modern History 1981 53(1): 49-72. Fulltext: in Jstor.
* Rahe, Paul A. Machiavelli's Liberal Republican Legacy (2005) excerpt, reviews and text search, shows Machiavelli's Discourses had a major impact on shaping conservative thought.
* Rahe, Paul. Republics Ancient and Modern: Classical Republicanism and the American Revolution, (1992) online edition
* Scott, John T. and Vickie B. Sullivan, "Patricide and the Plot of the Prince: Cesare Borgia and Machiavelli's Italy." American Political Science Review 1994 88(4): 887-900. Issn: 0003-0554 in Jstor
* Skinner, Quentin. The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, v. I, The Renaissance, (1978)
* Strauss, Leo. On Machivelli (1957)
* Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Niccolò Machiavelli (2005) online edition
* Struever, Nancy S. The Language of History in the Renaissance: Rhetoric and Historical Consciousness in Florentine Humanism (1970)
* Wight, Martin. Four Seminal Thinkers in International Theory: Machiavelli, Grotius, Kant, and Mazzini (2005), ch. 1 online edition

[edit] Editions

* Bondanella, Peter, and Mark Musa, eds. The Portable Machiavelli (1979)
* Penman, Bruce. The Prince and Other Political Writings, (1981)
* Selected Political Writings edited by David Wootton (1994) excerpt and text search
* The Prince ed. by Peter Bondanella (1998) 101pp online edition
* The Prince ed. by Rufus Goodwin and Benjamin Martinez (2003) excerpt and text search
* The Prince (2007) excerpt and text search
* Machiavelli, Niccolò. The Prince, (1908 edition tr by W. K. Marriott) Gutenberg edition
* The Discourses, online 1772 edition
* The Discourses, tr. with introduction and notes by L. J. Walker (2 vol 1950).
* The Discourses, edited with an introduction by Bernard Crick (1970).
* The Seven Books on the Art of War online 1772 edition
* The Art of War ed. by Christopher Lynch (2003)
* The Art of War online 1775 edition
* History of Florence online 1901 edition
* Reform of Florence online 1772 edition
* Gilbert, Allan H. ed. Machiavelli: The Chief Works and Others, (3 vol. 1965), the standard scholarly edition
* The Private Correspondence of Nicolo Machiavelli, ed. by Orestes Ferrara; (1929) online edition
* full text books from the Liberty Fund, a conservative think tank

Or you can just select from here some nice topic: http://www.questia.com/library/book/rep ... a-rahe.jsp

[Onasander]

I think you will find this is the case for most real nations as well- no real influence on the commonwealth nations, nor nations in the middle east and soviet/socialist law. I suspect maybe some of the Axis states, but they all defunct.

Now, I wouldn't be surprise if he hasn't snuck into the civil law tradition- given the preeminence of professional and academic opinion- but I am next to certain in either Lousiana nor Quebec where bi-juralism exists where civil law is applied he is used there. Mexico and the rest of Latin America seems backwards and foolish enough to perhaps of done it.

[the_dwarf]

I'm a law student who has read Nietzsche and wants to write a research paper on his influence on American law and jurisprudence. The topic has to be narrow enough for 60 pages, so I must find some original aspect of this issue to work on that's not too broad. Does anyone here have suggestions for topics, or suggestions for what I might read to find one? If so, please e-mail me at:

earlym2000-bmn@yahoo.com

what were your reasons for choosing Nietzsche as your subject? onasander quite handily showed there could not have been any influence in the early years and little if any in the modern government, did you merely presume there was one since you liked what you read of Nietzsche, or is there some small aspect you're aware of that you could extrapolate on? if you want to pursue that idea, which seems to have zilch going for it, you're going to have to give us somewhere to start.

[Barbarian]

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[Lim Kolf]

I'm a law student who has read Nietzsche and wants to write a research paper on his influence on American law and jurisprudence. ...

I doubt that Nietzsche in any way directly influenced Am. law, jurispru.

However, you could prove a statement of Nietzsche's true or false: Greek law developed from murder & the expiation of murder (Homer's Contest).

[Onasander]

Gonna have to look at homer's contest- mostly know of Nietzsche's concept from books I've read on him; the greeks had a different concept of 'outlaw' than we do, to be a outlaw means in the US the law is coming after you- you have to hide form it- like jesse james. In cities like athens in the early days, being a outlaw meant you were no longer protected by the law- you were thrust out of society, and society no longer had to look after you- people could murder you, rob you, do what they wanted to you- you were no longer a member of the body politic even on the level of a slave or a foreign massuse working hands, sex, and body for a wage in terms of protections.

This is preserved in a nutshell in US laws- allowances for bountry hunters operating under the confines of the law- though much more tamed down and centrally directed.... also the tradition of private police forces goes back into Archaic, pre-norman times as part of the fuedal structure- beginning under Richard 2, we began systematically aligning the rules and procedures- while negating the need for direct maintance and taxation (look into The Doomsday Book and the Exchequer in identifying, coordinating, and then farming taxation)- we still allow for this- especially given our stance on the second admendment- the rights of militias to bare and maintain arms (next to no other nation does this, it's a direct threat to them as most nation's people rather dislike their government and will do terrible things to it if given the chance- not all, but most. This includes European and a good many commonwealth countries).

If we don't have to officially aim to retain and maintain a large professional force of guards, and they act under the general procedures of the law as private police- (this includes medical, dental, life insurance, and patrol car maintance fees, as well as extensive training) then we save alot of money- districts tend to attract ex-military personal- mainly infantry (for example, 90% of Anchorage, Alaska's police force comes from the same military unit as of 2006, getting out, joining up and sent to school by them)- you save a massive amount of money on training your A-Team/Swat, and on setting a easily coordinated SOP that all official officers can abide to from their shared training- but also for the private security forces as they often times have the same military experience as well and are more than willing to coordinate.

The downside it- many of the one million strong private police force is maintained by businesses and richer communities- some districts use private cooperatives as their official police force and the police are pain by their performance by the local residents, and if they are failing, they are at risk of being fired! It varies greatly from region to region what is to be expected- some communities have chosen to go WITHOUT any kind of police force- sometimes outright banning in law that possibility, others subcontract, and yet others maintain a professional force paid by the government. We still have overlapping jurisdictions and priorities as well, echoing back to the system of Richard II.

In many ways, the US is a time capsule among english speaking nations for our laws often times are the most orthodox in terms of the english tradition- even more so than the UK today.We have the oldest dialects spoken, our laws are dominated in the mold of the two English Revolutions- we are strict adherents to the common law system more so than most other English nations.

It's not easy for foreigners to pick up on this fundamental difference of approach to law in the US- US law predates the secular adoption of catholic canon law in europe (as US law is a direct descendent of english law tradition, there was never a break, even during the revolution here)- we had already developed the shire system, had high water-powered industrialization, and the beginnings of the teirs of law while the mainland europeans were just getting used to founding cities and having civil law- we come at law from a completely different angle that is not easy for foreigners to understand as in their lands law is something that is done to you. It's much easier for say- I and the australian on this site to discuss law than for Cezar and I- or Neitzsche to come off as coherent in this regard in the analysis of law.

Now, if you were to take up a philosopher like, William James, then this would be much, much easier.... he befriended members of the supreme court, and helped alot in clarifying many issues of law in the 19th and 20th century.... but the opinion or outlook of a philosopher or a academic DOES NOT hold the effect upon law as it does in other civil law countries- we go off of precedents- most precedents have a million reinforcing rulings that can cover every shade of grey in time you can possibly imagine, and much more exacting than the mental tinkering of any philosopher as we gain a range of known psychological assessments/standards to judge others by- laws are not bound by common law, but at the same time we know they are only ideas, ideals- we try not to push mystical schemes of the intelligencia against the grain of the people- as everyone is armed and not to fond of being pushed around- shit gets leveled out fast- and everyone is touchy about not screwing with others needlessly usually- not always though- and voids do arise from technology changing things, or sudden new population-economic dynamics..... but our system more than proved it's worth in that next to any real communist movements were started in north america, and few of note in related commonwealth nations- guatemala has a few families and drug cartels that espouse it violently, and guyana adopted it peacefully- but in most nations, it's not a issue.

Even in Xeer Law- which is very, very similar to common law (was easy for the british to maintain their colony there- not so easy for the italians)- every invading power, be it ethopian, or islamic, is having a really shitty time trying to convince the locals to adopt a foreign system- xeer law regonizes no law above it, not even islamic nor government, and it's rooted in age old traditions, and has a system of checks and balances that is beautiful. If any comparision of Nietzche's outlook on law to the american/commonwealth system of law is to be objectively considered, it should be by Xeer Law- they managed to produce one of the most advanced and self sustaining, and mutually agreeable systems of law known to man- and they maintain a system that holds 'outlaws' in the same light of the ancient greeks did- it meant you were literally outside the dictates of the support of the community and protective law, and your SOL fucker, cause anyone and everyone will do harm unto you when given the chance- sleep with one eye open.