Here are four passages. You must write a 2.5 page comment in the form of an essay on each one. This should explain what the passage is about, how the passage fits into the general argument with which it is concerned, and anything else you consider to be important and relevant.
Keep in mind, the following are the three general levels of analysis I’m looking for:
• What does this quote mean?
• What is the argument from which this quote was taken? How does this quote fit
into that argument?
• Why is the author making that argument?
I – Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince:
“The gap between how people actually behave and how they ought to behave is so great that anyone who ignores everyday reality in order to live up to an ideal will soon discover he has been taught how to destroy himself…..”
“So it is necessary for a ruler, if he wants to hold on to power, to learn how not to be good, and to know when it is and when it is not necessary to use this knowledge.”
II – Martin Luther, On Secular Authority:
“Neither is enough for the world without the other. Without the spiritual government of Christ no-one can be made just in the sight of God by secular government alone. Christ’s spiritual government does not extend to everyone; on the contrary, Christians are at all times the fewest in numbers and live in the midst of the Unchristian. Conversely, where the secular government or law rules on its own, mere hypocrisy must prevail even if it were God’s own commandments. For no-one becomes without the Holy Spirit [.i.e. Gods’ Grace] in his heart, however good his works.”
Thus: “It is right and necessary that all princes should be good Christians.”
III – Jean Calvin, On Civil Government:
“It may be that there are in our days popular magistrates established to restrain the licentiousness of kings, corresponding to those ‘Ephors,’ which were set against the authority of the kings of the Spartans, or the Tribunes of the People, set over against the Roman consuls, or the ‘Demarchs’, set up against the Council of the Athenians. And perhaps in current circumstances, the authority exercised by the three estates in individual kingdoms when they hold their principal assemblies is of the same kind.”
IV – Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, Essays trans M.A. Screech, Book I, no. 14, 21, 23, 27, 30, 31, 36:
“The laws of conscience which we say are born of nature, are born of custom; since man inwardly venerates the opinions and the manners approved and received about him, he cannot, without remorse, free himself from them nor apply himself to them without self- approbation.”
DO NOT USE ANY SOURCES OTHER THAN THE 4 BOOKS MENTIONED. YOU NEED TO USE QUOTES ONLY FROM THESE BOOKS AND THEIR SPECIFIED CHAPTERS. MAKE SURE TO WRITE 2.5 PAGES PER PASSAGE
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