Our next work will be Machiavelli’s The Prince, a foundational text in the history of political philosophy. (Recommended editions include those by Mansfield or Codevilla, but feel free to use whichever edition you happen to have at hand or can access for free online.) Machiavelli saw himself as a new voyager, like his contemporary Christopher Columbus; he saw himself doing something new, doing something no one had done before. As such, Machiavelli is credited with being the first modern, as the one who initiated the battle between the ancients (most notably Plato and Aristotle) and the moderns. Incidentally, there is a book by Jonathan Swift about this fight titled Battle of the Books.
It is difficult to truly appreciate the radicality of Machiavelli because he has won the fight – we are thoroughly modern, and he is seen to be simply practical and realistic, whereas Plato and Aristotle, who were the philosophical and scientific authorities in Machiavelli’s time, are seen to be impractical and utopian or naive.