Abstract
Hidden from history but in plain sight in Renaissance Italy of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, there existed a plot led by elite literati to transform their political and social world. At its heart lay a paideuma, “an admittedly anachronistic term” (2, emphasis added), which was essentially a moral program drawn largely from the classics being rediscovered at the time by humanists whose goal was to reawaken ancient virtue in the hearts of the ruling classes of Italy—“virtue politics.” Although others have long nibbled around the edges of this plot and delved deeply into the texts key to understanding it, because they failed to recognize its programmatic nature as a crucial aspect of humanist thought, James Hankins in Virtue Politics: Soulcraft and Statecraft in Renaissance Italy brings to light its truly revolutionary and foundational nature for the political thought of then and now. Given recent debates about whether...
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