Machiavelli’s cardinal achievement — uncovering an insoluble dilemma. A permanent question mark in the path of posterity.
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“Machiavelli’s cardinal achievement is . . . his uncovering of an insoluble dilemma, the planting of a permanent question mark in the path of posterity. It stems from his de facto recognition that ends equally ultimate, equally sacred, may contradict each other, that entire systems of value may come into collision without possibility of rational arbitration, and that not merely in exceptional circumstances, as a result of abnormality or accident or error . . . but . . . as part of the normal human situation.”—Isaiah Berlin, “The Originality of Machiavelli”
My wife and I have been thoroughly obsessed with The Good Wife for the last two weeks. We’ve somehow managed to watch five and half seasons of it since New Year’s Day. Crazy, I know. But true. Our total lack of moderation has been nothing less than shocking—Las Vegas shocking! I view it now, and only in retrospect, the way I might view a great and glorious bender—a bender worthy of Rick James. Our TV binge wasn’t particularly healthy—of that I am sure—but it sure was fun!
Many nice things can be said about The Good Wife—all of them true—but what makes it stand out, what makes it so enthralling, so memorable, so special, is its morally complicated meditation on the meaning of good and evil in 21st-century America. The Good Wife is a painfully accurate depiction of the uneasy relationship between public life and private life; an unsettling exploration of the differences—and inherent conflicts—between private virtue and political virtue; and a shockingly honest portrayal of political life and the American legal system, which takes us far beyond the wishful thinking of Law and Order, the virtue ethics of NCIS, the moral exhibitionism of House, the faux-realism of The Wire, and the cheap cynicism of House of Cards.
Machiavelli would love this show.
—John Faithful Hamer, From Here (2015)
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Photo courtesy of author.