Patrick Boucheron's 2020 Book about Machiavelli and Walter J. Ong's Thought

Abstract

In my 4,400-word review essay "Patrick Boucheron's 2020 Book about Machiavelli and Walter J. Ong's Thought," I discuss the French historian Patrick Boucheron's fast-paced, learned, and accessible short new book Machiavelli: The Art of Teaching People What to Fear [in a Ruler], translated from the French by Willard Wood (New York: Other Press, 2020; orig. French ed., 2017). I use the larger framework of the thought of the American Jesuit Renaissance specialist and cultural historian Walter J. Ong (1912-2003; Ph.D. in English, Harvard, 1955) to discuss various points Boucheron makes about the life and times of Machiavelli in the Renaissance in Italy. I discuss Renaissance humanism, including the work of the French Renaissance logician and educational reformer and Protestant martyr Peter Ramus (1515-1572) and the founder of the Society of Jesus (known informally as the Jesuit order), St. Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556), and early Jesuit education as part of Renaissance humanism. In addition, I briefly discuss Pope Francis, the first Jesuit pope.