Educating the Virtuous Citizen: A View from the Renaissance
- patricklewisbaker
- Mar 21, 2023
- 1 min read
Updated: Aug 21
Francesco Patrizi of Siena (1413–1494) was the most important political philosopher of the Italian Renaissance before the generation of Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527). He is the principal exponent of the humanist tradition of “virtue politics.” As such, he was the first Western political philosopher since antiquity to devote sustained attention to the question of how a republic devoted to liberty and equality could uphold meritocratic principles in government—how it could ensure that its rulers and political class generally were public-spirited, well-educated men of virtue and wisdom. Part of his solution to this problem involved a revival of classical education both in the family and in public schools…