Abstract

What if we could overhear a conversation in the afterlife between Socrates and Machiavelli, in which Machiavelli has to submit to an Oxford tutorial style examination of his book conducted by Socrates using his famous method of cross-examination? How might the conversation go? This imaginative thought-experiment makes for both imaginative drama and a good lesson in logic, in moral and political philosophy, in "how to read a book," and in the history of early modern thought.