John Milton is my favorite, and i'm so happy we are going to be reading excerpts from Paradise Lost! I knew very little of his political dealings (though that consisted of his primary works). One thing I enjoyed from the work we read in class today was his opinion on the multitude. We were asked to compare Machiavelli's ideas of how to control the public compared to Milton's. Milton believed that the multitude was certainly hard to manage, but that the people had the ability to learn and outgrow the historical Monarchy that they followed for so long. I commend Milton for having so much faith in the people although they were so stuck in their ways. I can't wait for Paradise Lost and discovering the parallel ideas from his political ideas to his theological. Very cool stuff. Congratulations to the new honors council!
P.S. I commented on Megan Johnston's in defense of Cordelia."
This was a very interesting part of the discussion we had in our group today in class. Neither Machiavelli or Milton seemed to have much faith in the multitude right off the bat, but did seem to think that they were capable of doing the right thing eventually. Machiavelli said that "a multitude carefully limited by law, custom, and tradition more often does the right thing." I think both would agree that the multitude has the potential to make the right decisions about government, just maybe not fresh off of a coup d'etat...
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