ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the argument of the unpolished and very short composition of a letter as a fulcrum on which to rest a view of Niccolo Machiavelli's conception of political reality. In the case of Machiavelli, the chapter deals with a writer of matchless austerity, one preoccupied to the exclusion of almost all else with a single concern: to create a technique of political success. Machiavelli's theory of imagination is essentially sceptical, although Machiavelli's entirely conventional acceptance of many common-sense distinctions obscures the point. The general principles of Machiavelli's technique would offer mankind escape from the frustrating condition of acquiring knowledge only from experience. Machiavelli's concept of fantasia is, tien, a typical sceptic's device, but its importance is almost wholly obscured by the fact that Machiavelli is content, in virtually all his published writings, to take it for granted. The full significance of the concept of fantasia is that it replaces reason in a more conventional political thinking.
