virtùous

comparative more virtùous · superlative most virtùous · alternative virtù-ous

1. Involving the cleverness and understanding to accomplish one's goals.

   Virtue, Machiavelli instructed, was possible only when it was enclosed, but even within the virtùous state its quantity was finite.

   2004, Scott G. Nelson, “Sovereignty, ethics, community”, in Philosophy & Social Criticism, volume 30, number 7, →DOI, page 820

   4 more examples

   For instance, in his virtùous retelling of the David and Goliath story, Machiavelli equips David with a knife as well as a sling: one’s own good arms replace divine favor.

   1995, Diana Schaub, Erotic Liberalism: Women and Revolution in Montesquieu’s Persian Letters, →ISBN, page 102

   Think, for instance, of the various actualisations of the model-image of the Knight. They share the function of putting forth a claim about virtùous political conduct. This necessarily involves selection from among possible ways of conceiving of virtù.

   2007, Anni Kangas, The Knight, the Beast and the Treasure: A Semeiotic Inquiry into the Finnish Political Imaginary on Russia, 1918–1930s (Acta Universitatis Tamperensis 1283), University of Tampere, →ISBN, →ISSN, page 73

   We concluded at the end of Chapter 3 that the Mercurial or Herculean French king ruled over the fickle multitude by eloquence, but this woodcut might have suggested that not only “virtuous” eloquence but also “virtùous” eloquence with cunning and deceit, whose significance Machiavelli explored in his works, was needed to govern the people.

   2013 October, Takashi Nishi, The Representations of Hercules and Hydra in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, page 196

   The next year, at the 72nd Annual National Conference, we presented a paper which contrasted the moral positions found in The Prince and Breaking Bad, titled “Breaking Bad’s Walter White: A Virtùous Man Who Lacked Virtue.”

   2015, Eric T. Kasper, Troy Kozma, “Acknowledgments”, in Machiavelli Goes to the Movies: Understanding The Prince through Television and Film, Lexington Books, →ISBN, page ix