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1 7 6 I n t e r p r e t a t i o n Volume 41 / Issue 2fruit of knowledge of good and evil opens up a potential, it seems, whoseactualization is the goal of the Guide as a whole” (89). Maimonides turns tothe revealed Law, examining it in terms of the way in which it pursues whatis good for the soul (through correct opinions) and the body (through correctliving). To do this “is to evaluate its implicit claim to embody knowledge ofgood and bad. …Here, at least, if not throughout the Guide, what is missingfrom the dichotomy in its speeches at the outset seems to be present in itsdeed” (91). Maimonides does not discuss it: he simply gets about the businessof doing it. Burger points us toward a Maimonides who suggests that the“sweat of one’s brow” in the pursuit of knowledge might be, paradoxically,the means of recovery for the original, prelapsarian condition of man (91–92).Nathan Tarcov begins “Machiavelli in The Prince: His Way of Life inQuestion” with a substantial discussion of the Epistle Dedicatory of the Prince.Tarcov’s essay is particularly attuned to the ironic (and perhaps insulting)dimension of the Epistle Dedicatory. He also shows us that despite Machiavelli’sclaim that princes know peoples and peoples know princes, there isplausibly a third sort who knows both. This sort is capable of traversing thedistance between the two—and Machiavelli’s Prince is replete with “examplesof princes who lose their states and of private men who become princes” (105).Machiavelli himself, Tarcov suggests, is one who can traverse the distance.This immediately compels us to ask, as Tarcov does at the beginning of hisessay, whether Machiavelli pursues knowledge for its own sake or for its practicaleffects (101). Tarcov shows us most directly the way in which Machiavelliconceives of himself and his way of life: he knows (and therefore has inquiredinto) both worldly and natural things, and he holds that it is “good to reasonabout everything” (Discourses, 1.18.1), and he does not now and never shall“judge it to be a defect to defend any opinion with reasons, without wishingto use either authority or force for it” (Discourses, 1.58.1). This is “almost atextbook definition of the way of life of the philosopher” (108). Machiavellicontinually points to himself, to his choosing of examples, to conversationshe has himself had, and to dialogues with hypothetical interlocutors (109–10).In these dialogues, writes Tarcov, “Machiavelli himself resembles his Philopoemen,who reasoned with his friends, asked them questions, listened totheir opinions, gave his opinion, and supported it with reasons” (111). Whatis this, if not the behavior of a philosopher? Tarcov admirably draws outMachiavelli’s ambition to be a ruler of princes. In his counsel that princesimitate imitations (as Alexander imitated Achilles), Machiavelli underscoresthe power of the writer: “writing can be the most effective kind of action, andMachiavelli’s knowledge of the actions of great men includes their writings”