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Niccolò Machiavelli

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Machiavelli, c. 1500, in the robes of a Florentine public official.
Statue at the Uffizi.
Bust of Machiavelli.

Niccolò Machiavelli (3 May, 1469 – 21 June, 1527) Florentine political philosopher, musician, poet, and romantic comedic playwright. Machiavelli was also a key figure in realist political theory, crucial to European statecraft Renaissance and early Protestant Reformation, which shaped the behavior of nations to one another up through today. Machiavelli was one of the first people to study objectively -- with what we might now call a scientific attitude -- politics and government as they are actually practiced.

Background

Machiavelli was born in Florence, the second son of Bernardo di Niccolò Machiavelli and his wife Bartolommea di Stefano Nelli. His father was a reputed lawyer and belonged to an impoverished branch of an influential old Florentine family.

Machiavelli served the Republic of Florence after the expulsion of the Medici in 1494, travelling to European courts in France, Germany, as well as other Italian city-states on diplomatic missions. During this time he would draw influence for his work The Prince from the European leaders he met. His first mission was in 1499 to Caterina Sforza, who appeared as "my lady of Forlì" in his work The Prince. In 1500 he was sent to France to obtain terms from Louis XII for continuing the war against Pisa. Louis XII was also the king who committed the five capital errors in statecraft summarized in The Prince, and was consequently driven out of Italy. Machiavelli's public life was largely occupied with events arising out of the ambitions of Pope Alexander VI and his son, Cesare Borgia, and these characters fill a large space of The Prince.

When Pope Julius II restored the Medicis to power in 1512, Machiavelli's name was found on a list of 20 persons supposedly involved in a conspiracy to oppose Medici rule, including co-conspirator and disputed friend Giovani Battaini. He was briefly imprisoned and tortured in the Bargello in Florence. It is likely he had no part in the plot, and he maintained his innocence throughout. When Pope Leo X became pontiff in 1513, himself a member of the Medici family, he secured the release of Machiavelli and sent him into exile. Machiavelli returned to Sant'Andrea in Percussina, where he devoted himself to literature.

In later life, Machiavelli joined the humanist academy around Bernardo Rucellai which met at the Orti Oricellari. From here, he may have gained access to unpublished translations of Polybius, upon which many of his ideas on the form of republican government appear to be based (Polybius had not been translated in his lifetime, and Machiavelli is believed to have had no knowledge of Greek). In a famous letter to his nephew, Machiavelli wrote that in a normal day while in exile in Sant’Andrea in Percussina, he would rise early, work the fields or the woods until lunchtime, socialise in the local bars, but then:

"When evening comes, I return home (from the local tavern) and go to my study. On the threshold I strip off my muddy, sweaty workaday clothes, and put on the robes of court and palace, and in this graver dress I enter the courts of the ancients and am welcomed by them, and there I taste the food that alone is mine, and for which I was born. And there I make bold to speak to them and ask the motives of their actions, and they, in their humanity reply to me. And for the space of four hours I forget the world, remember no vexation, fear poverty no more, tremble no more at death; I pass indeed into their world." (The Literary Works of Machiavelli, trans. Hale. Oxford 1961, page 139.)

He died in Florence in 1527 and his resting place, as well as the tombs of his conspirators' friends and family, is unknown; however, a cenotaph in his honor can be found at the Basilica di Santa Croce di Firenze.

Works and political philosophy

The best known work of Machiavelli is his political treatise Il Principe (The Prince). It was written in an attempt to return to politics as an advisor to Lorenzo di Piero de' Medici. It has been argued that The Prince is not representative of Machiavelli's beliefs, as his advocacy of tyranny seems to contradict his other writings. However, Machiavelli seems to have been in earnest when he argued the advantages of cruelty and fraudulence. Apparently, he was hoping that a strong ruler would emerge from the Medici family, uniting Italy by expelling the foreign occupiers. Since its publication, Il Principe has become a legendary handbook on how to become and remain a ruler.

However, most experts agree that Machiavelli's intention was not to advocate one particular policy over another, but to objectively record the various discourses of politics. It would not be accurate to accuse him of advocating the wicked practices about which he wrote. There are places in his writings where he says, in effect, that if the ruler is to save the state in a particular sort of crisis, or retain his own position in power, then he must be prepared to act against this or that moral principle; but even in these passages he is, usually, only stating an unpalatable truth, at least in the political circumstance of his time and place, which was Renaissance Italy.

Nonetheless, in the Discourses, which will be discussed with greater detail below, Machiavelli does offer his view of the ideal form of government when he compares the pros and cons of different forms of government, and reveals it as his view that a republic, where it has genuine popular support, is likely to be the best and most stable form of government.

The Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio (Discourses On The First Ten Books of Titus Livy), Machiavelli's second most famous work, focuses on the proper function of Republics, rather than the function of autocratic regimes discussed in The Prince. (Machiavelli notes this in the second chapter of The Prince, which begins with the line: "Setting aside republics, about which I have spoken at length elsewhere, I shall concern myself only with princely states.") The Discorsi, as the work is most commonly known, espouses a much less harsh and cruel method of government than the government suggested in The Prince. An analysis of the history written by the Roman Titus Livy, the Discourses uses analogies from Roman history to study contemporary Italian politics. (For example, Machiavelli compares the way in which Roman generals used religion to manipulate their soldiers to the brief ascendancy of Savonarola in Florentine politics.)

Both of his major works talk extensively about uniting the Italian peninsula under one government.

Various political analysts prior to Machiavelli based their counsel on the assumption that for a ruler to succeed, he must be ethically sound; as if power was earned by integrity. Machiavelli’s approach was much more pragmatic and sharply contrasted with the ideals preached by the Church. Although he does not completely exclude ethics, he minimizes their role in a prince’s actions, because he believes that a prince has a unique role, and should therefore let his goals justify the means of achieving them. He introduced the theory that morally wrong actions are sometimes required to achieve morally right outcomes. Machiavelli gives the masses one identity, the subjects of a prince’s authority. This entity must be controlled by the prince because they ultimately decide the fate of a prince. Machiavelli explains his view on a prince’s morality: "How praiseworthy it is for a prince to keep his word and live with integrity rather than by craftiness, everyone understands; yet we see from recent experience that those princes have accomplished most who paid little heed to keeping their promises, but who knew how to manipulate the minds of men craftily. In the end, they won out over those who tried to act honestly" (47). Machiavelli’s suggestions are based on numerous historical accounts of past events. His examples reinforce his assertions that a prince must be shrewd enough to seem to have purely good qualities; however, it is not necessary that he actually have all these qualities (Machiavelli 43). Because Machiavelli claims “it is a good general rule about men, that they are ungrateful, fickle, liars, and deceivers, fearful of danger and greedy for gain” (Machiavelli, 46), he feels very little moral obligation to the masses. This pessimistic view of the human race gives the entire book a bitter tone, which some scholars have even claimed satirical (Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Machiavelli’s original opinions about the ethics of authority have laid the groundwork for much of modern political strategy.


Machiavellianism

Main article: Machiavellianism

Machiavellianism is the term some social and personality psychologists use to describe a person's tendency to deceive and manipulate others for gain. Whether the gain is personal or not is of no relevance, only that the resulting actions are the goal and the means by which one achieves the results are only important insofar as it affects the results. Used to describe later works by other authors based on Machiavelli's writings—particularly The Prince—in which the authors stress the view that "The ends justify the means." <---This is not correct but is often associated with Machiavelli. Machiavelli was far too smart to state that the ends always justify the means, which is simply not true. However Machiavelli does say that many times the outcome is what is important, or remembered. I quote "Everyone sees what you appear to be, few feel what you are, and those few do not dare to oppose themselves to the opinion of the many, who have the majesty of the state to defend them; and in the actions of all men, and especially princes, where there is no court of appeal, one looks at the outcome" (The Prince, Chapter 18) and he does though understand "The ends make all means potentially necessary". Although this conception of Machiavelli is not true, the term Machiavellianism does, in our time, sometimes refer to "the ends justify the means" becasue of this common misconception. He does though understand "The ends make all means potentially necessary"--- These authors failed to include some of the more moderating themes found in Machiavelli's works and the name is now associated with the extreme viewpoint. Notwithstanding the mitigating themes in The Prince, it was viewed in a negative light largely because the Catholic church put the work in its Index – a list of books against the faith.

The word was also adopted by some of Machiavelli's contemporaries, often used in the introductions of political tracts of the sixteenth century that offered more 'just' reasons of state, most notably those of Jean Bodin and Giovanni Botero.

Bibliography

The following is a list of the principal works of Machiavelli:

  • Discorso sopra le cose di Pisa, 1499
  • Del modo di trattare i popoli della Valdichiana ribellati, 1502
  • Del modo tenuto dal duca Valentino nell' ammazzare Vitellozzo Vitelli, Oliverotto da Fermo, etc., 1502 (Description of the Methods Adopted by the Duke Valentino when Murdering Vitellozzo Vitelli, Oliverotto da Fermo, the Signor Pagolo, and the Duke di Gravina Orsini)
  • Discorso sopra la provisione del danaro, 1502
  • Decennale primo (poem in terza rima), 1506
  • Ritratti delle cose dell'Alemagna, 1508-1512
  • Decennale secondo, 1509
  • Ritratti delle cose di Francia, 1510
  • Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio, 3 vols., 1512-1517 (Discourses on Livy)
  • Il Principe, 1513 (The Prince)
  • Andria, comedy translated from Terence, 1517
  • Mandragola, prose comedy in five acts, with prologue in verse, 1518 (The Mandrake)
  • Della lingua (dialogue), 1514
  • Clizia, comedy in prose, 1525
  • Belfagor arcidiavolo (novel), 1515
  • Asino d'oro (poem in terza rima, a new version of the classic work by Apuleius), 1517 (The Golden Ass)
  • Dell'arte della guerra, 1519-1520 (The Art of War)
  • Discorso sopra il riformare lo stato di Firenze, 1520
  • Sommario delle cose della citta di Lucca, 1520
  • Vita di Castruccio Castracani da Lucca, 1520 (The Life of Castruccio Castracani of Lucca)
  • Istorie fiorentine, 8 books, 1520-1525 (Florentine Histories)
  • Frammenti storici, 1525.

Other poems include Sonetti, Canzoni, Ottave, and Canti carnascialeschi.

Modern appreciations

References

  • Selected political writings of Niccolò Machiavelli ; edited and translated by David Wootton, Indianapolis : Hackett Pub. Co., c1994. See the introduction for Wootton's arguments.
  • The Story of Philosophy ; Bryan Magee, New York : DK Publishing, Inc., c2001. See page 72 and 73.
  • For Hans Baron's arguments, see his article Machiavelli: the Republican Citizen and Author of 'The Prince'. It can be found in Dunn and Harris' two volume set of secondary writings entitled Machiavelli (1997). It comprises all secondary writings done about Machiavelli from 1827 to 1997.
  • Japanese Rock band Dir en grey featured a song on their 2005(Japan)/2006(US) album "Withering to death." titled "Machiavellism".
  • Chanakya(c.350 - c.275 BC), a well-known name in India, was a professor of political scince at Takshashila University in ancient India. He has been called the Indian Machiavelli by Jawaharlal Nehru.

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