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Niccolò Machiavelli

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Statue at the Uffizi.
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Statue at the Uffizi.

Bust of Machiavelli.
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Bust of Machiavelli.

Niccolò di dei Machiavelli (May 3, 1469 – June 21, 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 contemporary diplomatic behaviour of nations. Machiavelli was one of the first people to objectively study the practice and implementation of politics and government.

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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.[William Gilbert. 1998. Renaissance and Reformation] 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 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 practices, such as assassination and mass murder, 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. Furthermore, he argues that the attempt at being good can be very self-deceptive, and that a government's job is to protect its people; so that they, and not it, can make the moral decisions that come from art, religion, and science. For this, he is severely criticised, making his name an adjective for amorality and corruption.

Nonetheless, in the Discourses, which will be discussed with greater detail below, Machiavelli compares the pros and cons of different forms of government, and offers his view that the republic, where it has genuine popular support, is the ideal form of government, as it is the most stable.

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 (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" (46), he feels very little moral obligation to the masses. This cynical 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.

Responses to Machiavelli

In September 1740, the long essay Anti-Machiavel was published anonymously, though it was an open secret that the author was actually Frederick the Great, with extensive editing by Voltaire. The work argues that Machiavelli's methods have not actually been as effective in practice as he claims, and that by setting an example of amoral behavior, the ruler encourages the degeneration of moral standards in society at large.

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 any actions taken are only important insofar as they affect 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." 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. Not withstanding 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.

Modern appreciations

See also

References

Notes

Bibliography

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

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

External links

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