May 03, 2010 <Back to Index>
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Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli (3 May 1469 – 21 June 1527) was an Italian philosopher/writer, and is considered one of the main founders of modern political science. He was a diplomat, political philosopher, musician, and a playwright, but foremost, he was a civil servant of the Florentine Republic. In June of 1498, after the ouster and execution of Girolamo Savonarola, the Great Council elected Machiavelli as Secretary to the second Chancery of the Republic of Florence. Like Leonardo da Vinci, Machiavelli is considered a good example of the Renaissance Man. He is most famous for a short political treatise, The Prince, written in 1513, but not published until 1532, five years after Machiavelli's death. Although he privately circulated The Prince among friends, the only work he published in his lifetime was The Art of War, about high-military science. Since the sixteenth century, generations of politicians remain attracted and repelled by the cynical approach to power posited in The Prince and his other works. Whatever his personal intentions, which are still debated today, his surname yielded the modern political word Machiavellianism — the use of cunning and deceitful tactics in politics.
Machiavelli was born in Florence, Italy,
the third son of attorney Bernardo di Niccolò Machiavelli, and
his wife, Bartolomea di Stefano Nelli. The Machiavelli family are
believed descended from the old marquesses of Tuscany, and to have produced thirteen Florentine Gonfalonieres of Justice, one of the offices of a group of nine citizens selected by drawing lots every two months, who formed the government, or Signoria. Machiavelli was born in a tumultuous era — Popes waged war, and the wealthy Italian city-states might anytime fall, piecemeal, to foreign powers — France, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire — and political-military alliances continually changed, featuring condottieri who changed sides without warning, and weeks-long governments rising and falling. Rigorously
trained to manhood by his father, Machiavelli was taught grammar,
rhetoric and Latin. He did not learn Greek, even though Florence was at
the time one of the centers of Greek scholarship in Europe. In 1494, he
entered Florentine government service as a clerk and as an ambassador;
later that year, Florence restored the republic — expelling the Medici family,
who had ruled Florence for some sixty years. He was in a diplomatic
council responsible for negotiation and military affairs, undertaking,
between 1499 and 1512, diplomatic missions to the courts of Louis XII in France, Ferdinand II of
Aragón, in Spain, and the Papacy in Rome, in Italy proper.
Moreover, from 1502 to 1503, he witnessed the effective state-building
methods of soldier-churchman Cesare Borgia (1475 – 1507), who was then enlarging his central Italian territories. Between 1503 and 1506, Machiavelli was responsible for the Florentine militia, including the City’s defense. He distrusted mercenaries,
preferring a politically-invested citizen-militia, a philosophy that
bore fruit — his command of Florentine citizen-soldiers defeated Pisa in
1509; yet, in August of 1512, the Medici, helped by Pope Julius II, used Spanish troops to defeat the Florentines at Prato; Piero Soderini resigned
as Florentine head of state, and left in exile; then, the Florentine
city-state and the Republic were dissolved. For his significant role in
the republic's anti-Medici government, Niccolò Machiavelli was
deposed from office, and, in 1513, was accused of conspiracy, and arrested. Despite torture "with the rope"
(the prisoner is hanged from his bound wrists, from the back, forcing
the arms to bear the body's weight, thus dislocating the shoulders), he
denied involvement and was released; then, retiring to his estate, at Sant'Andrea in Percussina,
near Florence, he wrote the political treatises that earned his
intellectual place in the development of political philosophy and
political conduct. In a letter to Francesco Vettori, he described his exile: When
evening comes, I return home [from work and from the local tavern] and
go to my study. On the threshold, I strip naked, taking off my muddy,
sweaty work day 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. As a writer, Machiavelli identified the unifying theme in The Prince and the Discorsi: All
cities that ever, at any time, have been ruled by an absolute prince,
by aristocrats, or by the people, have had for their protection force
combined with prudence, because the latter is not enough alone, and the
first either does not produce things, or when they are produced, does
not maintain them. Force and prudence, then, are the might of all the governments that ever have been or will be in the world. Machiavelli died in 1527. His grave site is unknown, but a cenotaph honouring him was erected at the Church of Santa Croce, in Florence. The Latin legend reads: TANTO NOMINI NULLUM PAR ELOGIUM (No eulogy would be adequate to praise so great a name). The Prince's contribution to the history of political thought is the fundamental break between political Realism and political Idealism. Niccolò Machiavelli’s best-known book exposits and describes the
arts with which a ruling prince can maintain control of his realm. It
concentrates on the "new prince", under the presumption that a
hereditary prince has an easier task in ruling, since the people are
accustomed to him. To retain power, the hereditary prince must
carefully maintain the socio-political institutions to which the people
are accustomed; whereas a new prince has the more difficult task in
ruling, since he must first stabilize his new-found power in order to
build an enduring political structure. That requires the prince being a public figure above
reproach, whilst privately acting amorally to achieve State goals. The
examples are those princes who most successfully obtain and maintain
power, drawn from his observations as a Florentine diplomat, and his ancient history readings; thus, the Latin phrases and Classic examples. The Prince does not dismiss morality, instead, it politically defines “Morality” — as in the criteria for acceptable cruel action — it must be decisive:
swift, effective, and short-lived. Machiavelli is aware of the irony of
good results coming from evil actions; notwithstanding some mitigating
themes, the Catholic Church proscribed The Prince, registering it to the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, moreover, the Humanists also viewed the book negatively, among them, Erasmus of Rotterdam. As a treatise, its primary intellectual contribution to the history of political thought is the fundamental break between political Realism and political Idealism — thus, The Prince is a manual to acquiring and keeping political power. In contrast with Plato and Aristotle, a Classical ideal society is not the aim of the prince’s will to power. As a political scientist, Machiavelli emphasises necessary, methodical exercise of brute force punishment-and-reward (patronage, clientelism, et cetera) to preserve the status quo.
As there seems to be a very large difference between Machiavelli's advice to ruthless and tyrannical princes in The Prince and his more republican exhortations in Discorsi, many have concluded that The Prince is actually only a satire. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, for instance, admired Machiavelli the republican and consequently argued that The Prince is
a book for the republicans as it exposes the methods used by princes.
If the book was only intended as a manual for tyrannical rulers, it
contains a paradox: it would apparently be more effective if the
secrets it contains would not be made publicly available. Also Antonio Gramsci argued
that Machiavelli's audience was the common people because the rulers
already knew these methods through their education. This interpretation
is supported by the fact that Machiavelli wrote in Italian, not in
Latin (which would have been the language of the ruling elite).
Although Machiavelli is supposed to be a realist, many of his heroes in The Prince are in fact mythical or semi-mythical, and his goal (i.e. the unification of Italy) essentially utopian at the time of writing.
Sixteenth-century contemporaries adopted and used the adjective Machiavellian (in
the sense of devious cunning), often in the introductions of political
tracts offering more than government by “Reasons of State”, most
notably those of Jean Bodin and Giovanni Botero. Contemporary, pejorative usage of Machiavellian (or anti-Machiavellism in the 16th C.) is a misnomer describing someone who deceives and manipulates others for gain; (personal or not, the gain is immaterial, only action matters, insofar as it effects results). The Prince hasn’t the moderating themes of his other works; politically, “Machiavelli” denotes someone of politically-extreme perspective; however Machiavellianism remains a popular speech and journalism usage; while in psychology, it denotes a personality type. The Discourse on the First Ten Books of Titus Livy comprises the early history of Rome. It is a series of lessons on how a republic should be started and structured, including the concept of checks and balances, the strength of a tri-partite political structure, and the superiority of a republic over a principality. |