“It is better to be feared than loved, if
you cannot be both.” You might agree with this statement if you
fancy yourself a “Machiavellian.” Italian diplomat Niccolò Machiavelli lived
over five centuries ago but his influence among unscrupulous politicians reaches into
the modern age. He is mostly known for writing The Prince
-- the handbook that established him as the "father of modern political theory." Through its teachings -- power is the ultimate
goal through any means necessary. Formative Years Machiavelli was born in Florence on May 3,
1469 to Bernardo di Niccolò Machiavelli, a lawyer, and his wife, Bartolomea di Stefano
Nelli. He was the oldest son of his parents with
two elder sisters, and a younger brother. The Machiavelli family was an established,
middle-class family; not particularly affluent but with means to live a comfortable life. Machiavelli was born during a tumultuous time
in history. One in which Popes regularly waged war against
Italian city-states and political alliances frequently changed. This led to the rise and fall of many short-lived
governments and shifting power centers. France, Spain, and the Holy Roman Empire all
battled for regional control and influence. Not much is known about Machiavelli’s early
life growing up in this environment. And, few details were written or passed down
about his boyhood. We do know he began his elementary education
at the age of seven and studied grammar, rhetoric, as well as Latin. Apparently he was well-versed in the ancient
classics and among these, he highly prized his copy of Livy's history of the Roman Republic. Political Career Machiavelli's first entered politics in 1498
and helped the political faction remove Girolamo Savonarola, the then-dominant religious and
political figure in Florence. In the same year Machiavelli was appointed
to the second chancery of the republic and he also served as secretary to the sensitive
government agency dealing chiefly with warfare and foreign affairs known as the Ten of Liberty
and Peace. In his official capacity, Machiavelli participated
in both domestic politics and diplomatic missions to foreign governments. These posts afforded him many opportunities
over fourteen years to closely examine the inner workings of government and to meet prominent
individuals, among them the Duke of Valentinois Cesare Borgia, whose fight for political power
was a major inspiration for The Prince. Machiavelli quickly gained political prominence
and influence. By 1502, he was a well-respected assistant
to the republican head of state, Piero Soderini. In 1512, the Medici, backed by Pope Julius
II, used Spanish troops to defeat the Florentines. After the Medici victory, the city-state and
republic were dissolved and Machiavelli was left without a seat in office. The next year in 1513, the Medici accused
him of conspiracy against them and imprisoned and tortured him. The form of torture was brutal. Using ropes, Machiavelli was hung by bound
wrists from the back, forcing the arms to bear the weight of the body. This form of torture is extremely painful
and results in dislocated shoulders. Machiavelli denied all of the allegations
against him and was released after three weeks. He retreated to his country home in Percussina
and spent the time out of office authoring his political writings that sealed his place
in history. During his exile, Machiavelli joined intellectual
groups and wrote several plays, among them La mandragola (Mandragola). The play remained popular for many years with
audiences. His next effort, a military treatise published
in 1521, entitled Libro della arte della guerra (The Art of War), was the only historical
or political work published during his lifetime. “Discourses upon the First Decade of T.
Livius” and The Prince were completed between 1513 and 1517. Both were not published until after Machiavelli's
death, in 1531 and 1532 respectively. Though he was writing and having regular correspondence
with others, Machiavelli’s true passion in life was politics and he tried many times
to win back favor with the Medici. Machiavelli lamented his position in a letter
to a friend, writing: “When evening comes, I go back home, and
go to my study. On the threshold, I take off my work clothes,
covered in mud and filth, and I put on the clothes an ambassador would wear. Decently dressed, I enter the ancient courts
of rulers who have long since died. There, I am warmly welcomed, and I feed on
the only food I find nourishing and was born to savour. I am not ashamed to talk to them and ask them
to explain their actions and they, out of kindness, answer me. Four hours go by without my feeling any anxiety. I forget every worry. I am no longer afraid of poverty or frightened
of death. I live entirely through them.” In 1520, Machiavelli was made the official
historian of Florence and was subsequently entrusted with minor governmental duties. His prodigious Istorie fiorentine (History
of Florence) carefully plays down his republican platform with the Medicean bias expected of
him. In 1525, Pope Clement VII recognized his achievement
with a monetary stipend. Two years later, the Medici were again ousted,
and Machiavelli's hopes for advancement under the revived republic dissolved. They didn’t trust him. Disheartened by his country's internal struggles,
Machiavelli fell gravely ill and died, a disillusioned man, his dream of an operational republic
unrealized. The Prince Machiavelli wrote The Prince beginning in
1513 and completed it the following year. It wasn’t published until after his death
in 1532 and the first English translation appeared in 1640. The handbook was essentially a practical guide
for how Lorenzo de’ Medici could restore Italy (he dedicated the book to him). It’s interesting and ironic that the fiercely
republican Machiavelli would write a how-to guide for an autocratic leader. Some critics have suggested The Prince is
actually satire. Machiavelli was acutely aware, however, of
foreign threats to Italy and thus deemed it necessary for a strong prince to thwart French
and Spanish authority. In addressing the ruling Medici family, he
primarily uses Borgia as an example of a shrewd but effective leader. Since handbooks of conduct meeting monarchal
needs had become immensely popular by the 1400s, the external form of The Prince was
neither startling nor particularly remarkable to Machiavelli's contemporaries. Yet, from its initial appearance, The Prince
proved no mere manual of protocol nor, for that matter, of even conventional strategy. In its chapters, Machiavelli delineated a
typology of sovereignties and the deployment of available forces military, political, or
psychological to acquire and retain them. The Prince is the first political treatise
to divorce statecraft from ethics; as Machiavelli wrote: “How one lives is so far removed
from how one ought to live that he who abandons what one does for what one ought to do, learns
rather his own ruin than his preservation.” Adding to his unflinching realism the common
Renaissance belief in humanity's capacity for determining its own destiny, Machiavelli
posited two fundamentals necessary for effective political leadership: virtu and fortuna. Virtu refers to the prince's own abilities
(ideally a combination of force and cunning); fortuna to the unpredictable influence of
fortune. In a significant departure from previous political
thought, the designs of Providence play no part in Machiavelli's scheme. On issues of leadership hitherto masked by
other political theorists in vague diplomatic terms, Machiavelli presented his theses in
direct, candid, and often passionate speech, employing easily grasped metaphors and structuring
the whole in an aphoristic vein which lends it a compelling authority. Reaction to The Prince was initially but only
briefly favorable, with Catherine de' Medici said to have enthusiastically included it,
among other of Machiavelli's writings, in the educational curriculum of her children. But, within a short time the book fell into
widespread disfavor, becoming viewed as a handbook for atheistic tyranny. The Prince, and Machiavelli's other writings
as well, were placed in the Papal Index of Prohibited Books in 1559. Further denigrated toward the close of the
sixteenth century in Discours sur les moyens de bien gouverner et maintenir en paix un
royause, ou autre principaute. Contre Nicolas Machiavel, florentin by Innocenzo
Gentillet in France, The Prince was held responsible for French political corruption and for widespread
contribution to any number of political and moral vices. Gentillet's interpretation of The Prince as
advocating statecraft by ruthlessness and amoral duplicity was disseminated throughout
Britain through the works of such popular, highly influential dramatists as William Shakespeare
and Christopher Marlowe. In the Prologue to Marlowe's The Jew of Malta,
Machevilli addresses the audience at length, at one point encapsulating the Elizabethan
perception of Machiavelli by saying, "I count religion but a childish toy, / And hold there
is no sin but ignorance." Here and in the works of Marlowe's contemporaries,
Machiavelli was depicted as an agent of all that Protestant England despised in Catholic,
High- Renaissance Italy. Hostile English interpreters so effectively
typified Machiavelli as an amalgam of various evils, which they described with the still-used
term " Machiavellian," that fact and fabrication still coexist today. Rarely, until the nineteenth century, did
mention of The Prince elicit other than unfounded and largely unexamined repugnance, much less
encourage objective scrutiny of its actual issues. As Fredi Chiappelli has aptly summarized:
"Centuries had to elapse before the distinction between moral moment and political moment,
between technical approach and moralistic generalities, and even between the subject
matter of the book and the author's person were finally achieved." Modern critics, noting these crucial distinctions,
have engaged in a prolonged and animated discussion concerning Machiavelli's true intent in The
Prince. An anomalous seventeenth-century commentator,
philosopher Pierre Bayle, found it "strange" that "there are so many people, who believe,
that Machiavel teaches princes dangerous politics; for on the contrary princes have taught Machiavel
what he has written." Since Bayle's time, further analysis has prompted
the most prolonged and animated discussion relating to the work: the true intent of its
creator. Was the treatise, as Bayle suggested, a faithful
representation of princely conduct which might justifiably incriminate its subjects but not
its chronicler? Or had Machiavelli, in his manner of presentation,
devised the volume as a vehicle for his own commentary? Still more calculatedly, had the author superseded
description in ably providing a legacy for despots? A single conclusion concerning the author's
motive has not been drawn, though patterns of conjecture have certainly appeared within
Machiavelli's critical heritage. Lord Macaulay, in emphasizing the writer's
republican zeal and those privations he suffered in its behalf, has contended that it is "inconceivable
that the martyr of freedom should have designedly acted as the apostle of tyranny," and that
"the peculiar immorality which has rendered The Prince unpopular ... belonged rather to
the age than to the man." Others have echoed this suggestion, examining
the work in its historical context: John Addington Symonds has deemed it "simply a handbook of
princecraft, as that art was commonly received in Italy, where the principles of public morality
had been translated into terms of material aggrandisement, glory, gain, and greatness." Many have urged that Machiavelli intended
the treatise as a veiled satiric attack on the methods of Italian tyranny or, by abstruse
methods, its converse" a paean to patriotism and sensible government, grounded in a clear-sighted
knowledge of the corrupt human condition. According to Harold J. Laski, The Prince "is
a text-book for the house of Medici set out in the terms their own history would make
them appreciate and, so set out, that its author might hope for their realization of
his insight into the business of government." While ultimately unable to agree on the underlying
purpose of The Prince, nearly all critics have nonetheless been persuaded of its masterful
composition, even when unwilling to endorse its precepts. Macaulay has affirmed that the "judicious
and candid mind of Machiavelli shows itself in his luminous, manly, and polished language." And Francesco De Sanctis has determined that
"where he was quite unconscious of form, he was a master of form. Without looking for Italian prose he found
it." For sheer volume and intensity, studies of
The Prince have far exceeded those directed at Machiavelli's Discourses, though the latter
work has been acknowledged an essential companion piece to the former. All of the author's subsequent studies treating
history, political science, and military theory stem from this voluminous dissertation containing
the most original thought of Machiavelli. Less flamboyant than The Prince and narrower
in its margin for interpretation, the Discourses contains Machiavelli's undisguised admiration
for ancient governmental forms, and his most eloquent, thoroughly explicated republicanism. Commentators have noted the presence of a
gravity and skillful rhetoric that at times punctuate The Prince but are in full evidence
only in that work's final chapter, a memorable exhortation to the Medicis to resist foreign
tyranny. The Discourses also presents that methodical
extrapolation of political theory from historical documentation which is intermittent in The
Prince. Max Lerner has observed that "if The Prince
is great because it gives us the grammar of power for a government, The Discourses are
great because they give us the philosophy of organic unity not in a government but in
a state, and the conditions under which alone a culture can survive." It has been deemed not at all incongruous
that an intellect immersed in historical circumstance and political impetus should so naturally
embrace comedy as well. For Machiavelli regarded comedy exactly as
he conceived history: an interplay of forces leading unavoidably to a given result. Machiavelli's Mandragola, his only work in
the comedic genre, clearly reflected this parallel. De Sanctis has remarked that "under the frivolous
surface [of Mandragola] are hidden the profoundest complexities of the inner life, and the action
is propelled by spiritual forces as inevitable as fate. It is enough to know the characters to guess
the end." The drama's scenario concerns Callimaco's
desire to bed Lucrezia, the beautiful young wife of a doddering fool, Nicia, who is obsessed
with begetting a son. Masquerading as a doctor, Callimaco advises
Nicia to administer a potion of mandrake to Lucrezia to render her fertile, but also warns
that the drug will have fatal implications for the first man to have intercourse with
her. He slyly suggests to Nicio that a dupe be
found for this purpose. Persuaded by her confessor, a knavish cleric,
to comply with her husband's wishes, the virtuous Lucrezia at last allows Callimaco into her
bed, where he has no difficulty convincing her to accept him as her lover on a more permanent
basis. Tales of this sort" replete with transparent
devices, mistaken identities, and cynical, often anticlerical overtones" were already
commonplace throughout Europe by the Middle Ages, though critics have remarked that Machiavelli
lent freshness to even this hackneyed material. Sydney Anglo has commended his "clear, crisp
repartee" and ability "to nudge our ribs at improprieties and double-meanings," despite
characterization that is "rudimentary, haphazard, and inconsistent, with even protagonists going
through their motions like automata." Macaulay, on the other hand, has applauded
the play's "correct and vigorous delineation of human nature." A decided influence on the philosophies of
Thomas Hobbes and Sir Francis Bacon and on the thought of such modern political theorists
as Vilfredo Pareto, Gaetano Mosca, Georges Sorel, and Robert Michels, Machiavelli has
been called the founder of empirical political science, primarily on the strength of the
Discourses and The Prince. Taken in historical perspective, it is understandable
that The Prince should have dwarfed Machiavelli's other works. For with this slim treatise the author confronted
the ramifications of power when its procurement and exercise were notably peremptory" not
only in his own country but throughout Europe as well. Commentators have come to weigh the integrity
of Machiavelli's controversial thought against the pressing political conditions which formed
it. Some, like Roberto Ridolfi, have endeavored
through their studies to dislodge the long- standing perception of Machiavelli as a ruthless
character: "In judging Machiavelli one must ... take account of his anguished despair
of virtue and his tragic sense of evil.... On the basis of sentences taken out of context
and of outward appearances he was judged a cold and cynical man, a sneerer at religion
and virtue; but in fact there is hardly a page of his writing and certainly no action
of life that does not show him to be passionate, generous, ardent and basically religious." "Far from banishing religion or ethics from
politics," Peter Bondanella has stated in European Writers, "Machiavelli created a new
religion out of politics, with all its fateful implications for modern intellectual history." Personal Life & Legacy In 1502, Machiavelli married Marietta Corsini. The couple had six children together; four
sons and two daughters. Machiavelli died in the city on June 21, 1527,
in Florence, Italy. He was interred in the church of Santa Croce
in Florence. Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince is one of
the most celebrated and notorious books in the history of Western political thought. It continues to influence discussions of war
and peace, the nature of politics, and the relation of private ethics to public duties. Ostensibly a sixteenth-century manual of instruction
on certain aspects of princely rule and behavior, The Prince anticipates and complicates modern
political and philosophical questions. What is the right order of society? Can Western politics still be the model for
progress toward peace and prosperity, or does our freedom to create our individual purposes
and pursuits undermine our public responsibilities? Are the characteristics of our politics markedly
different, for better or for worse, than the politics of earlier eras? Machiavelli argues that there is no ideal,
transcendent order to which one can conform, and that the right order is merely the one
that has the capacity to persist over time. The Prince's emphasis on the importance of
an effective truth over any abstract ideal marks it as one of the first works of modern
political philosophy.
