![[Macchiavelli]](3d06662d.jpg "Niccolo Macchiavelli")
Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) was a Florentine politician, diplomat and writer. In 1494 the French invaded Italy, to assert the claim of King Charles VIII to the throne of Naples (Italy was not a unified country until the late nineteenth century). The North Italian city-state of Florence was at this time theoretically a republic but in practice it was ruled by the wealthy Medici family. With French help, rebels in Florence threw out the Medici and established a republic. At first, the leading figure in the new regime was the friar and mystic Savonarola, but in 1498 his enemies (including Machiavelli) secured his fall from power and his execution. For the next few years, the government was headed by Piero Soderini, who had the support of the middle classes, though some aristocrats criticized him. Under Soderini, Machiavelli was given high office in the administration and sent on a number of diplomatic missions. Soderini stressed the importance of reason in coming to political decisions, but his aristocratic opponents argued that it was often necessary to rely on force rather than reason, and Machiavelli increasingly came to agree with them.
The attempt by the French to take over Naples - and other parts of Italy - was resisted by Spain, a country which had recently been united by the marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile. In 1512 Spanish troops attacked Florence and restored the Medicis to power. Machiavelli lost his job and was tortured and imprisoned. Eventually he was allowed to live in retirement. He spent his time writing histories, plays, and other literary works, and also two famous books on politics - The Prince (1513; published 1532) and also, with some additional material, at Medieval sourcebook and the Discourses (finished by 1519; published in 1531). He hoped that his writing of The Prince would win him government employment, but it did not. He died in 1527, shortly after the Medici had been thrown out again, and the Florentine republic restored. The leaders of the new republic showed no more interest in employing Machiavelli than the Medici had.
The Prince was dedicated to a Medici, and Machiavelli certainly intended it to win him a job. Does this mean that we should not take what he says seriously? In his much longer Discourses, Machiavelli made it clear that he preferred republics to monarchies. Does this contradict what he says or implies in The Prince? There is certainly some tension between the republicanism of the Discourses and the apparent monarchism of The Prince, and it needs to be resolved. But the two books share many elements. In both, Machiavelli argues that states should disregard conventional morality whenever it is in their interests to do so, since "the end justifies the means" (he never said precisely this, but he said plenty of similar things). Governments, in his view, are fully justified in systematically deceiving the people they govern. Are his arguments for this convincing? In both books, Machiavelli tried to draw conclusions from factual observation of what people actually do (the empirical or inductive method). Does he do this consistently and convincingly, and does he deserve his reputation as the first political scientist? Is his an adequate way of talking about politics? (it might not be if, for example, it is self-evidently true that all people have certain rights; if it is self-evident it does not need to be established by observation; can any amount of observation establish rights or duties?). Machiavelli rejected Christian values (and all Christian groups rejected his books, which were widely condemned). What values - if any - does he put in their place? Where does The Prince fit in relation to other Renaissance humanist writings on politics? Is it true that the book simply could not have been written in any other place than Italy or any other time than the early-sixteenth-century, and, if so, why? In 1589, another Italian (Botero) published a book entitled Ragion di Stato (Reason of State), in which he went some way towards Machiavellism, but set limits to quite how immorally states are justified in acting. Many other similar works were written on "reason of state" in the early seventeenth century. Sometimes, Machiavellian ideas, or justifications of illegal government action on the grounds of "reason of state," were presented by way of commentaries or annotations on the ancient Roman historian Tacitus (it could be risky to praise or even talk much about Machiavelli, but it was safe to talk about Tacitus). Late-sixteenth and seventeenth century Tacitism is sometimes seen as a covert form of Machiavellism. In the early seventeenth-century, the French government of Richelieu, and other governments, were accused of secretly acting on Machiavelli's teachings. They denied that they were doing so - but good Machiavellians would, of course, insist that they were honest, moral, God-fearing people, and not Machiavellians at all. So, what was Machiavelli's influence? Are all governments, through force of circumstance, in fact Machiavellian?
Some suggestions for further reading:
J. R. Hale, Machiavelli and Renaissance Italy, London 1961, is a clear, brief account, good on context.
Quentin Skinner, Machiavelli, Oxford 1985 (PastMasters series) is the best short modern introduction.
F. Meinecke, Machiavellism: the doctrine of raison d'état and its place in modern history, translated by D. Scott, New York 1965, is the classic old discussion
of later Machiavellism. Richard Tuck, Philosophy and government 1572-1651, Cambridge 1993 has some interesting if controversial things to say about Tacitism and reason of state. Peter S. Donaldson, Machiavelli and Mystery of State Cambridge 1988, is a good account of some later Machiavellians and theorists of reason of state.
A few URLs (there are very many):
| Niccolo Machiavelli |
| Niccolo Machiavelli.com ; (papers for purchase! use care!) |
| The life and works of Niccolo Machiavelli |
 |
|---|
|
