Niccolo Machiavelli

Life

Niccolo Machiavelli was born in Florence in 1469. He was secretary to the Dieci di Liberta e Pace, or the Ten of the Florentine Republic. Destitute and deprived of office when the Medici returned to power, he was exiled for a time but was later recalled. He died in obscurity and neglect in 1527, Among his varied writings, those of particular interest to philosophy are: Il Principe (The Autocrat, better known as The Prince), and Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius.

Political Thought

The problem of the state had already been discussed by Aristotelian-Scholastic philosophy, which had advanced a solution based on the premise that man, by reason of his rational nature, tends to the perfect society, the state. Consequently, the positive elements of the state, and in particular the element of morality, must be derived from the concept of the rational being and not from the fact of man's actual historical behavior.

The concept of morality, like all rational concepts, is something absolute, which cannot vary even though it has been disobeyed. Thus, even granted the hypothesis that all men tell lies, the rational concept of lying as a moral evil, remains constant. For Machiavelli this principle did not hold true, because of the immanentist principle that the state must be considered in itself without reference to any reality which might transcend it.

The problem which Machiavelli sets out to solve is how to enlarge and maintain the state, which must be ordered to the greater good of the citizens. To solve this problem, Machiavelli appeals to history, which reveals that states rise out of the conflict of violent passions, and that a leader succeeds in forming and maintaining a state only if with greater passion than his opponent he is able to triumph over him.

Machiavelli draws the conclusion that the prince or autocrat cannot appeal to Christian ascetical or renunciatory morality, but must use force and cunning, according to circumstances, to overcome his adversaries. Hence the principle of the new science in politics was: "The end justifies the means." The prince must justify his action in reference to the maintenance of the state; and he will be a good ruler if he achieves this end, regardless of what means he uses.

Nevertheless the prince (and the state) of Machiavelli have an ethics, surely not Christian ethics, but the Humanist Renaissance ethics of love of country. Machiavelli was an eyewitness to the miseries which afflicted the Italy of his day, divided and lacerated as it was by discord and the wars of various princes. To put an end to the role of these princes, whose ambitions laid all Italy open to strife, he dreamed of the rise of an ideal prince, the incarnation of Caesar Borgia, who, with the force of a lion and the cunning of a wolf, would succeed in subjugating all petty rulers and forming a single Italian state.

Seeing that the rulers of his day were egoistic and wicked, Machiavelli dreamed of raising up in his prince a greater egoism and more violent passions in order to overcome the power of the local tyrants and to establish a principality which must save Italy, the Italy which in his day was "without a head, without order, lacerated and beaten."

Along with the theories of Machiavelli must be considered the politico-religious thought of Girolamo Savonarola (1452-1498). Savonarola also starts with a consideration of the actual chaos of society and of the Church, and sees a possibility of a renovation through the intervention of a lay prince (for him, Charles VIII). For Savonarola the intervention of a lay prince must be only occasional, because he does not deny the Church lives and moves in virtue of the eternal promise of its founder, Jesus Christ. Thus he cannot be judged heretical.

Note must also be taken of the political thought of the Catholic priest Giovanni Botero (1540-1617). In his work Of the Nature of the State, comprising ten books, he counsels the prince to prudently hide his weaknesses, in order to preserve his regal reputation, and to fully respect the Catholic religion, which is a precious and indispensable means for rendering politically docile men who are profoundly inclined to evil, and to direct the militia and into war the instinctive ferocity of man.