Niccolò Machiavelli

Niccolò Machiavelli an Italian diplomat, historian and political philosopher of Florence (1469-1527), whose book The Prince analysed the acquisition and maintenance of power with a candour that made his name a byword for cunning and gave rise to the modern idea of political realism. He also wrote on republican government, history and military affairs.

Life and Diplomatic Career

Niccolò Machiavelli was born in Florence in 1469 into a family of the minor nobility with a tradition of public service. He received a humanist education and, in 1498, after the fall of the Medici and the execution of Savonarola, he was appointed secretary of the second chancery of the Florentine republic. For fourteen years he served the republic as a diplomat and administrator.

His missions took him to the courts of France, Germany and the papacy, and he observed at close quarters the methods of the great powers. He negotiated with popes, emperors and kings, and he learned to judge politics by what rulers actually did rather than by what they professed. He also organised a citizen militia to defend Florence, an experiment in which he took lasting pride.

The return of the Medici in 1512 ended his career. He was dismissed, accused of conspiracy, imprisoned and tortured, and although he was released he never regained office. He retired to his small estate at Sant'Andrea in Percussina, where he wrote the works on which his reputation rests.

The Prince and Political Realism

The Prince, written in 1513 and circulated in manuscript before its posthumous publication in 1532, is a short treatise on how a ruler may gain and keep a state. It is addressed to Lorenzo de' Medici and closes with a plea for the liberation of Italy from foreign domination. Its novelty lies in its method: Machiavelli analyses politics as it is, not as it ought to be, and refuses to moralise about the gap between the two.

He argued that a prince must be willing to act against conventional morality when necessity requires it, that it is better to be feared than loved provided one avoids being hated, and that appearance and reputation are instruments to be managed. The ends of maintaining the state justify means that a private person could not use, though Machiavelli warned against needless cruelty and treachery that undermine a ruler's position.

The portrait of the ruthless but calculating prince, exemplified in his account of Cesare Borgia, gave rise to the word Machiavellian and to centuries of controversy. Some read the book as a cynical manual for tyrants, others as a covertly republican diagnosis of the corruption of Italian politics. It remains the founding text of modern political thought.

Republics, History and Liberty

Machiavelli's republicanism is fully displayed in the Discourses on Livy, a commentary on the first ten books of the Roman historian. There he argues that republics are superior to principalities in their capacity for liberty, growth and stability, and that the conflicts between patricians and plebeians in Rome, far from being a weakness, helped to preserve freedom by keeping competing forces in balance.

He held that states are always subject to corruption and decline and that they must periodically be renewed by returning to their founding principles. He admired the Roman practice of allowing accusations, of rotating offices and of maintaining a citizen army, and he drew lessons for the Italy of his day. His republicanism was civic and martial, emphasising virtue, public spirit and readiness to defend the commonwealth.

His History of Florence, commissioned by the Medici, applied the same analytical temper to his own city, tracing its factions and its instability with a disenchanted clarity. In all these works he treated history as a storehouse of examples from which practical lessons could be drawn, on the assumption that human nature remains constant across time.

Fortune, Virtue and Human Nature

Two concepts organise Machiavelli's thought: virtù and fortuna. Virtù is not moral virtue but the energy, skill, decisiveness and adaptability that allow a leader to master circumstance. Fortuna is the unpredictable power of chance and of events beyond one's control. He likened fortune to a river that can be controlled by building dams and embankments before the flood arrives.

He held that fortune governs roughly half of human affairs and that the rest is open to human agency, so that a prudent person prepares for adversity and adapts his methods to the times. A rigid adherence to one approach is fatal, since circumstances change and success depends on the ability to change with them. This stress on adaptability is among his most distinctive contributions.

His view of human nature was unflattering. He assumed that people are generally selfish, fickle and ungrateful, and he advised rulers and legislators to design institutions that harness these traits rather than depend on good will. From this assumption he drew the argument that laws and constitutions, not the character of individuals, are the true foundation of a durable state.

Influence and Legacy

Machiavelli's influence on later political thought has been immense. He is often credited with separating politics from theology and ethics and with founding the modern, empirical study of power. His name entered the vocabulary of European languages as a term of reproach, yet statesmen from Cardinal Richelieu to the founders of modern republics read him with attention.

The republican strand of his work was rediscovered in the later twentieth century, when historians emphasised his contribution to the tradition of civic liberty that runs from the Italian city-states through the English Commonwealth to the American founding. His insistence that a free state requires virtue in its citizens as well as good institutions gave new life to the classical republican ideal.

He is remembered as the first modern political thinker, a man who wrote from experience and stripped the analysis of power of its idealising gloss. Whether his realism is a science or a counsel of despair remains disputed, but his questions, about how states are won, kept and lost, and what liberty requires, remain at the centre of political argument.

See also

• The Prince
• Republicanism
• Cesare Borgia
• Florence