MODULE 7: MACHIAVELLI AND THE PRINCE
Renaissance
Intro: The Renaissance
- The Renaissance broke with the past and
inaugurated a new and intensely interesting
era, whose inspiration was the classical
culture of the pre-Christian period
- It was humanistic, artistic, optimistic,
scientific, individualistic, and paganistic
- Those who participated in the great
adventure sought to break the grip of
medievalism on the world
- Artists abandoned the Gothic style
- Thinkers repudiated Scholasticism
- Philosophers rejected the view of medieval
theology that man was a depraved animal,
marked with sin at birth, and having no better
than a fair chance of being saved
- The man of the Middle Ages:
● Had been ideally an ascetic
● Morality had meant self-restraint
● The abjuration of physical
pleasures
- The man of the Renaissance:
● Essentially a pagan
● Was less fearful of the Devil than
his medieval progenitor
● His art returned to the classical
form
- Before the 15th century was out, the New
World would be discovered, and the science
of the Renaissance would contribute greatly
to that event
- The transformation of the intellectual world
was paralleled by that of the economic
- During the Middle Ages:
● Commercial profit had been
regarded as sinful
● The merchant had been entitled to
a fair price but its fairness was
gauged by the amount he needed
to support himself and his family on
a minimum scale
- In the 15th century:
● A new economic class was
emerging
● In England, France, Flanders, and
southern Germany: merchant
adventurers grew impatient with the
restrictive local regulations imposed
by a feudal economy and sought to
break them
● The difficulty of communication has
contributed greatly to the
perpetuation of the restrictions, but
as the interchange of ideas was
facilitated and able and ambitious
men were ready to take advantage
of every opportunity, the changed
already in motion were speeded
● The new economic man had no
qualms about making a profit
● Self-interest was a legitimate
motive and was the economic
expression of the individualistic
● Capitalism was being born
Capitalism
- It had a difficult delivery
- The new and dynamic middle class ad to
struggle not only against the guild system on
the economic front but also against the
nobility on the political
- The nobles had long been able through the
imposition of local regulations and in
conjunction with the guilds, to control
economic enterprise within the feudality
- If the rising capitalism were to survive, it had
to defeat localism, (the very essence of
the feudal system)
- The movement found a powerful friend in the
king, who had been struggling with the same
enemy
- The alliance of king and middle class was
a natural one:
● The capitalists wanted money
● The king wanted power
● A strong national monarch,
subsidized heavily by merchant
princes, could impose his own
regulations upon trade to supplant
those of the local nobility, thus
enhancing his own authority at their
expense
● National economic regulations, with
the attendant destruction of local
barriers, enlarged the operational
area of the merchant
● The cost was high but the rewards
great
● The king found it easier to obtain
money from his new source than to
try to wring it from a reluctant
parliament which represented, in
large part, the very forces he was
attempting to destroy
- The partnership of king and capitalist was
temporary
- In the end the capitalist was bound to resent
the regulations imposed by the monarch,
who in any case, was likely to make those
regulations too restrictive
- The king was helping to create the power
that would destroy him, but his contingency
was far in the future and could not be
anticipated
- The combination of capitalism and the
national monarchy was to have a profound
influence upon the future course of history
Later part of the 15h century:
- It was a period of advancement for the
principle of absolutism in both Church and
state
- In the Church:
● The Pope successfully resisted
demands for that decentralization of
dispersal of power that had been
voiced in the conciliar movement
 ● Though his secular authority had
almost disappeared, his power to
rule the Church organization as a
kind of divine-right monarch was
more generally acknowledged than
it had been for a hundred years
- The rise of monarchical power was still
more spectacular
● Kings gathered into their own hands
the authority which they had
formerly been compelled to share
with the emperor, Pope, nobility and
parliaments
● Throughout Europe, kings with the
support of the middle class, raised
the forces necessary to destroy
their internal enemies
● The long and sanguinary struggle
was successful for the king
● When it was over, medieval
institutions had been wrecked
beyond recovery
● Kings took control of cities and
overcame the resistance of the
feudal nobility
● They relieved the monasteries of
their great wealth and used the
money to build the power of the
middle class which was supporting
monarchical ambitions
● They controlled the Church within
their own kingdoms, making it an
instrument of national policy
Italy
- In no part of Europe were the forces for
change more active than in Italy
- Italians were closer to the scene of religion
than other Europeans and more repelled by
the conduct of profligate popes and
scandalous operation of the papal office
- Reaction was evidenced by the growth of a
neopaganism that affected many aspects of
Italian life
- The establishment of academies of learning
devoted to secular studies demonstrated
Italian interest in the new learning which,
with its emphasis on rationalism and
empiricism, was opposed to Scholasticism
- Art and intellectual creativity of all kinds
flourished in the new climate
- Commercial pursuits were highly rewarding
and wealth so gained subsidized artistic
accomplishments unequaled in world history
- The centralizing trend of governmental
absolutism was frustrated by political
divisions in the peninsula
- Italy consisted mainly of 5 states of
roughly equal power: Naples, Milan,
Florence, Venice, and the Papal State
- If Italy were to follow the mainstream of
historical development toward national unity,
these 5 would have to be unified
- It was generally recognized that this
unification could be accomplished only by
force
- The Papal State: the greatest stumbling
block, whose Pope had made this
geographically insignificant entity the
strongest and best-administered state in Italy
- The Pope would have been willing to extend
his control over the whole of Italy had the
Italians not refused to countenance such
move
- But if the Pope was not strong enough to
unite Italy by force, he was capable of
preventing others from doing so
- The old institutions of Church and Empire
were no longer able to evoke a spirit of unity
and compel a degree of moral behavior, but
Italy had no national monarch and as a
result morality declined precipitously
- Italy broke with the past she fell under the
control of tyrants in the various states, who
ruled solely on the basis of force and guile
- These despots lacked a sense of moral
obligation; their object was power, its
establishment and its maintenance
Machiavelli: The Man and His Work
Philosophy
- Niccolo Machiavelli understood clearly the
forced that barred Italy’s path to unity and
power
- No one wished more to clear the path or
offered more definite solutions to Italy’s
problems
- His purpose can be fully comprehended only
in the light of the prevailing conditions
- Corruption in public and private life was
all about him; he deprecated the fact and
longed for the healthy public spirit which he
knew must be attended by an improvement
of private morals
- As a diplomatic agent he had traveled
abroad, observed the administration of
foreign governments, and noticed the spirit
of citizenry in the consolidated nations
- As a patriotic Italian he hated these
foreigners who so often in his own lifetime
had trespassed upon his native soil and
contributed to the turbulence of Italian
politics
- As a wise and practical politician he was
convinced that Italians would have to
emulate their examples
- Competition among the families of the
Italian nobility and condottieri had so
weakened the political structure that it had
easily fallen prey to the machinations of
foreign monarchs; Machiavelli’s efforts
were dedicated to the correction of this
evil
 - The only possible solution was Italian
unification, which should be achieved solely
through the leadership of a prince whose
single-minded devotion to this cause would
not be mitigated by any considerations of
humaneness, morality, religion, or altruism
Biography
- Was born in Florence in 1469
- His family claimed a relationship to the
nobility but was never part of it
- Little is known about Machiavelli’s early
years or about his education
- He appears to have been widely read in
Italian and Latin classics, but the free,
vigorous and uncomplicated style of his
writings seems to denote a lack of formal
scholastic training
- The Florence that Machiavelli knew was
ruled by the Medici family
- 1494: the Medicis were driven from the city
and Florence became a republic; that same
year Machiavelli first entered public life as a
chancery clerk
- His progress was rapid
- 1498: Machiavelli became 2nd chancellor and
secretary to the Council of Ten
(responsible for war and inferior affairs);
he held the post for 14 years
- On many occasions, his services as a
diplomatic observer were required and this
task carried him to the courts of Louis XII of
France, Maximillian of Germany, Cesare
Borgia in Romagna, and others
- Machiavelli protested his assignment to the
camp of Cesare Borgia but was eventually
impressed by him
- Before he returned to Florence, he was
certain that only Borgia or someone
possessed of his qualities could supply
Italy’s need for a leader who would unify
and strengthen the country and enable it
to throw out the foreign oppressors
- Cesare Borgia because the model for The
Prince (his best known work)
1506, the citizen army
- Machiavelli persuaded the Council to adopt
his plan for the formation of a citizen army
- His studies of Roman history and his
observations of the practices of the national
monarchs of Western Europe convinced him
that the security of the republic was
contingent upon such more
- Machiavelli himself assumed responsibility
for training the militia
1512, return of the Medici and Machiavelli’s exile
and imprisonment
- The constant state of flux of Italian politics
presented an opportunity for the Medici to
reestablish their control over Florence
- The citizen soldiers fled ignominiously at the
first contact with the Medici forces
- The republic was overthrown
- The Medici were in command
- Machiavelli was unemployed
- He preferred the republic, but whatever
repugnance he had toward the new tyranny
was more than balanced by his desire for
public life, so he made overtures to the new
masters of Florence—it was a vain gesture
- The Medici exiled him to his home country
and forbade his presence in Florence
- Soon afterward, Machiavelli having been
wrongly accused of implication in the
Boscoli conspiracy against the Medici,
was imprisoned and tortured
- He was eventually freed and permitted to
return to his family and to the bucolic
existence which he thoroughly detested
- Leisure was repugnant to him, and at any
ratee the vagaries of Italian politics were
such that the possibility of reemployment
could hardly be discounted
- Machiavelli set about a literary career in
greater earnest but abandoned it in favor of
The Prince, which he completed in 1513
before returning to another work called
Discourses
1520
- Machiavelli produced his treatise on The Art
of War and his Life of Castruccio
- In the same year he began a history of
Florence, which he did not live to complete
but which was published in part
- Other efforts included:
a. Translation of the Andria
b. Three comedies (among which was
Mandragola, one of the most highly
praised of Italian plays)
c. Belfagor (short and satirical novel)
- It is possible that Machiavelli undertook a
few missions for the Medici in his later life.
But they were almost certainly unimportant
- His public life had ended in 1512, although
he is known to history for what he
accomplished between the date and time of
death in Florence in 1527
On the significance of his works:
- For the student of political thought,
Machiavelli’s The Prince and the Discourses
are of major importance
- The relationship between the two has been
the subject of controversy
- The Prince
● Is by far better known and briefer
than the Discourses
● Its unqualified advocacy of an
all-powerful ruler whose actions are
to be unrestricted by moral
 considerations has made its author
famous through the ages
- Many who have never read The Prince or
heard of Machiavelli understand the meaning
of the adjective Machiavellian
- Some of those who have contributed
analyses of Machiavelli and his political
ideas have warned against judging the man
entirely by The Prince and have proposed
that the Discourses more truly represents
Machiavelli’s ideas
- Some have argued that The Prince was
never intended for publication and general
consumption, that it was written for
presentation to the Medici in hope that such
gesture would cause them to look favorably
upon Machiavelli’s aspirations for
employment
- One interesting conjecture:
● The ideas contained in The Prince
constitute such a radical departure
from the tenor of Machiavelli’s other
writings and from his demonstrated
enthusiasm for republicanism that
the book can only be understood as
a brilliant satire, and that
Machiavelli believed and advocated
precisely the opposite of what he
argued in the book
● The whole truth concerning
Machiavelli’s meaning and intent
was probably interred with his
bones, but despite conflicting
opinions on the matter, certain
conclusions seem unwarranted
- Both books resulted from Machiavelli’s
overriding concern with the development and
maintenance of Italian unity
- In The Prince: he deals with this problem
from the viewpoint of its solution through the
agency of an absolute government
- In the Discourses: he uses the Roman
republic as a model to demonstrate the
superiority of a republic, providing the
character of the populace will permit that
form of government
- The two works of a piece; that
characteristic subordination means to ends
which is the hallmark of “Machiavellianism” is
present in each
- The arguments that the treatises are
representative of 2 completely disparate
points of view seems to rest upon a rather
strained interpretation
- It would be difficult to prove that The Prince
was written solely for the purpose of
ingratiating himself with the Medici and
harder still to demonstrate that the work was
intended for the eyes of the Medici alone to
keep it from public scrutiny
- If The Prince is pure satire it is conveyed
with such subtlety that its implication has
escaped the notice of an overwhelming
majority of distinguished scholars
- It has been said that Machiavelli developed a
new political science just as Galileo found a
new science of nature
- The judgement is valid for several
reasons:
● Machiavelli’s approach is purely
temporal; religion and the Church
are considered, but only insofar as
they relate to the matter of secular
unity
● Machiavelli rejects all those
theological foundations for
government that had been part and
parcel of medieval thought; he
ignores the natural law and is
unconcerned with the matter of the
responsibility of the ruler to his
people
● Machiavelli does not attempt to
prove his point by citing authorities
● His conclusions are based upon
empiricism and common sense
rather than upon historical
evidence; he merely cites events in
history that support conclusions at
which he had long since arrived on
the basis of his experience
● He was a practical and practicing
politician
- Machiavelli understood the cause of his
country’s troubles and was willing to pay any
price to correct them
- This being the case, the judgement of history
has been on occasion unduly severe
- 17th century writers found him a convenient
whipping boy and the literature of the
Elizabethan period abounds with characters
based upon the author’s perception of
Machiavelli (Such as Iago from Othello)
- “Old Nick” derives from Machiavelli’s first
name
- On the other hand, Machiavelli was also
highly praised:
● Francis Bacon lauded his
empiricism (“We are much
beholden to Machiavelli and other
writers of that class who openly and
unfeignedly declare or describe
what men do, and not what they
ought to do,”
● Hegel and Fichte experienced the
anguish and frustration of
nationalists without a nation (like
Machiavelli) and admired his work
- Each may judge for himself whether
Machiavelli was a patriot or a friend, but the
intelligent appraisal must be based upon a
reading of his pertinent works and a
consideration of the circumstances that
inspired them
- The student of political philosophy will find
that Machiavelli’s ideas appear “modern”
- This is largely because he took political
theory out of the religious context; such
independence was possible in Italy since
intellectuals were freer from religious
influence than elsewhere in Europe
 - The Church in Italy was too deeply involved
in local politics to attempt to control
philosophical speculation or event to interest
itself greatly in spiritual matters
- These and other circumstances make
Machiavelli the first modern political theorist
- Unlike most of his predecessors, he did not
occupy himself with framing plans for an
ideal state; he was too realistic for such
speculation and he would have been happy
to have a state of any kind
- He was too realistic to be interested in what
men said
- He knew that men do not always, or in
politics even often, act as they profess to act
- He understood the drive for power because
he had experienced it himself and believed
that men were self-seeking—but he was
convinced that these planks formed the
platform upon which a state must be built
Machiavelli’s The Prince
st
- The 1 11 chapters: deal with Machiavelli’s
classification of despotisms and their
methods of establishment
- The matter of hereditary monarchies is very
briefly considered, for his main concern is
with Italy (and it was apparent to him that no
hereditary monarchy that would supply that
country’s need for a ruler)
- A monarch who inherits his realm has a
much easier career than a newly established
ruler
- It is much harder for a new monarch to
consolidate his control; much depends upon
the particular conditions in the country and
upon the method by which the new ruler
came to power
- A conqueror is bound to stimulate some
antagonism, irrespective of the course he
follows, and he must be quick to suppress
opposition where it occurs
- Malcontents must be eliminated with
complete ruthlessness
- Halfway measures increase resentment
and do not sufficiently curb the power of
opposition
- The new ruler should seek out and
cultivate the minority groups oppressed
under the preceding administrations (they
may provide some foundation of the support
in cases where the majority resent the
imposition of a new tyranny)
- The prince must be careful that he does not
go too far in this regard for he can really trust
no one, and it is a cardinal rule that the
despot must never consciously add to the
power of anyone who might later threaten his
position
- The conqueror who imposes his rule upon a
republic faces unique and painful problems
● Those accustomed to tyranny
may resent a new tyrant, but since
their basic pattern of life does not
change significantly, they will find it
easy to adjust to the new situation
● But the people of a republic are
resentful of their loss of freedom,
will not easily give it up, and will
fight for its restoration (Machiavelli:
“But in republics there is greater
life,, greater hatred, and more
desire for vengeance; they do not
and cannot cast aside the memory
of their ancient liberty,”
● The only recourse for the ruler is
to destroy completely the customs
and institutions of a free people
● He must “lay them to waste” in
order that he may begin again to
create a new community not
infected with the virus of freedom
● “Reform” is a troublesome
business; the people are naturally
conservative, resisting change of
any kind
● The successful ruler must
persevere and be tough in order
to alter any society
On the brutality of rulers:
- Some rulers reach their high positions by
sheer treachery and brutality—but harsh
and perfidious methods do not create a
solid foundation upon which to build, and
the long-run success of the prince who
has come to power in such a manner
depends upon the skill which he
demonstrates
- Brutality, though it may seem necessary,
should be intelligently and not senselessly
applied and used thoroughly but briefly
- A continuous reign of terror will defeat
the purposes of the ruler
On class conflict:
- A prince may be carried to power as a result
of class conflict
- The nobility may fear the people and
support a ruler who they hope will
suppress the majority
- The people may support a prince who will
give them relief from an oppressive nobility
 - The wise ruler: will seek to obtain the
support of the people, in the second he will
endeavor to maintain their support
- While the tyrant may not require popular
acclaim to achieve power, he must know
that only the people can provide him with the
solid foundation which is a prerequisite of
governmental stability
- The people are more dependable than the
nobility—all they ask is freedom from
oppression while the nobility will compete for
power with the prince himself
On ecclesiastical authorities:
- Certain principalities are governed by
ecclesiastical authorities
- Such dominions may be acquired by ability
or good fortune, but they require less effort in
their maintenance than do other types of
governments
- In these states, a built-in stability rests upon
the fact that they are held together by
ancient religious customs
- Thought princes are corrupt and lack
capacity, they may enjoy success because
their citizens will follow the dictates of a
religion that acts as a powerful political
cement
- It is easily possible to detect a strong note or
irony in Machiavelli’s statement that “these
ecclesiastical princes alone have states
without defending them, have subjects
without governing them, and their states, not
being defended, are not taken from them;
their subjects not being governed do not
resent it, and neither think not are capable of
alienating themselves from them”
On military power:
- In Chapters 12-14 of The Prince:
Machiavelli discusses the use of miliary
power
● Regardless of the method
employed by a ruler to gain power
and irrespective of the type of
governmental system established,
two things are necessary to the
maintenance of the state: good
laws and the strength required to
enforce them
● “The chief foundations of all states,
whether new, old, or mixed, are
good laws and good arms.”
● Machiavelli’s “obsession”: the
armed forces must consist of
citizen-soldiers
● Despite his disappointing
experience with the Florentine
militia, Machiavelli places his trust
in this kind of military force
● Mercenary troops are not to be
trusted, who fight for money alone
and are without honor
● Only those who fight to defend their
homes, their honor, and the virtue
of their women will lay down their
lives in battle, and soldiers who will
not risk death will fail
● Auxiliaries are not much better
● The troops of another sovereign
give their primary loyalty to him;
even if a prince wins his battle by
employing the armed forces of
another, he ends as the prisoner of
the one who as supplied the
soldiers
- The foremost duty of a ruler is to create an
efficient army
- His soldiers must have both practical
(military) and psychological training and
receive training in time of peace that
prepares them for wars to come
- The ruler who waits for the emergency
before he prepares for it will surely lose
- In chapters 15-18: Machiavelli expresses
the advice to princes that is largely
responsible for his unenviable reputation
through the centuries
- Rulers are admonished to secure their power
by employing whatever tactics may be
necessary
- They will only waste time and court danger if
they try to plan perfect commonwealths and
ideal lives
- Human nature, dominated by the egoistic
drive, provides no realistic basis for such
endeavor
On the liberal ruler :
- The wise prince will avoid excessive
liberality
- Generosity is less advantageous than
parsimony
- A ruler lavish with his favors must
advertise that fact, and the people will soon
resent a policy of prodigality, for they will
realize that they themselves are paying for it
- The ruler who is parsimonious will
discover that while the people may resent his
attitude, they will appreciate the fact that he
is being cautious with their own property
- The ruler’s relationship to his people is
much like that of a father and son; if a father
wants unity in the family and obedience to
his commands, he must rule firmly
- A prince must not be too kind, for
kindness will be construed as laxity, and
anarchy will result
- He must constantly bear in mind that his
greatest responsibility is to hold the state
together; this responsibility may often
 necessitate measures which are not as cruel
in fact as they appear to be, or which are at
least preferable to the greater cruelty that
attends the disintegration of the body politic
On a feared or respected rule: : advice to a prince on the consolidation of his
- The ruler would of course prefer to have both
affection and respect from his subjects. But
of the 2, respect is more important
- The same people who pledge their undying
devotion to a prince will abandon him as
soon as they feel that a danger to
themselves may be mitigated by their
desertion
- If the ruler is feared and respected, subjects
will not dare do other than support him
- The prince must nonetheless take care that
he does not become hated, for hatred
would weaken the foundation of support
upon which his authority must rest
- To avoid this malevolence, he must
respect the property and women of his
subjects
- He may have to execute some of his people,
and if he does he should do so with dispatch
- “but above all he must abstain from taking
the property of others, for men forget more
easily the death of their father than the less
of their patrimony,”
On settling conflict : for the prince
- There are 2 methods of settling conflict:
by law and by force
- Law: way of men
- Force: way of beasts
- Unfortunately, there is a great deal of the
beast in man, and the ruler must
understand his nature and act accordingly
- When the prince is compelled to act as a
beast he should combine the cunning of the
fox with the strength of the lion
- The ruler must learn to play the fame as it
will assuredly be played by his opponents
- A cunning prince can always find an
acceptable pretext for breaking his promises
- Machiavelli states that: “an infinite number
of modern examples” could be cited to prove
this point—scarcely an exaggeration
- A faithless prince: is by no means a bad
one if his object is maintenance of the state;
nevertheless he ought not openly break his
word
- A prince ought to be a “great feigner and
dissembler”
- He need not be too concerned about the
people for they are easy to deceive,
particularly if deceiver does not have the
appearance of a rogue
On the consolidation of power :
- Chapters 19-25 deal with Machiavelli’s
power
- The prince is warned concerning the
importance of his armed forces
- The prince must create a favorable image of
himself in the minds of his people
- He must appear to possess integrity,
courage, determination, and strength of will
- The citizenry must feel that they may rely
upon their ruler in an emergency
- Machiavelli stresses the stability of the state
On resolution :
- In the event of war between 2 of his
neighbors, the prince must take a stand with
one or the other
- If possible, he should play the
balance-of-power game by supporting the
weaker of the two
- He should avoid neutrality, for both countries
will hate him is he stands aloof, and he will
probably be at the mercy of the victor when
the war is over
- Lack of resolution in taking sides as in many
other matters is the most dangerous course
On the selection of his officials:
- One of the ruler’s chief problems is the
selection of his officials and advisers
- He must bear in mind that they will advance
their own cause rather than is own if they are
permitted to do so
- The prince must be ruthless in purging his
official ranks of those who do not serve him
well
- He should be equally assiduous in rewarding
those who do
- A prince who is feared must also guard
against sycophancy among the members of
his official family
- Advisers may tell him what they think he
wishes to hear rather than what he ought to
hear, knowing that the bearer of bas news is
rarely popular
- A prudent monarch must seek
trustworthiness above all other virtues in a
council, and he should demonstrate that no
person need fear the giving of sound advice,
no matter how unpalatable it may be
On Fortune :
- 25th chapter: evidences a fatalistic quality
 - Machiavelli knows that the best-laid plans
often go awry; even the wisest and most
prudent prince cannot anticipate events
controlled by God or fortune yet he warns
against the assumption that there is no room
for the exercise of free will
- “I think it may be true that fortune is the
ruler of half our actions, but that she
allows the other half or thereabouts to be
governed by us”
- Fortune:
● Is like a river which occasionally
floods its banks and destroys the
work of men
● Its effects can be controlled if
people are wise enough in advance
to build the dikes that may contain
the flood or the canals that may
divert its flow
● Some damage may still be done,
but it is nothing compared to what
might have been
- A far-seeing ruler will do what he can to
control the effects of fortune in order that a
possibly fatal combination of circumstances
may be only damaging
- Only a prince of the kind Machiavelli
favors can erect bulwarks against
destruction
- The lack of such person in Italy has left that
country unprotected against the floods which
in such countries as France, England, and
Spain have been adequately controlled
Appeal to the Medici family : principality and that people of a republic,
- Chapter 26, final chapter: consists of an
appeal o the Medici to set about the task of
unifying Italy and driving out the foreign
invaders
- Critics differ in their opinions regarding the
place which this section occupied in the
general pattern of the book, some
contending that it is an integral part of the
whole and some that it is an appendage
designed by Machiavelli to flatter the ruling
family of Florence
- The motive is unimportant, as the final
chapter serves the purpose of clarifying the
goal which Machiavelli has had in mind
throughout The Prince
- It is a passionate appeal for national unity by
a patriot
- It is the end which justifies the means to
which the balance of The Prince is devoted
- The Prince may certainly be read as a
handbook of advice tot tyrants and without
reference to the situation that prompted its
writing—to do so however would be less
than fair to Machiavelli
Conclusions
- Machiavelli was the apostle of power politics
- He was the first to advocate the use of force
to attain national objectives
- Was a good student of Cesare Borgia,
Ferdinand of Spain, Henry VII of England,
or any one of a number of other
ambitious rulers and would-be rulers of
the period
- His reputation is less attributable to his
uniqueness than it is to the fact that he
spelled out for his own and for subsequent
generations the tactics which he and they
thought necessary to the fulfillment of their
goal:
● The achievement of national
unity
● To this, Machiavelli was willing to
subordinate every means
- Raison d’etat was always enough for
Machiavelli
- There is not substantial evidence in either
The Prince & Discourses that he was
concerned with the welfare of the people (if it
is argued that Machiavelli sought national
unity for the people’s sake, the
counterargument must be that he did not say
so, and we are entitled to draw conclusions
only on the basis of what he said)
- A superficial examination of his writings
(especially Discourses) might lead one to
assume that Machiavelli really was a
compassionate man—after all, her did not
admonish princes in a republic to safeguard
the property of their subjects, to protect the
women, increase their wealth, and to rule
gently and justly wherever possible
- He stated that a republic was better than a
having some wisdom, should be given a
voice in those matters which they were
capable of understanding
- His goal is never the goof, free, or
democratic life for citizens, but unity
- Machiavelli did not seek unity because he
believed it would bring advantages—he
advocated the good things of democracy
because under certain conditions, they
would contribute to unity
- Such a view may be deprecated, but it is fair
to say that twentieth-century citizens of the
nation-state can at least understand it
- Machiavelli compels us to “see things as
they are rather than as we would like them to
be”
- Another piece of advice that demonstrates
his perspicacity and pertinency for the
modern political observer is his warning to
officials not to be overly credulous when
taking the testimony of exiles for use in the
formulation of policy or strategy
- Much of what he said would lack validity
today simply because conditions have so
drastically changed; he overestimated the
changes wrought by statesmen, no matter
how skilled or ruthless they may be
- The Prince & Discourses are still modern;
they still raise the problems with which men
in a nationalistic world must content
 Ecclesiastes 9:10

“Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your

might, for in the realm of the dead, where you are
going, there is neither working nor planning nor
knowledge nor wisdom.”

Padayon, polsay cuties <3