The Prince is sometimes claimed to be one of the first works of modern philosophy, especially modern political philosophy, in which the effective truth is taken to be more important than any abstract ideal.
It was also in direct conflict with the dominant Catholic and scholastic doctrines of the time concerning politics and ethics.
In contrast to Plato and Aristotle, Machiavelli insisted that an imaginary ideal society is not a model by which a prince should orient himself. During the first generations after Machiavelli, his main influence was in non-Republican governments.
A copy was also possessed by the Catholic king and emperor Charles V. Modern materialist philosophy developed in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, starting in the generations after Machiavelli. Scholars have argued that Machiavelli was a major indirect and direct influence upon the political thinking of the Founding Fathers of the United States due to his overwhelming favoritism of republicanism and the republic type of government.
Hamilton learned from Machiavelli about the importance of foreign policy for domestic policy, but may have broken from him regarding how rapacious a republic needed to be in order to survive. France, then Spain and Austria, invaded Italy and its warring city-states were unable to defend themselves, leading to nearly years of dominance by outside rulers.
Over the centuries that followed, the principles it espoused would trigger outrage as well as admiration and establish Machiavelli as a controversial and revolutionary political thinker. Years after writing The Prince , Machiavelli penned The Art of War , a treatise written in the form of a dialogue between a military expert and citizens. The Art of War discusses the role that citizens have in supporting and using military troops to the citizens' advantage, the role of training and the best use of artillery in disarming one's enemies.
Drawing on themes he introduced in The Prince , Machiavelli also notes how deception and intrigue are valuable military strategies. Machiavelli would be blamed for inspiring Henry VIII to defy the pope and seize religious authority for himself. Hitler kept a copy of The Prince by his bedside and Stalin was known to have read and annotated his copy of the book.
Some scholars have questioned whether Machiavelli intended that readers take him at his word. Instead, they propose that The Prince was actually a satirical work and intended as a warning of what could happen if power is left unchecked. But most take it at face value as a cold-blooded blueprint for how to gain and hold onto power. Codevilla, The Hoover Institution. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us!
Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. Toward the end of the 14th century A. Leonardo da Vinci was a painter, architect, inventor, and student of all things scientific.
The Medici family, also known as the House of Medici, first attained wealth and political power in Florence in the 13th century through its success in commerce and banking. Michelangelo was a sculptor, painter and architect widely considered to be one of the greatest artists of the Renaissance — and arguably of all time. His work demonstrated a blend of psychological insight, physical realism and intensity never before seen. His contemporaries It still seems to me that a prince is either happy or unhappy, depending on whether his conduct is or is not in conformity with the times in which he reigns.
We have to know how to adapt, we need a certain number of qualities that will give us the "fortuna" and allow us to adapt. The rest of the paragraph takes up the idea of the plurality of possibilities, of different destinies, and that we must know how to adapt. The "fortuna" is a woman, feminised in the language of Machiavelli; at the end of chapter XXV we can clearly see this very masculine dimension of power.
I think, moreover, that it is better to be impetuous than circumspect, because fortune is a woman: to keep her in subjection, she must be treated harshly; she gives in more to men who use violence than to those who act coldly: that is why she is always a friend of young people, who are less reserved, more carried away, and who command with more audacity. This is a very masculine conception of fortune which is a woman who is impetuous and in need of impetuosity; a prince who exploits impetuosity has every chance of attracting fortune.
To seduce the woman who must be beaten into submission, a certain number of qualities are required, but what are they? One of the chapters is important, it is chapter XV, because it is in chapter XV that Machiavelli develops the new virtues, the virtues of modern times. Machiavelli takes up the humanist argument, a statesman must be wise, must be ideally just, moderate and firm, which are the cardinal virtues of humanists: justice, wisdom, moderation, firmness.
In chapter XV, he rejects and overturns these humanist and very classical virtues, today it seems that he proposes other political values that are important; Machiavelli breaks with the classical model of humanist values and proposes a new catalogue of virtues. This chapter is the one in which Machiavelli repudiates, rejects the humanist tradition which is his own. In order to seduce fortune, a certain number of qualities are needed.
Machiavelli questions us about these qualities and whether they are still valid? So many writers have spoken of it, that perhaps I will be accused of presumption if I speak of it again; all the more so as in dealing with this subject I will be straying from the common road.
But, with the intention that I should write things that will be useful to those who read me, it seemed to me that it was better to stop at the reality of things than to indulge in vain speculation.
Many people have imagined republics and principalities such as we have never seen or known. But what is the point of these imaginations? It is so far from the way we live to the way we should live that by studying only the latter, we learn to ruin ourselves rather than to preserve ourselves. A prince who wants to maintain himself and learn not to be always good, and use it well or badly, according to necessity.
He takes verbal precautions and announces his break-up. This is what Machiavelli teaches us and a simple truth, but completely new for his time. We should be less interested in the normative dimension of power, that is to say the dimension of what must be, than in power as it is. In other words, the 'just' and the 'good' are less important than the 'useful', what is important is the reality of the power we are confronted with and not a political ideal.
We can see very clearly that he criticises the almost 'idealistic' humanist vision of power, he moves away from the 'just' vision of 'moderation'. For Machiavelli, leaders are far from the virtues of the humanities, so a state must be thought of on the basis of what is and what is not founded on an ideal. This very important theoretical argument will have repercussions in history.
A prince who wishes to maintain himself must therefore learn not to be always good, and use it well or badly, according to necessity. To say at the time to learn to be no good was revolutionary, it overturned the political values of the time. Machiavelli showed by the phrase to learn not to be good, basically he explained his position.
But, as this is hardly possible, and as the human condition does not include him, he must at least have the prudence to flee from those shameful vices which would cause him to lose his States.
As for the other vices, I advise him to guard against them if he can; but if he cannot, there will be no great disadvantage in allowing himself to do so with less restraint; he must not even fear that he will be accused of certain defects without which it would be difficult for him to maintain himself; for, on close examination, it is found that, as there are certain qualities which appear to be virtues and which would make the prince's ruin, so there are others which appear to be vices, and from which may nevertheless result his preservation and well-being.
It's a very simple idea, but absolutely fundamental. There is power with its perfectly noble ideals and then there is the reality of political life, these are two notions that are sometimes incompatible because there is a real dimension to power and an immaterial dimension linked to the perception that one has of this power.
Machiavelli's great novelty is to distinguish power from the perception of this power. When he says that one must sometimes appear to be good, wise even if one is not; it is the idea that power is made of an immaterial dimension and a real perception are two different things, it is a binary dimension of power. Machiavelli has built his vision of the qualities of the Prince around the idea that there is power, but that it is linked to the perception we have of this power. Many politicians are weak and give the impression of being strong and vice versa; we owe this dual dimension of power to Machiavelli, who made it a central point of his theory.
In this chapter XVI "Of liberality and parsimony", one must know how to be generous and sometimes less parsimonious; according to chapter XVII sometimes one must be cruel "Of cruelty and pity; and if it is better to be loved than feared, or the opposite", the title is quite symptomatic, sometimes it is better to be feared than loved. Machiavelli suggests that in order to seduce fortune, in order to remain in power one must be both a lion, which is strength, and a fox, which is to say, one must know how to use cunning.
He alludes to his political experience, which marked him in particular with Caesar Borgia. Sometimes you have to use cunning and sometimes you have to use force. Once "The Prince" had been completed, once these virtues had been explained, once the qualities of the holder of power had been reaffirmed, Machiavelli in early would try to return to power, he would try to entrust his letter "The Prince" to the Medici in order to return to power.
Unfortunately, he will not succeed, his book, which will be so successful afterwards, will end up in oblivion. Machiavelli did not succeed in returning to power, in regaining an important political function, from - he joined a group of humanists with whom he had distanced himself, trying to reflect on a question that was a little different from the question of how to remain in power.
The Republic of Florence disappeared in , the Medici came back to power, why? How is it that a republic has not managed to maintain itself? It can be explained by the games of international alliances, but according to these humanists this is not enough, they no longer want to think about the quality of the prince, but rather why the republican regime disappeared, why Florence sank, why the republican regime disappeared?
To do this, they plunge into the history of Florence, but above all into the history of Rome. He looks into the history of the Republic of Rome for questions he asks himself: why the republican regime in Florence, but more generally why republican regimes fail and sink, and what keeps them going? In other words, the question of this group of humanists is haunted by an important question: what are the conditions for the existence and prosperity of a republic?
From the history of Rome, some lessons can be drawn. Machiavelli had written another very important work entitled the "Discourse on the First Decade of Titus Livius". There are somewhere two important works by Machiavelli, one of which is the Discourse on Titus-Life, which nuances the speech of the "Prince".
Immersing oneself in the complexity of the work allows one to have a slightly different point of view. Machiavelli from - asks himself another question, he will begin to write the Discourse of the first decade of Livy and is haunted by the following question: how can republican regimes with the image of Rome in mind and by extension republican regimes endure? When in - the Republic of Florence was abolished and then replaced by the Medici, Machiavelli wondered why Florence was lost and whether there were any standard ideals that could be used to theorise the greatness and decadence of republican regimes?
He is haunted by the idea of the foundations and causes of the permanence of the republics. He has the example of the Roman Republic which disappeared in 27 A. This implies asking a second subsidiary question, he spoke of the virtues of the Prince in "The Prince", but are there public virtues for the whole social body, in other words are there conditions under which the social body, in other words do citizens not have to have qualities in order to promote the common good?
These are the three main questions Machiavelli reflects on when he writes his speeches. For Machiavelli, based on the example of Venice, Florence and Rome, it can be inferred that a number of conditions must be inferred for republics to last. Thus, we can see the type of regime Machiavelli favoured.
The first condition is that it is first of all necessary for those in power to demonstrate a certain 'political responsibility', which must be wise, moderate and fair. In "The Prince", he says that these are not sufficient conditions, somewhere he finds the humanist ideals that he had discarded in "The Prince", but while in the speeches he reaffirms, and this is the first condition for the existence of any republic, that the rulers must show virtues, but humanist virtues, wisdom, moderation, equity, and greatness of soul.
The first condition is that these classical humanist virtues must still be found in order for the republic to return. The second condition is that a republic must be politically and constitutionally well organised, the political constitution must be very solid. What is needed? It simply needs a constitution that imitates, takes up the model that is a source of inspiration for everyone, the Roman model, the constitution of a republic must be mixed. In other words, there has to be a need for a solid republic based on a mixed constitution which is the Roman model.
In Machiavelli's time, it was very common to find the idea of a mixed constitution again. A mixed constitution is in Machiavelli's image, his discourse is a constitution based on three important elements of any political society: the monarchical element, the aristocratic element and the democratic element. There has to be a power that is divided between the monarchical dimension, which is a man or a woman, the aristocratic dimension, i.
Rome was founded on this model, the consules represented the monarchical element, the senate represented the aristocratic element and the comices represented the military as well as the more popular circles. The model of the Roman constitution that all the historians of Rome have called "mixed constitution" is a model that integrates these three dimensions.
This model has been taken up by a great many legal and political theorists, the American constitution of is also based on these constituent elements of power, it is a model that is in fact a Roman model that has irrigated the entire history of philosophy and has left its mark on the history of political thought. It is this model of a mixed constitution, because mixed between different elements, which is a constitutional order that is not a monarchy, nor an aristocracy, nor a democracy, but which is all three at the same time.
It's a model that has left its mark on people's minds over several centuries, especially on the American constituents. Machiavelli adds something new to this second condition by saying that for the system to work, for the political organisation based on a mixed constitution to work, it is crucial that political factions exist or are set up that clash.
There is the idea of a political party, Machiavelli breaks with a tradition that there should be stability and unity around those in power, humanists defended the ideal of unity and stability. Machiavelli would take up part of the theory again, adding that factions could confront each other, "freedom comes out of conflict". He fears like the plague those regimes where everyone agrees with everyone else.
Machiavelli advocates disunity rather than political union, which he sees as one of the ways of preventing corruption from taking hold. Machiavelli praises political dissent, different opinions must be expressed and animate political life, such a constitution is not enough if it is not animated, animation is this form of disunity, a form of defence of the idea of debate.
The third condition given is the need to develop religious worship, but not religion, because, like the Romans, he was impressed by the sociological function of religion, he was impressed to see the Roman genius to instrumentalise religion, which in a way allows the constitution of Roman citizenship, a good Roman citizen practises the worship of gods.
Machiavelli was not interested in religious truths, but understood the social function of religion as a constructor of civil religion, which is love of the party and the republic; this feeling of belonging to a common culture is an element and a feeling that must be cultivated. Among the French there is the cult of love for the republic, the same goes for the Americans, it is something extremely strong which fundamentally, for Machiavelli, is a possibility which is to use the religious fact as a federator and unifier of an ideology of the citizen.
Machiavelli seeks to use the religious fact in order to build citizenship, to build love for the republic, to build what Rousseau calls "the new man". For Machiavelli, the cult of religion makes it possible to give coherence to a state, at present there is civic education in some schools, which is a kind of religion of citizenship, it is the function of religion as unifying the political body and the social body.
Education for citizenship is a form of religion that needs to be developed like the Roman religion that succeeded in developing this Roman citizenship, in other words, religious worship has a social function that needs to be exploited in order to build modern citizenship, love of practice and love of the republic.
The fourth condition for the existence of a republic is the need to have a political regime based on law. In other words, it is the importance of law or laws in any republic, laws are needed to hold and circumscribe principles just as to circumscribe the people, it believes in the virtues of law as the guarantor of the political freedom of citizens.
Machiavelli thinks and deeply believes that the very existence of laws guarantees social and political order and a certain form of political equality as well. The notion will later become important, namely that of equality before the law, which is very dear to Machiavelli's heart, there is only a republic based on legal laws and a coherent set of laws; these laws are only legitimate and likely to guarantee freedom if everyone is involved in their organisation. According to Machiavelli's reasoning, the law is the guarantor of the political freedom of citizens.
A free republic is a republic if and only if the law voted and decided by the citizens is put in place.
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