Niccolo Machiavelli

Born in 1469 He was a Florentine civil servant and political thinker His duties included numerous diplomatic missions to France, Germany, and the papal court The Many Faces of Machiavelli Machiavelli was the archetypal politico in atto, the active man of politics, embodying the unity of thought and action. Gramsci Politics to him was a transforming, creative activity whose purpose was to mobilize Italian nation against the feudal aristocracy and papacy and their mercenaries. Machiavellis prince is an anthropomorphic symbol of a new and progressive collective will. Machiavelli, while purporting to erect a science of statecraft, suffered from an equal lack of historical sense and empirical discipline. Herbert Butterfield Machiavelli portrayed as a rhetorician, whose method of studying political reality was interpretative and historical rather than scientific, and who wrote to persuade, to delight, to move, to impel, to act which is hardly the goals of the scientist. Maurizio Viroli Machiavelli is a freedom-loving republican. Machiavelli presents a wholehearted defence of traditional republican values. Quentin Skinner Machiavelli was a bold innovator, a purveyor of immoralities and blasphemies, who did not see republicanism and tyranny as antonyms. Politics as he understood it, was a struggle for domination, the purpose of which was to secure order rather than justice. Harvey Mansfield

The Prince Machiavellis work where he advises rulers, good or bad, on how to seize absolute authority and hold their fellow countrymen in thrall. The world of politics is depicted as a jungle in which there is no reality but power, and power is the reward of ruthlessness, ferocity, and cunning. In such a jungle the tyrant is king, and republican ideals-justice, liberty, equality-count for little. At best, they are pleasing fictions which can be used to disguise the exercise of naked power. As for the people, they are gullible and passive, though Machiavelli warns of the necessity to win their support and use them as a counterweight to the scheming and treacherous nobility. The Discourses Machiavellis work that portrays a staunch republican and reminds us of Machiavellis selfless devotion to the service of the Florentine republic. In this work he advises both citizens and leaders of republics on how to preserve their liberty and avoid corruption. Self-government he proclaims, is the surest guarantor of security and prosperity, since the interests of the many and those of a ruling prince are usually antithetical. He adds that the people, as a collectivity, are more stable and exhibit better judgement than most princes, and even likens the voice of a people to that of God. Contradictions Between His Works Historians have long discussed the relationship between his two main works, their apparent inconsistency, and the extent to which each represents his true thought. Machiavelli, like a good rhetorician (and a job-seeking one at that), tailored his oration to appeal to his audience-in this case an authoritarian ruler by dedicating The Prince to the Medici lords so that they might employ him.

The contradictions between The Prince and the Discourses are more apparent than real. The mood and focus vary between one work and another, but both show equally the basic values for which Machiavelli is notorious, such as the use of conventionally immoral means for political purposes and the belief that government depends on force and quile rather than universal standards of truth or goodness. Hostility to Metaphysics Machiavelli held a mirror up to reality; he did not seek to change that reality in any fundamental way. Nor was his admiration for antiquity and worldly values anything new. He was soaked in the spirit of Florentine humanism and learned from his predecessors. These environmental influences and intellectual debts induce some commentators to interpret his texts strictly in terms of their context. Machiavelli implicitly rejects the very notion of a metaphysical structure of the universe, the attempt to say that certain things have essences, or purposes, implanted in the by God or by nature. There is, in other words, no trace of Aristotelian or Christian teleology, no reference to any ideal order, to any doctrine of mans place in the great chain of being, to any culminating fulfilment towards which creation moves. There is no discernible assumption of the existence of divine law; the natural laws Machiavelli mentions are laws of physical necessity. Nor does he concern himself with the salvation of souls or the contemplation of Gods handiwork. Machiavelli sought truth in earth instead of in heaven-in observation, not in deduction from axiomatic principles. Empirical Method It is commonly assumed that Machiavellis principal contribution to intellectual history was the inductive

method - the idea of grounding knowledge on the collection, collation, and analysis of what we call facts, thus acclaiming him as the founder of modern political science. Political Realism Machiavellis realism, as much as his commitment to the empirical method, stemmed from his rejection of metaphysics and teleology. If the universe is not governed by Reason or Mind, then effective truth, practical reality is all there is. There is no natural order of the soul, and therefore no natural hierarchy of values. In determining how people ought to live, we must be guided by how they do live, by their actual thoughts and behaviour. Machiavelli criticized previous writers on politics for valuing abstract speculation over practical experience, for envisaging ideal and imaginary states. Conclusion The key to understanding Machiavelli is to avoid false standards of comparison. His application of the empirical method to human affairs does mark an important stage in the evolution of political science. It is also misleading to interpret Machiavelli as a classical republican, inspired by ideals of justice and human excellence. He was a republican, but one who had few illusions about mans political condition To Machiavelli, the eternal malignity of the human spirit meant that men never do good unless through necessity. He had little faith in the potnential of human beings, in our power to learn from experience, in our capacity for spiritual growth.