ItalyWho was Niccolò Machiavelli?
Niccolò Machiavelli served the Republic of Florence from 1498 to 1512 as a senior official handling diplomacy and military affairs. When the Medici returned to power in 1512 he was dismissed, briefly imprisoned and tortured, and then retired to his farm near San Casciano. There he wrote The Prince (1513), the Discourses on Livy, The Art of War and the Florentine Histories. His work is often read as a turning point in Western political thought because it analyzes how rulers and republics actually gain and lose power, rather than how they ideally ought to behave.
Political views
Argued that a ruler must be prepared to act against conventional morality when the survival of the state requires it.
Source: plato.stanford.eduHeld that it is safer for a ruler to be feared than loved if both cannot be achieved, while warning against being hated.
Source: gutenberg.orgPraised the Roman Republic and argued in the Discourses that a mixed government with popular participation is more stable than rule by one person.
Source: iep.utm.eduOrganized a Florentine citizen militia in 1505-1506 so that the republic would not depend on foreign or mercenary troops.
Source: iep.utm.eduCalled for a strong leader to unify Italy and free it from foreign domination in the final chapter of The Prince.
Source: gutenberg.orgSaw religion as useful for civic cohesion but criticized the Church for weakening Italian political unity.
Source: plato.stanford.eduDescribed the virtù of a successful ruler as a flexible disposition, able to vary conduct from good to evil as fortune and necessity require.
Source: plato.stanford.edu
Legacy
The adjective "Machiavellian" came to mean cunning and unscrupulous, and for centuries critics treated The Prince as a handbook for tyrants; the Catholic Church placed his works on its Index of Prohibited Books. Other readers, including Spinoza and Rousseau, suggested the book exposed how princes behave. Modern scholars credit him with founding a realistic, empirical approach to politics, and republican theorists such as Quentin Skinner and Philip Pettit draw on his Discourses. Debate continues over whether he was primarily a defender of liberty or of power.
In their words
It is much safer to be feared than loved, when, of the two, either must be dispensed with.