Nicollo Machiavelli, the Florentine philosopher and his political thought are usually one of the first items taught in political science courses. Machiavelli is best known as the author of the infamous book The Prince, an outrageous publication, which is a manual for a single-handed ruler of a city-state, and from which Machiavelli is portrayed as a cold-blooded, cruel, egocentric character. The prince was a shocker when it came out in 1532, and it still is today. It prescribed an extremely realistic, and cynical doctrine, in which only the ends comes into consideration when making decisions. In chapter XVI of The Prince, on one of the most democratic of issues, liberty, Machiavelli suggests “…it would be well to be reputed liberal. Nevertheless, liberality exercised in a way that does not bring you the reputation for it, injures you”(22). His advice to the prince was never subtle, and no one could have accused Machiavelli of writing popular literature, or of trying to avoid criticism. “Aristotle had warned that the one who lives without law must be either god or a beast. Machiavelli thought men were such wretched creatures that they should be governed by a man prepared to combine the cunning of the fox and the ferocity of a lion to stay in power by force and fraud long enough to carry out a moral purge and to arm his people”(Brown 20). Five years after The Prince was written, Machiavelli wrote another piece called The Discourses on Livy, based on the first decade of Titus Livius, a historian’s description of the Roman republic. This book was the complete antithesis of The Prince, dealing with the question of how a republic should be run. While the first book alone would have made Machiavelli an interesting figure, writing both books created great controversy over Machiavelli’s character and beliefs. Mainly because of The Prince and its attitude towards religion, Machiavelli became the target of insults by contemporary scholars, and at times was referred to as ‘Wicked Nick’. The political journal Commentary posted the following review of his books.
Maxims form Machiavelli’s two most shocking and radical books, The Prince (1513) and The Discourses (1513-19), are gems of clear-headed ruthlessness: enemies and potential enemies should be summarily executed, because only those still alive can plot revenge; it is absolutely necessary for a prince to appear religious, and utterly disastrous for him actually to be religious; one should not hesitate to break one’s word when interest requires it. And this is but a small sampling of what has led to centuries of attack on the Florentine for his immorality and earned him a reputation, in Shakespeare’s words, as “the murderous machiavel.”(Anton 1)
While the discourses turn to deal with liberty, a nobler theme than power that is discussed in The Prince, Machiavelli is still deemed an immoral writer.“…by contrast, the basic value in the discourses is that of liberty: it is that ideal, not that of mere security, which Machiavelli now wishes us to place above all other considerations, including the dictates of conventional morality”(Danoff 4). It is my belief that however shocking Machiavelli’s works are, it should be taken under perspective, and with a dose of reality. Maybe when we are disgusted by his ideas we are merely subscribing to an idealistic myth, under which we live. Not all scholars deem Machiavelli as the devil himself; “Machiavelli is one of the major thinkers in the naturalistic tradition. He laid the foundation for modern “constitutional” or “democratic” political regimes…Masters
suggests it may be beneficial to reconsider Machiavelli’s science of power as a means of integrating the wisdom of the ancients with the effectual realities of the present” (Barton 1).
Who is Nicollo Machiavelli? His doctrines do not seem to be consistent, but rather shift from one decree to the next. Besides a strong secular approach, there seem to be no shared direction in the two books. “He represents a different face to each observer…some see him as a tough-minded advocate of reason d’etat, others as a romantic who idealized ancient Rome; some see him as a passionate patriot, others as a cynic; some as a detached, objective observer, others as a teacher of evil; some as a republican, others as worshipping strong leaders and military might”(Danoff 16). A resolution to Machiavelli’s ambivalence that I subscribe to is that he is a political technician, seeing no morality behind the motives that are in action, but only measuring, evaluating, and predicting them. “What is so remarkable about Machiavelli is that he passes no judgment on the ambitions harbored by men. His seeming indifference to the ends of human striving leads numerous scholars to proffer the interpretation that Machiavelli is a technician of power, the prototype of the value-free social scientist”(Coby 250).
