MACHIAVELLI
Niccolo Machiavelli, an Italian statesman and political philosopher of the early sixteenth century, is considered the founder of modern political thinking. Machiavelli was a product of Renaissance Florence, a city-state that was struggling for expansion and survival among a competing group of similar states. As a public servant and diplomat, Machiavelli came to understand power politics by observing the spectacle around him without any illusions. In 1512, he was briefly imprisoned and then forced to leave public life. He retired to his country estate, where he recorded his reflections on politics. Two of his books would become classics in political theory: Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy, a set of essays on ancient and modem politics, and The Prince, a potent little book that would shock readers for centuries.
Machiavelli saw politics as an affair separate from religion and ethics, an activity to be practiced and studied for its own sake. Politics was simply the battle of men in search of power, and since all men were brutal, selfish, and cowardly, politics must follow certain rules. In his most famous work, The Prince (1532), Machiavelli described the means by which a leader may gain and maintain power. The ideal prince was the man who had studied his fellow men, both by reading history and by observing the present, and was willing to exploit their weaknesses. Machiavelli thought that his own time was too corrupt to permit any alternative to the Renaissance despots that he saw all around him.
Machiavelli’s philosophy arose more from a deeply pessimistic view of human nature than from a lack of moral sense, which many readers criticized in him. He was, and still is, misunderstood to have promoted atheism over religion and criminality over other means of governing. Despite the ruthless connotation of the term “Machiavellian,” many of his works, such as the History of Florence (1532), express republican principles. Machiavelli’s supporters saw him not as a cynic who gloried in evil but as a scientist of politics who saw the world more clearly than others and reported what he saw with lucidity and honesty.
The cultural impact of Machiavelli’s philosophy was far-reaching, and negative interpretations have persisted. The dramatic literature of the late sixteenth century, notably the plays of Shakespeare, often featured a villainous but humorous character type known as the Machiavel. The Machiavel character loved evil for its own sake, and this delight in evil made all other motivation unnecessary. The Machiavel had a habit of using humorous monologues to comment on his own wickedness and contempt for goodness. Shakespeare's principal Machiavel characters are the treacherous lago in Othello, the ruthlessly ambitious Edmund in King Lear, and the murderous title character in Richard III.