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Italian diplomat Niccolò Machiavelli lived over five centuries ago but his influence among unscrupulous politicians reaches into the modern age. He is mostly known for writing The Prince — the handbook that established him as the “father of modern political theory.” Through its teachings — power is the ultimate goal through any means necessary.
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Transcript Provided by YouTube:
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“It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.”
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You might agree with this statement if you fancy yourself a “Machiavellian.”
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Italian diplomat Niccolò Machiavelli lived over five centuries ago but his influence
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among unscrupulous politicians reaches into the modern age.
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He is mostly known for writing The Prince — the handbook that established him as the
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“father of modern political theory.”
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Through its teachings — power is the ultimate goal through any means necessary.
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Formative Years
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Machiavelli was born in Florence on May 3, 1469 to Bernardo di Niccolò Machiavelli,
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a lawyer, and his wife, Bartolomea di Stefano Nelli.
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He was the oldest son of his parents with two elder sisters, and a younger brother.
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The Machiavelli family was an established, middle-class family; not particularly affluent
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but with means to live a comfortable life.
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Machiavelli was born during a tumultuous time in history.
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One in which Popes regularly waged war against Italian city-states and political alliances
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frequently changed.
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This led to the rise and fall of many short-lived governments and shifting power centers.
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France, Spain, and the Holy Roman Empire all battled for regional control and influence.
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Not much is known about Machiavelli’s early life growing up in this environment.
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And, few details were written or passed down about his boyhood.
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We do know he began his elementary education at the age of seven and studied grammar, rhetoric,
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as well as Latin.
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Apparently he was well-versed in the ancient classics and among these, he highly prized
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his copy of Livy’s history of the Roman Republic.
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Political Career
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Machiavelli’s first entered politics in 1498 and helped the political faction remove Girolamo
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Savonarola, the then-dominant religious and political figure in Florence.
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In the same year Machiavelli was appointed to the second chancery of the republic and
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he also served as secretary to the sensitive government agency dealing chiefly with warfare
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and foreign affairs known as the Ten of Liberty and Peace.
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In his official capacity, Machiavelli participated in both domestic politics and diplomatic missions
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to foreign governments.
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These posts afforded him many opportunities over fourteen years to closely examine the
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inner workings of government and to meet prominent individuals, among them the Duke of Valentinois
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Cesare Borgia, whose fight for political power was a major inspiration for The Prince.
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Machiavelli quickly gained political prominence and influence.
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By 1502, he was a well-respected assistant to the republican head of state, Piero Soderini.
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In 1512, the Medici, backed by Pope Julius II, used Spanish troops to defeat the Florentines.
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After the Medici victory, the city-state and republic were dissolved and Machiavelli was
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left without a seat in office.
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The next year in 1513, the Medici accused him of conspiracy against them and imprisoned
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and tortured him.
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The form of torture was brutal.
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Using ropes, Machiavelli was hung by bound wrists from the back, forcing the arms to
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bear the weight of the body.
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This form of torture is extremely painful and results in dislocated shoulders.
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Machiavelli denied all of the allegations against him and was released after three weeks.
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He retreated to his country home in Percussina and spent the time out of office authoring
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his political writings that sealed his place in history.
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During his exile, Machiavelli joined intellectual groups and wrote several plays, among them
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La mandragola (Mandragola).
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The play remained popular for many years with audiences.
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His next effort, a military treatise published in 1521, entitled Libro della arte della guerra
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(The Art of War), was the only historical or political work published during his lifetime.
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“Discourses upon the First Decade of T. Livius” and The Prince were completed between
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1513 and 1517.
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Both were not published until after Machiavelli’s death, in 1531 and 1532 respectively.
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Though he was writing and having regular correspondence with others, Machiavelli’s true passion
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in life was politics and he tried many times to win back favor with the Medici.
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Machiavelli lamented his position in a letter to a friend, writing:
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“When evening comes, I go back home, and go to my study.
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On the threshold, I take off my work clothes, covered in mud and filth, and I put on the
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clothes an ambassador would wear.
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Decently dressed, I enter the ancient courts of rulers who have long since died.
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There, I am warmly welcomed, and I feed on the only food I find nourishing and was born
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to savour.
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I am not ashamed to talk to them and ask them to explain their actions and they, out of
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kindness, answer me.
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Four hours go by without my feeling any anxiety.
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I forget every worry.
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I am no longer afraid of poverty or frightened of death.
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I live entirely through them.”
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In 1520, Machiavelli was made the official historian of Florence and was subsequently
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entrusted with minor governmental duties.
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His prodigious Istorie fiorentine (History of Florence) carefully plays down his republican
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platform with the Medicean bias expected of him.
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In 1525, Pope Clement VII recognized his achievement with a monetary stipend.
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Two years later, the Medici were again ousted, and Machiavelli’s hopes for advancement under
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the revived republic dissolved.
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They didn’t trust him.
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Disheartened by his country’s internal struggles, Machiavelli fell gravely ill and died, a disillusioned
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man, his dream of an operational republic unrealized.
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The Prince
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Machiavelli wrote The Prince beginning in 1513 and completed it the following year.
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It wasn’t published until after his death in 1532 and the first English translation
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appeared in 1640.
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The handbook was essentially a practical guide for how Lorenzo de’ Medici could restore
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Italy (he dedicated the book to him).
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It’s interesting and ironic that the fiercely republican Machiavelli would write a how-to
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guide for an autocratic leader.
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Some critics have suggested The Prince is actually satire.
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Machiavelli was acutely aware, however, of foreign threats to Italy and thus deemed it
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necessary for a strong prince to thwart French and Spanish authority.
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In addressing the ruling Medici family, he primarily uses Borgia as an example of a shrewd
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but effective leader.
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Since handbooks of conduct meeting monarchal needs had become immensely popular by the
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1400s, the external form of The Prince was neither startling nor particularly remarkable
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to Machiavelli’s contemporaries.
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Yet, from its initial appearance, The Prince proved no mere manual of protocol nor, for
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that matter, of even conventional strategy.
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In its chapters, Machiavelli delineated a typology of sovereignties and the deployment
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of available forces military, political, or psychological to acquire and retain them.
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The Prince is the first political treatise to divorce statecraft from ethics; as Machiavelli
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wrote: “How one lives is so far removed from how one ought to live that he who abandons
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what one does for what one ought to do, learns rather his own ruin than his preservation.”
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Adding to his unflinching realism the common Renaissance belief in humanity’s capacity
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for determining its own destiny, Machiavelli posited two fundamentals necessary for effective
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political leadership: virtu and fortuna.
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Virtu refers to the prince’s own abilities (ideally a combination of force and cunning);
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fortuna to the unpredictable influence of fortune.
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In a significant departure from previous political thought, the designs of Providence play no
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part in Machiavelli’s scheme.
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On issues of leadership hitherto masked by other political theorists in vague diplomatic
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terms, Machiavelli presented his theses in direct, candid, and often passionate speech,
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employing easily grasped metaphors and structuring the whole in an aphoristic vein which lends
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it a compelling authority.
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Reaction to The Prince was initially but only briefly favorable, with Catherine de’ Medici
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said to have enthusiastically included it, among other of Machiavelli’s writings, in
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the educational curriculum of her children.
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But, within a short time the book fell into widespread disfavor, becoming viewed as a
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handbook for atheistic tyranny.
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The Prince, and Machiavelli’s other writings as well, were placed in the Papal Index of
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Prohibited Books in 1559.
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Further denigrated toward the close of the sixteenth century in Discours sur les moyens
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de bien gouverner et maintenir en paix un royause, ou autre principaute.
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Contre Nicolas Machiavel, florentin by Innocenzo Gentillet in France, The Prince was held responsible
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for French political corruption and for widespread contribution to any number of political and
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moral vices.
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Gentillet’s interpretation of The Prince as advocating statecraft by ruthlessness and
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amoral duplicity was disseminated throughout Britain through the works of such popular,
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highly influential dramatists as William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe.
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In the Prologue to Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta, Machevilli addresses the audience at length,
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at one point encapsulating the Elizabethan perception of Machiavelli by saying, “I count
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religion but a childish toy, / And hold there is no sin but ignorance.”
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Here and in the works of Marlowe’s contemporaries, Machiavelli was depicted as an agent of all
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that Protestant England despised in Catholic, High- Renaissance Italy.
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Hostile English interpreters so effectively typified Machiavelli as an amalgam of various
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evils, which they described with the still-used term ” Machiavellian,” that fact and fabrication
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still coexist today.
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Rarely, until the nineteenth century, did mention of The Prince elicit other than unfounded
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and largely unexamined repugnance, much less encourage objective scrutiny of its actual
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issues.
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As Fredi Chiappelli has aptly summarized: “Centuries had to elapse before the distinction
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between moral moment and political moment, between technical approach and moralistic
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generalities, and even between the subject matter of the book and the author’s person
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were finally achieved.”
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Modern critics, noting these crucial distinctions, have engaged in a prolonged and animated discussion
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concerning Machiavelli’s true intent in The Prince.
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An anomalous seventeenth-century commentator, philosopher Pierre Bayle, found it “strange”
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that “there are so many people, who believe, that Machiavel teaches princes dangerous politics;
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for on the contrary princes have taught Machiavel what he has written.”
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Since Bayle’s time, further analysis has prompted the most prolonged and animated discussion
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relating to the work: the true intent of its creator.
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Was the treatise, as Bayle suggested, a faithful representation of princely conduct which might
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justifiably incriminate its subjects but not its chronicler?
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Or had Machiavelli, in his manner of presentation, devised the volume as a vehicle for his own
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commentary?
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Still more calculatedly, had the author superseded description in ably providing a legacy for
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despots?
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A single conclusion concerning the author’s motive has not been drawn, though patterns
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of conjecture have certainly appeared within Machiavelli’s critical heritage.
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Lord Macaulay, in emphasizing the writer’s republican zeal and those privations he suffered
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in its behalf, has contended that it is “inconceivable that the martyr of freedom should have designedly
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acted as the apostle of tyranny,” and that “the peculiar immorality which has rendered
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The Prince unpopular … belonged rather to the age than to the man.”
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Others have echoed this suggestion, examining the work in its historical context: John Addington
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Symonds has deemed it “simply a handbook of princecraft, as that art was commonly received
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in Italy, where the principles of public morality had been translated into terms of material
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aggrandisement, glory, gain, and greatness.”
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Many have urged that Machiavelli intended the treatise as a veiled satiric attack on
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the methods of Italian tyranny or, by abstruse methods, its converse” a paean to patriotism
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and sensible government, grounded in a clear-sighted knowledge of the corrupt human condition.
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According to Harold J. Laski, The Prince “is a text-book for the house of Medici set out
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in the terms their own history would make them appreciate and, so set out, that its
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author might hope for their realization of his insight into the business of government.”
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While ultimately unable to agree on the underlying purpose of The Prince, nearly all critics
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have nonetheless been persuaded of its masterful composition, even when unwilling to endorse
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its precepts.
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Macaulay has affirmed that the “judicious and candid mind of Machiavelli shows itself
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in his luminous, manly, and polished language.”
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And Francesco De Sanctis has determined that “where he was quite unconscious of form, he
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was a master of form.
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Without looking for Italian prose he found it.”
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For sheer volume and intensity, studies of The Prince have far exceeded those directed
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at Machiavelli’s Discourses, though the latter work has been acknowledged an essential companion
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piece to the former.
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All of the author’s subsequent studies treating history, political science, and military theory
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stem from this voluminous dissertation containing the most original thought of Machiavelli.
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Less flamboyant than The Prince and narrower in its margin for interpretation, the Discourses
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contains Machiavelli’s undisguised admiration for ancient governmental forms, and his most
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eloquent, thoroughly explicated republicanism.
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Commentators have noted the presence of a gravity and skillful rhetoric that at times
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punctuate The Prince but are in full evidence only in that work’s final chapter, a memorable
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exhortation to the Medicis to resist foreign tyranny.
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The Discourses also presents that methodical extrapolation of political theory from historical
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documentation which is intermittent in The Prince.
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Max Lerner has observed that “if The Prince is great because it gives us the grammar of
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power for a government, The Discourses are great because they give us the philosophy
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of organic unity not in a government but in a state, and the conditions under which alone
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a culture can survive.”
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It has been deemed not at all incongruous that an intellect immersed in historical circumstance
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and political impetus should so naturally embrace comedy as well.
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For Machiavelli regarded comedy exactly as he conceived history: an interplay of forces
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leading unavoidably to a given result.
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Machiavelli’s Mandragola, his only work in the comedic genre, clearly reflected this
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parallel.
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De Sanctis has remarked that “under the frivolous surface [of Mandragola] are hidden the profoundest
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complexities of the inner life, and the action is propelled by spiritual forces as inevitable
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as fate.
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It is enough to know the characters to guess the end.”
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The drama’s scenario concerns Callimaco’s desire to bed Lucrezia, the beautiful young
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wife of a doddering fool, Nicia, who is obsessed with begetting a son.
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Masquerading as a doctor, Callimaco advises Nicia to administer a potion of mandrake to
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Lucrezia to render her fertile, but also warns that the drug will have fatal implications
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for the first man to have intercourse with her.
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He slyly suggests to Nicio that a dupe be found for this purpose.
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Persuaded by her confessor, a knavish cleric, to comply with her husband’s wishes, the virtuous
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Lucrezia at last allows Callimaco into her bed, where he has no difficulty convincing
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her to accept him as her lover on a more permanent basis.
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Tales of this sort” replete with transparent devices, mistaken identities, and cynical,
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often anticlerical overtones” were already commonplace throughout Europe by the Middle
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Ages, though critics have remarked that Machiavelli lent freshness to even this hackneyed material.
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Sydney Anglo has commended his “clear, crisp repartee” and ability “to nudge our ribs at
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improprieties and double-meanings,” despite characterization that is “rudimentary, haphazard,
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and inconsistent, with even protagonists going through their motions like automata.”
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Macaulay, on the other hand, has applauded the play’s “correct and vigorous delineation
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of human nature.”
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A decided influence on the philosophies of Thomas Hobbes and Sir Francis Bacon and on
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the thought of such modern political theorists as Vilfredo Pareto, Gaetano Mosca, Georges
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Sorel, and Robert Michels, Machiavelli has been called the founder of empirical political
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science, primarily on the strength of the Discourses and The Prince.
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Taken in historical perspective, it is understandable that The Prince should have dwarfed Machiavelli’s
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other works.
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For with this slim treatise the author confronted the ramifications of power when its procurement
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and exercise were notably peremptory” not only in his own country but throughout Europe
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as well.
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Commentators have come to weigh the integrity of Machiavelli’s controversial thought against
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the pressing political conditions which formed it.
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Some, like Roberto Ridolfi, have endeavored through their studies to dislodge the long-
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standing perception of Machiavelli as a ruthless character: “In judging Machiavelli one must
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… take account of his anguished despair of virtue and his tragic sense of evil….
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On the basis of sentences taken out of context and of outward appearances he was judged a
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cold and cynical man, a sneerer at religion and virtue; but in fact there is hardly a
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page of his writing and certainly no action of life that does not show him to be passionate,
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generous, ardent and basically religious.”
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“Far from banishing religion or ethics from politics,” Peter Bondanella has stated in
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European Writers, “Machiavelli created a new religion out of politics, with all its fateful
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implications for modern intellectual history.”
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Personal Life & Legacy
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In 1502, Machiavelli married Marietta Corsini.
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The couple had six children together; four sons and two daughters.
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Machiavelli died in the city on June 21, 1527, in Florence, Italy.
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He was interred in the church of Santa Croce in Florence.
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Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince is one of the most celebrated and notorious books in
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the history of Western political thought.
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It continues to influence discussions of war and peace, the nature of politics, and the
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relation of private ethics to public duties.
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Ostensibly a sixteenth-century manual of instruction on certain aspects of princely rule and behavior,
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The Prince anticipates and complicates modern political and philosophical questions.
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What is the right order of society?
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Can Western politics still be the model for progress toward peace and prosperity, or does
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our freedom to create our individual purposes and pursuits undermine our public responsibilities?
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Are the characteristics of our politics markedly different, for better or for worse, than the
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politics of earlier eras?
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Machiavelli argues that there is no ideal, transcendent order to which one can conform,
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and that the right order is merely the one that has the capacity to persist over time.
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The Prince’s emphasis on the importance of an effective truth over any abstract ideal
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marks it as one of the first works of modern political philosophy.
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