Who is Machiavelli and what is his philosophy ?

Machiavelli who is modern philosopher thinker wrote about political reality rather than theory.
In fact, he is the founder of the “modern state”. Even though Machiavelli drew his ideas from
the ancient philosophers, his philosophy was also based on his life experience. Modern power
politics cannot be thought of without reference to Machiavelli and his book which is Prince. The
prince is well known as Art of government. He was the first ideologist of power politics.
Machiavelli does not ignore religion and morality. He believes that state is highest form of
human society, the state is superior in his political theory. He considered dirty hands view which
is described as following sentences. It concerns an action that is morally wrong. The action is
performed to achieve an important goal. This goal cannot be reached without the violation of
moral rules. The action is right. In fact, virtue is dependent upon chaos and confusion.
According to Machiavelli the conventional approach is unrealistic because the position in which
any prince finds himself is that of trying to protect his interests in a dark world filled with
unscrupulous men. He thought that virtue is manliness, strength and evil. Machiavelli’s dilemma
includes two requirements which are being not good whenever dictated by necessity and
retaining a good reputation. The problem is thus to avoid appearing wicked even when you
cannot avoid behaving wickedly. Moreover, the dilemma is even sharper than this implies, for
the true aim of the prince is not merely to secure his position. Machiavelli refuses to admit that
the dilemma can be resolved by setting stringent limits to princely wickedness virtues become
vices (and vice versa). Qualities which are considered good but are nevertheless ruinous only
look like virtues but are vices. Their opposites which are likely to bring safety and well-being
only look like vices but are virtues. Indeed Machiavelli emancipated politics from theology and
conventional moral philosophy. He undertook to describe simply what rulers actually did and
thus anticipated what was later called the scientific spirit in which questions of good and bad are
ignored, and the observer attempts to discover only what really happens.

References:

https://medium.com/patrickdaniel/a-brief-biography-of-niccolo-machiavelli-and-his-ideas-
8c8cc7949512

https://www.historytoday.com/archive/political-philosophy-machiavelli