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Infamous Machiavelli and “The Prince”

By: Morad Nazari

24/12/2015

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Introduction
It is a strange urge that some people have: to rule the fates of others, to play with events in order to
change the course of history, to decide who receives and who surrenders, who prospers and who falls to
ruin, indeed who shall live and who shall die. And all because of one word: power.[1]
Niccolò Machiavelli (1536 -1603), the author, diplomat and philosopher best known for writing what
many consider the first real book of political science which examines power, The Prince (1513). He was an
Italian politician, historian, philosopher and writer who worked in Florence during the Renaissance. As an
official in the Florentine Republic, Machiavelli had responsibility for diplomatic and military affairs. His
observations on rulers, leadership and unscrupulous politicians have led to him being heralded as the
founder of modern political science. Machiavelli's beliefs on rulers therefore reverberate strongly in
contemporary thought on politicians and what they ought not to be like.
Machiavelli’s writings are maddeningly and notoriously unsystematic, inconsistent and sometimes
self-contradictory. Machiavelli may have grazed at the fringes of philosophy, but the impact of his musings
has been widespread and lasting. The terms “Machiavellian” or “Machiavellism” find regular purchase
among philosophers concerned with a range of ethical, political, and psychological phenomena, even if
Machiavelli did not invent “Machiavellism” and may not even have been a “Machiavellian” in the sense
often ascribed to him. Moreover, in Machiavelli's critique of “grand” philosophical schemes, we find a
challenge to the enterprise of philosophy that commands attention and demands consideration and response.
Thus, Machiavelli deserves a place at the table in any comprehensive survey of philosophy.
Biography
Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli was born into the unstable time of shifting fortunes on 3rd of
May 1469 in Florence, Italy, and at a young age became a pupil of a renowned Latin teacher, Paolo da
Ronciglione. It is only with his entrance into public view, with his appointment as the Second Chancellor of
the Republic of Florence, however, that we begin to acquire a full and accurate picture of his life. For the
next fourteen years, Machiavelli engaged in a flurry of diplomatic activity on behalf of Florence, travelling
to the major centers of Italy as well as to the royal court of France and to the imperial curia of Maximilian.
We have letters, dispatches, and occasional writings that testify to his political assignments as well as to his
acute talent for the analysis of personalities and institutions.[2]
Niccolò Machiavelli was an Italian philosopher and writer based in Florence, Italy during the
Renaissance. He is one of the main founders of modern political science. He was a diplomat, political
philosopher, playwright, and a civil servant of the Florentine Republic. He also wrote comedies, carnival
songs, poetry, and some of the most well-known personal correspondence in the Italian language. [3]
Machivelli would grow up to hold a number of government positions, including serving as an advisor
to the Borgia family. As pope, the head of the family Alexander Borgia, stole money from the church and
used its coffers for his family's wealth. His eldest son Cesare was a bloodthirsty young warlord and his
daughter Lucrezia allegedly poisoned several husbands in order to inherit their money. As the name
"Borgia" was synonymous with betrayal, theft, crime, violence, murder, and power mongering, Machiavelli
began to record his observations and offer guidance on how rulers ought best to lead.[4, 5]
To understand Machiavelli’s ideas it is essential to understand the society where he lived and
worked. Florence had been under a republican government since 1494, when the leading Medici family and
its supporters had been driven from power. During this time, Machiavelli thrived under the patronage of the
Florentine gonfaloniere (or chief administrator for life), Piero Soderini. He also gave advice on military
tactics, successfully organizing infantry forces in specific Italian campaigns and establishing a Florentine
militia. [2, 6]
Machiavelli lived in an era and location that allowed him to witness corruption in the Christian
church in its height, causing him to view the pope as just another prince on a quest for increased power. In
the late medieval period and the early Renaissance, was prone to a host of political problems, including
invasions from France and Spain. Wayward leaders were also leading the country astray. In Rome, the
corrupt Alexander Borgia won the Papal election through bribery, and he rapidly appropriated the church's
wealth for his own family's benefit. In Florence, the once-powerful Medici family, patron of the arts and
civic projects, was in decline and losing its power and prestige. Florence eventually came under Papal
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control and (with Venetian help) the Medici was restored as a ruling family; Machiavelli had always
supported the Florentine Republic and hence in 1512 he lost his job. He was a direct victim of the regime
change: he was initially placed in a form of internal exile and, when he was (wrongly) suspected of
conspiring against the Medici in 1513, he was imprisoned and tortured for several weeks. Despite torture, he
denied involvement and was released; then, retiring to his estate, at Sant Andrea in Percussina, near
Florence.[2, 6, 7]
Due to these changes, parts of Italy became Republics such as Genoa, but other cities like Venice fell
to dictators. There was no hereditary monarchy to rule the country and with no central government and
essentially a country of nation-states. Each Italian city was like a little nation unto itself, ruled by oligarchic
families who viciously eliminated business competitors in a manner that would make the modern Mafia turn
pale. Italy was literally tearing itself apart, and it couldn't unify itself or defend the peninsula against
aggressors. It was a bad time to be an Italian. These events and people left impressions on Machiavelli that
would become recommendations for strong, ruthless, central government in his writings.[4, 5]
Machiavelli’s retirement thereafter to his farm outside of Florence afforded the occasion and the
impetus for him to turn to literary pursuits and never returned to political office again. He wrote political
treatises that earned his intellectual place in the development of political philosophy and political conduct.
After a time Machiavelli began to participate in intellectual groups in Florence and wrote several plays that
were both popular and widely known in his lifetime. Still politics remained his main passion. Machiavelli
died on 21st of June 1527. He was buried at the Church of Santa Croce in Florence, Italy.[3]
Machiavelli’s Works and Artworks
Machiavelli turned out to be a brilliant writer, his rapier-like mind mercilessly dissecting the
behavioral patterns of politicians whom he had witnessed first-hand over many years. It has been suggested
that Machiavelli wrote out of resentment, but the emotional forces that drove him were stronger than mere
resentment. Bitter passions motivated the searchlight of truth that he swung back upon those who had
engineered his political exile. The result was some of most profound and insightful political thinking thus far
in the European tradition.[6]
Most of Machiavelli’s well-known writings were done after Machiavelli was removed from all
functions of the Republic of Florence. The first of Machiavelli’s writings in a more reflective vein was also
ultimately the one most commonly associated with his name, a political treatise The Prince. Written at the
end of 1513 (and perhaps early 1514), but only formally published posthumously in 1532, five years after
Machiavelli’s death. The Prince was composed in great haste by an author who was, among other things,
seeking to regain his status in the Florentine government. (Many of his colleagues in the republican
government were quickly rehabilitated and returned to service under the Medici.) Originally written for
presentation to Giuliano de'Medici (who may well have appreciated it), the dedication was changed, upon
Giuliano's death, to Lorenzo de'Medici, who almost certainly did not read it when it came into his hands in
1516.[2, 3]
Machiavelli's enforced retirement led him to other literary activities. He wrote verse, plays, and short
prose, penned a study of The Art of War (published in 1521), and produced biographical and historical
sketches. Most importantly, he composed his other major contribution to political thought, the Discourses on
the Ten Books of Titus Livy, an exposition of the principles of republican rule masquerading as a
commentary on the work of the famous historian of the Roman Republic. Unlike The Prince, the Discourses
was authored over a long period of time (commencing perhaps in 1514 or 1515 and completed in 1518 or
1519, although again only published posthumously in 1531). The book may have been shaped by informal
discussions attended by Machiavelli among some of the leading Florentine intellectual and political figures
under the sponsorship of Cosimo Rucellai.[2]
Near the end of his life, and probably as a result of the aid of well-connected friends whom he never
stopped badgering for intervention, Machiavelli began to return to the favor of the Medici family. In 1520,
he was commissioned by Cardinal Giulio de'Medici to compose a History of Florence, an assignment
completed in 1525 and presented to the Cardinal, who had since ascended the papal throne as Clement VII,
in Rome. Other small tasks were forthcoming from the Medici government, but before he could achieve a
full rehabilitation, he died on 21 June 1527.[2]
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It is generally agreed that The Prince was especially innovative, and not only because it was written
in Italian rather than Latin. The Prince is sometimes claimed to be one of the first works of modern
philosophy, in which the effective truth is taken to be more important than any abstract ideal. It was also in
direct conflict with the dominant Catholic and scholastic doctrines of the time concerning how to consider
politics and ethics. The book concentrates on the possibility of a "new prince", rather than the more
traditional subject of a hereditary prince. To retain power, the hereditary prince must carefully maintain the
socio-political institutions to which the people are accustomed; whereas a new prince has the more difficult
task in ruling, since he must first stabilize his new-found power in order to build an enduring political
structure. That requires the prince being concerned with reputation but also being willing to act immorally.
As apolitical scientist, Machiavelli emphasizes the occasional need for the methodical exercise of brute
force, deceit, and so on. Although it is relatively short, the treatise is the most remembered of his works and
the one most responsible for bringing word Machiavellian into wide usage as a pejorative term describing
someone who aims to deceive and manipulate others for personal advantage. It even contributed to the
modern negative connotations of the words "politics" and "politician" in western countries. In terms of
subject matter it overlaps with the much longer book Discourses on Livy, which was written a few years
later. In its use of examples who were politically active Italians who perpetrated criminal deeds for politics,
another lesser-known work by Machiavelli which The Prince has been compared to is the Life of Castruccio
Castracani. [3]
Machiavelli, disillusioned with the ineffectual bickering and infighting among the Italian cities, saw
the effectiveness of the Borgia family members in seizing and maintaining their power. He formulated his
own theory of effective government in a treatise known as "The Prince," and he based his ideal "Prince" on
Cesare Borgia's life. He famously asserted that good rulers sometimes have to learn "not to be good," they
have to be willing to set aside ethical concerns of justice, honesty, and kindness in order to maintain the
stability of the state. The idea was shocking to contemporaries, who had inherited medieval ideas about
divine kingship, in which the king was appointed by God for the express purpose of serving as a sort of
celestial deputy on earth, upholding law and justice. In popular medieval belief, the king was thought to be a
"primate," an avatar of human virtue with innate authority over lesser beings in the cosmological hierarchy.
In contrast, Machiavelli argued that the most successful kings were not the ones who acted according to
dictates of law, or justice, or conscience, but those willing to do whatever was necessary to preserve their
own power--and thus indirectly preserve the order of the state. His title, "The Prince," in fact, is a subtle
mockery of the idea that rulers should be noble in their character. The implication of his title is that the
idealized Prince Charming is a mere fairy tale.[4]
The Prince
The main points from The Prince, well worth pondering from the business and political aspect are as
follow:[1]
1) Good leaders possess virtue: boldness, courage and skill.
2) It is better to be feared (i.e., respected) than loved.
3) Forget lofty ideals and moralistic or religious tenants as this could lead to your destruction by
making you appear weak.
4) A man will hate you and work against you if you take away his property (in business:
position, staff, responsibilities), and/or his woman -- remember this is Renaissance Italy -- (in business:
company car, parking space, office space: the visual signs of success and status). "People more quickly
forget the death of their father," Machiavelli observes, "than the loss of their inheritance."
5) To avoid being overthrown and removed from power, avoid being hated.
6) Be generous to your troops (i.e., staff) but be miserly to others.
7) Beware the virtues (generosity, mercy, honesty, etc.) -- for they can make you seem weak and
lead to your loss of power. If you are virtuous and your opponent isn't, you will lose. Thus, you must assume
that he isn't virtuous.
8) Use the vices (lying, miserliness, deceit, etc.) as tactics and tools to maintain power. It is
vital, however, that others never realize this.
9) It is politically useful to appear to be virtuous.
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10) Be deceitful if you must, and only if it suits your purposes -- but nobody should ever discover
that this is your tactic.
11) If you must remove someone, do it quickly, decisively and limited in scope. Then move
forward.
12) Use any means of expediency to achieve your goals; expediency is something that promotes
your own interests or purposes. In other words, the ends justify the means.
With its context kept in mind, let us turn to Machiavelli’s diabolical guide to political statecraft, The
Prince. What exactly in The Prince was so dastardly? Well, there is a scathing view of human nature for
starters. Machiavelli recommended that ‘a prudent ruler cannot, and must not, honor his word when it places
him at a disadvantage … Because men are wretched creatures who would not keep their word to you, you
need not keep your word to them’. Machiavelli then recommended that ‘one must know how to color one’s
actions and be a great liar and deceiver’. Further on, Machiavelli explained that a prince who neglected what
was actually done by people for what (by rights) should be done was doomed to self-destruction. Someone
who always acted virtuously would quickly come to a sticky end among the multitude who were not at all
virtuous. Hence the successful political statesman must learn how and when to act in a dishonest and
immoral way, and must be much better at acting dishonorably than those around him.[6]
“It is necessary for a prince wishing to hold his own to know how to do wrong.” Advice like this,
offered by Niccolò Machiavelli in The Prince, made its author’s name synonymous with the ruthless use of
power.[8] Another element of The Prince thought shocking by some commentators was Machiavelli’s
practical guide to the conquest of other states, a ‘how to’ manual of maintaining control of foreign lands.
Machiavelli recommended administering them either by devastating them totally, and living there in person,
or by creating a local oligarchy loyal to your own power base. However, Machiavelli warned that whoever
was responsible for creating someone else’s system of power had actually ruined themselves, as the
demonstrated mechanism of power creation had elevated the assistant into a potential challenger to the new
ruler.[6]
This shocking and (to some commentators) outrageous political realism was what has caused
Machiavelli’s tarnished reputation to this day. But in fact Machiavelli claimed only to be characterizing how
everyone acted in normal life anyway. By implication he acknowledged that it would be much better for
society as a whole if everyone acted virtuously; it was just that it was (in Machiavelli’s era at least) not
possible to guarantee this form of action from all citizens. Given this hard-nosed reality, there was no point
in dissembling about it, as even more human misery would be the result. Hence the princely statesman must
use guile and cunning in order to guarantee the success and prosperity of his kingdom and his people,
although this would also mean the preservation of the resplendent riches of political office.[6]
In his dedication to Lorenzo, however, Machiavelli explains that the book reflects his reading of the
actions and decisions of the "great men" of history, both ancient and modern. "I have not set off this little
work," he writes, "with pompous phrases, nor filled it with high-sounding and magnificent words... for [it]
should derive credit only from the truth of the matter." The truths Machiavelli writes about are raw, practical
and electrifying in their frankness. Although we may cringe from his descriptions and prescriptions,
somehow we realize that this is how politics is conducted, whether by managers jousting for power and
position in the corporate world or politicians seeking office.[1]
The importance of Machiavelli’s Treatise “The Prince”
The Prince was not even read by the person to whom it was dedicated, Lorenzo de Medici. If the
truth be told, this strange little treatise for which Machiavelli is famous, or infamous, never aided—at least
not in any systematic way—anyone in the actual business of governing. The most one can says about The
Prince in this regard is that Kissinger and Nixon preferred it as their bedtime reading. Why are we still
reading this book called The Prince, which was written 500 years ago? Before Machiavelli, politics was
strictly bonded with ethics, in theory if not in practice. According to an ancient tradition that goes back to
Aristotle, politics is a sub-branch of ethics—ethics being defined as the moral behavior of individuals, and
politics being defined as the morality of individuals in social groups or organized communities. Machiavelli
was the first theorist to decisively divorce politics from ethics, and hence to give a certain autonomy to the
study of politics.[8]
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Machiavelli wrote The Prince to serve as a handbook for rulers, and he claims explicitly throughout
the work that he is not interested in talking about ideal republics or imaginary utopias, as many of his
predecessors had done: “There is such a gap between how one lives and how one should live that he who
neglects what is being done for what should be done will learn his destruction rather than his preservation.”
This is a prime example of what we call Machiavelli’s political realism—his intention to speak only of the
“effectual truth” of politics, so that his treatise could be of pragmatic use in the practice of governing. So
why are we still reading this treatise five centuries later? The answer has to do with the fact that this book is
what we call a classic. Its enduring value lies not so much in its political theories as in the way it discloses or
articulates a particular way of looking at the world. The Prince shows us what the world looks like when
viewed from a strictly demoralized perspective and that is what the fascination and also the scandal is all
about.[8]
There are, however, different ideas which consider The Prince as an abortion:
What I’m putting forward as my own interpretation of The Prince is that the treatise was doomed
from the beginning to the same sorry failure as Borgia’s political career. By that I mean that it’s not by
chance that the unredeemed realism of The Prince has not had any direct, concrete effect on political
history. If its ambition was to be a handbook by which rulers could advance their own agendas, if its
ambition was to instruct a prince who could one day unify Italy and throw out the foreigners, if its ambition
was to found a school of political theory or promote some kind of trans-formation in the history of nation
states, or even if its ambition was much more modest, namely to ingratiate its author with the Medici rulers
of Florence, then we have no choice but to conclude that as a political treatise The Prince was an abortion.
It failed to achieve its ends.
The abortive fate of The Prince makes you wonder why some of the great utopian texts of our
tradition have had much more effect on reality itself, like The Republic of Plato, or Rousseau’s peculiar
form of utopianism, which was so important for the French Revolution. Christianity itself— its imagination
of another world beyond the so-called real world—completely transformed the real politics of Europe. Or
Karl Marx, for that matter, it’s not the realism of the Marxian analysis, it’s not his critique of capitalism’s
unsustainable systemic contradictions—it’s more his utopian projection of a future communist state that
inspired socialist movements and led to political revolutions throughout the world.
You cannot get reality to bend to your will, you can only seduce it into transfiguration. And the fact
remains that reality cannot be seduced by realism, only by trans-realism, if I may use a word that denotes
more than fantasy, utopianism, intuitionism, or religious supernaturalism. Trans-realism refers to
something that neither resists nor escapes reality but calls on reality to transcend itself, and to turn its prose
into poetry. What I’m trying to suggest is that realism itself is doomed to a kind of fecklessness in the world
of reality, while the real power—the real virtuous power—seems to be aligned with the faculty which
Machiavelli held most in contempt, namely the imagination. It’s the human imagination that in the long run
proves itself the truly efficacious and revolutionary force. [8]

“The prince”: On Rulers

Taking Cesare Borgia as a "model," Machiavelli formed his beliefs on rulers into a book called "The
Prince." Key to the book is the idea that infighting between family members as well as a lack of central
leadership will lead to the instability of a nation. Machiavelli asserted that good rulers must learn "not to be
good" but to set aside ethical standards of justice and compassion in order to maintain stability. Unlike
medieval and other early-Renaissance writers who advocated that rulers – specifically kings – were sent by
God to carry out his moral law, Machiavelli argued that successful rulers are the ones who do whatever they
need to in order to preserve order. In Renaissance literature, the term "Machiavelle" came to refer to a villain
who will betray others in order to get his own way.[5]
Machiavelli's insistence on the practicality of his political advice is most evident in his consideration
of the personality, character, and conduct of the successful ruler. No matter what idealistic notions are
adopted as principles of private morality, he argued, there is no guarantee that other people will follow them,
and that puts the honorable or virtuous individual at a distinct disadvantage in the real world. In order to
achieve success in public life, the ruler must know precisely when and how to do what no good person

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would ever do. The skillful ruler does better to act boldly than to try to calculate every possible eventuality.
A good ruler will invariably choose competent companions who offer honest advice in response to specific
questions and carry out the business of the state without regard for their private interests; such people,
therefore, deserve the rewards of honor, wealth, and power that unshakably secure their devotion to the
leader. Ineffective leaders, on the other hand, surround themselves with flatterers whose unwillingness to
provide competent advice is a mark of their princes' inadequacy.[9]
To Machiavelli, power and leadership were of the greatest importance. His entire book, The Prince,
focused on how to gain power and leadership, how to keep power and leadership, and what proper power
and leadership was. A prince able to hold on to power and lead his subjects, must "adopt [the nature] of the
fox and that of the lion; for a lion is defenseless against snares, and a fox is defenseless against wolves.
Hence a prince ought to be a fox in recognizing snares and a lion in driving off wolves." War was not
something to be taken lightly. "A prince must have no other objective, no other thought, nor take up any
profession but that of war... for that is the only art expected of a ruler." No matter how much his subjects
like him, or the vastness of kingdom and wealth, a prince is nothing unless he can withstand foreign
invasion. Nations and states are constantly trying to expand, and according to Machiavelli, a prince must
protect his kingdom from these encroachments. To Machiavelli, fear was the emotion that a successful ruler
caused in people. The excellent rulers also inspired love and avoided being hated, but without the element of
fear, this was worthless. "It would be best to be both loved and feared. But since the two rarely come
together, anyone compelled to choose will find greater security in being feared than in being loved." Fear
forces subjects to comply with the prince's laws, no matter how harsh. Love makes subjects comply with
prince's laws, but only when it is convenient. Hatred often causes rebellion, but if the prince can instill
enough fear in his subjects, he can subdue them. Therefore, it is necessary for the prince to be able instill
fear in his subjects.[7]
Although private morality may rest on other factors—divine approval, personal character, or abstract
duties, for example—in public life only the praise and blame of fellow human beings really counts. Thus,
Machiavelli supposed, the ruler needs to acquire a good reputation while actually doing whatever wrong
seems necessary in the circumstances. Thus, rulers must seem to be generous while spending their money
wisely, appear to be compassionate while ruling their armies cruelly, and act with great cunning while
cultivating a reputation for integrity. Although it is desirable to be both loved and feared by one's subjects, it
is difficult to achieve both, and of the two, Machiavelli declared, it is far safer for the ruler to be feared.[9]
Machiavelli also warned rulers of the transient nature of political support, characterizing men as
‘ungrateful, fickle, liars, and deceivers’ who shunned danger and were greedy for profit. Hence they would
risk their lives for a ruler when the perceived danger was remote, but when such dangers became much more
real they would quickly defect. The solution to this problem was for a ruler to make themselves feared
(although not hated), so that there was always a psychological dread of punishment. Execution, if properly
justified, was sometimes a necessity in this respect, although only when there was a genuine reason for it.[6]

“The Prince”: Analyzing Power

Machiavelli's political theory represents a concerted effort to exclude issues of authority and
legitimacy from consideration in the discussion of political decision-making and political judgment.
Nowhere does this come out more clearly than in his treatment of the relationship between law and force.
Machiavelli acknowledges that good laws and good arms constitute the dual foundations of a well-ordered
political system. But he immediately adds that since coercion creates legality, he will concentrate his
attention on force. He says, “Since there cannot be good laws without good arms, I will not consider laws
but speak of arms”. In other words, the legitimacy of law rests entirely upon the threat of coercive force;
authority is impossible for Machiavelli as a right apart from the power to enforce it. Consequently,
Machiavelli is led to conclude that fear is always preferable to affection in subjects, just as violence and
deception are superior to legality in effectively controlling them. Machiavelli observes that “one can say this
in general of men: they are ungrateful, disloyal, insincere and deceitful, timid of danger and avid of
profit…. Love is a bond of obligation which these miserable creatures break whenever it suits them to do so;
but fear holds them fast by a dread of punishment that never passes”. As a result, Machiavelli cannot really
be said to have a theory of obligation separate from the imposition of power; people obey only because they
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fear the consequences of not doing so, whether the loss of life or of privileges. And of course, power alone
cannot obligate one, inasmuch as obligation assumes that one cannot meaningfully do otherwise.[2]
Concomitantly, a Machiavellian perspective directly attacks the notion of any grounding for
authority independent of the sheer possession of power. For Machiavelli, people are compelled to obey
purely in deference to the superior power of the state. If I think that I should not obey a particular law, what
eventually leads me to submit to that law will be either a fear of the power of the state or the actual exercise
of that power. It is power which in the final instance is necessary for the enforcement of conflicting views of
what I ought to do; I can only choose not to obey if I possess the power to resist the demands of the state or
if I am willing to accept the consequences of the state's superiority of coercive force. Machiavelli's argument
in The Prince is designed to demonstrate that politics can only coherently be defined in terms of the
supremacy of coercive power; authority as a right to command has no independent status. He substantiates
this assertion by reference to the observable realities of political affairs and public life as well as by
arguments revealing the self-interested nature of all human conduct. For Machiavelli it is meaningless and
futile to speak of any claim to authority and the right to command which is detached from the possession of
superior political power. The ruler who lives by his rights alone will surely wither and die by those same
rights, because in the rough-and-tumble of political conflict those who prefer power to authority are more
likely to succeed. Without exception the authority of states and their laws will never be acknowledged when
they are not supported by a show of power which renders obedience inescapable. The methods for achieving
obedience are varied, and depend heavily upon the foresight that the prince exercises. Hence, the successful
ruler needs special training.[2]
For Machiavelli, there is no moral basis on which to judge the difference between legitimate and
illegitimate uses of power. Rather, authority and power are essentially coequal: whoever has power has the
right to command; but goodness does not ensure power and the good person has no more authority by
virtue of being good. Thus, in direct opposition to a moralistic theory of politics, Machiavelli says that the
only real concern of the political ruler is the acquisition and maintenance of power (although he talks less
about power per se than about “maintaining the state.”) In this sense, Machiavelli presents a trenchant
criticism of the concept of authority by arguing that the notion of legitimate rights of rulership adds nothing
to the actual possession of power. The Prince purports to reflect the self-conscious political realism of an
author who is fully aware—on the basis of direct experience with the Florentine government—that goodness
and right are not sufficient to win and maintain political office. Machiavelli thus seeks to learn and teach the
rules of political power. For Machiavelli, power characteristically defines political activity, and hence it is
necessary for any successful ruler to know how power is to be used. Only by means of the proper application
of power, Machiavelli believes, can individuals be brought to obey and will the ruler be able to maintain the
state in safety and security.[2]
Impatient with abstract reflections on the way things "ought" to be, Machiavelli focused on the way
things are, illustrating his own intensely practical convictions with frequent examples from the historical
record. Although he shared with other humanists a profound pessimism about human nature, Machiavelli
nevertheless argued that the social benefits of stability and security can be achieved even in the face of
moral corruption.[9]

“The Prince”: Virtù and Fortuna

In 1513 Machiavelli wrote his best-known work, Il Principe (The Prince). Dedicated to Lorenzo de'
Medici, this little book offers practical advice on how to rule a city like sixteenth-century Florence. Its
overall theme is that the successful prince must exhibit virtù [variously translated as "strength," "skill," or
"prowess"] in both favorable and adverse circumstances. This crucial quality of leadership is not the same as
the virtuous character described by ethical philosophers, since Machiavelli held that public success and
private morality are entirely separate. The question is not what makes a good human being, but what makes
a good prince.[9]
The term that best captures Machiavelli's vision of the requirements of power politics is virtù. While
the Italian word would normally be translated into English as “virtue,” and would ordinarily convey the
conventional connotation of moral goodness, Machiavelli obviously means something very different when
he refers to the virtù of the prince. In particular, Machiavelli employs the concept of virtù to refer to the
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range of personal qualities that the prince will find it necessary to acquire in order to “maintain his state”
and to “achieve great things,” the two standard markers of power for him. This makes it brutally clear there
can be no equivalence between the conventional virtues and Machiavellian virtù. Machiavelli expects
princes of the highest virtù to be capable, as the situation requires, of behaving in a completely evil fashion.
For the circumstances of political rule are such that moral viciousness can never be excluded from the realm
of possible actions in which the prince may have to engage, Machiavelli's sense of what it is to be a person
of virtù can thus be summarized by his recommendation that the prince above all else must acquire a
“flexible disposition.” That ruler is best suited for office, on Machiavelli's account, who is capable of
varying her/his conduct from good to evil and back again “as fortune and circumstances dictate”.
Machiavelli sees politics to be a sort of a battlefield on a different scale. Hence, the prince just like the
general needs to be in possession of virtù, that is, to know which strategies and techniques are appropriate to
what particular circumstances. Thus, virtù winds up being closely connected to Machiavelli's notion of the
power. The ruler of virtù is bound to be competent in the application of power; to possess virtù is indeed to
have mastered all the rules connected with the effective application of power. Virtù is to power politics what
conventional virtue is to those thinkers who suppose that moral goodness is sufficient to be a legitimate
ruler: it is the touchstone of political success.[2]
Examples are everything in The Prince. Every time Machiavelli sets forth a theoretical premise about
politics he gives examples, and almost invariably he will give examples from two different historical eras,
antiquity on the one hand and contemporary political history on the other, as if to suggest that history is
nothing but an archive of examples either to be imitated or to be avoided. An example of his for virtuosity is
Cesare Borgia. Borgia was a contemporary of Machiavelli and of this fascinating figure suffice it to say that
he was the “natural,” or illegitimate, son of Pope Alexander VI. In chapter seven of The Prince, Machiavelli
discusses at great length the political career of Borgia and proposes him to the reader as a paragon of virtue.
He is the very embodiment of the ingenuity, efficacy, manliness, foresight, valor, strength, shrewdness, and
so forth that defines Machiavelli’s concept of political virtuosity. [8]
Here is a passage from the text in which Machiavelli gives an example of this virtuosity of Cesare
Borgia. The episode occurs after Borgia has conquered the region of Romagna, and now his task is to set the
state in some kind of order. How does a prince who has just conquered a state gain the obedience of his
subjects if those subjects are characterized by a human nature governed by fickleness, greed, fear, and the
law of self-interest? Well, this is how Borgia went about it:[8]
First, to bring about “peace and obedience,” he put in place a cruel and efficient minister.
Later, Borgia decided that such excessive authority was no longer necessary, for he feared that it
might become odious…. He had the minister placed one morning in Cesena on the piazza in two pieces with
a block of wood and a bloodstained knife alongside him. The atrocity of such a spectacle left those people,
at one and the same time, satisfied and stupefied.
What’s brilliant about this action for Machiavelli is the way Borgia manages not only to exercise
power but also to control and manipulate the signs of power. One of the great insights of The Prince is that
to be an effective ruler you must learn how to orchestrate the semiotics of power, so as to place yourself in a
position where you don’t actually have to use power to achieve your aims. Borgia’s way of dealing with his
minister is a prime example of what Machiavelli praises as political virtue, because in this instance Borgia
demonstrates the knowledge of the inner essence of the people, or of what the people need and expect in a
ruler. The spectacle of punishment on the one hand leaves the people “satisfied,” because iniquities,
cruelties, and injustices were indeed committed against the people by the minister, but on the other hand it
also leaves them “stupefied,” in the sense that it reminds everyone of an awesome power operating behind
the scenes. [8]
What is the conceptual link between virtù and the effective exercise of power for Machiavelli? The
answer lies with another central Machiavellian concept, Fortuna (usually translated as “fortune”). Fortuna is
the enemy of political order, the ultimate threat to the safety and security of the state. Machiavelli's use of
the concept has been widely debated without a very satisfactory resolution. Suffice it to say that, as with
virtù, Fortuna is employed by him in a distinctive way. Where conventional representations treated Fortuna
as a mostly benign, if fickle, goddess, who is the source of human goods as well as evils, Machiavelli's

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fortune is a malevolent and uncompromising fount of human misery, affliction, and disaster. While human
Fortuna may be responsible for such success as human beings achieve, no man can act effectively when
directly opposed by the goddess.[2]
Machiavelli's most famous discussion of Fortuna occurs in Chapter 25 of The Prince, in which he
proposes two analogies for understanding the human situation in the face of events. Initially, he asserts that
fortune resembles “one of our destructive rivers which, when it is angry, turns the plains into lakes, throws
down the trees and buildings, takes earth from one spot, puts it in another; everyone flees before the flood;
everyone yields to its fury and nowhere can repel it.” Yet the furor of a raging river does not mean that its
depredations are beyond human control: before the rains come, it is possible to take precautions to divert the
worst consequences of the natural elements. “The same things happen about Fortuna,” Machiavelli observes,
“She shows her power where virtù and wisdom do not prepare to resist her, and directs her fury where she
knows that no dykes or embankments are ready to hold her”. Fortune may be resisted by human beings, but
only in those circumstances where “virtù and wisdom” have already prepared for her inevitable arrival.[2]
Machiavelli reinforces the association of Fortuna with the blind strength of nature by explaining that
political success depends upon appreciation of the operational principles of Fortuna. His own experience has
taught him that “it is better to be impetuous than cautious, because Fortuna is a woman and it is necessary, in
order to keep her under, to beat and maul her.” In other words, Fortuna demands a violent response of those
who would control her. “She more often lets herself be overcome by men using such methods than by those
who proceed coldly,” Machiavelli continues, “therefore always, like a woman, she is the friend of young
men, because they are less cautious, more spirited, and with more boldness master her”. The wanton
behavior of Fortuna demands an aggressive, even violent response, lest she take advantage of those men
who are too retiring or “effeminate” to dominate her. Machiavelli's remarks point toward several salient
conclusions about Fortuna and her place in his intellectual universe. Throughout his corpus, Fortuna is
depicted as a primal source of violence (especially as directed against humanity) and as antithetical to
reason. Thus, Machiavelli realizes that only preparation to pose an extreme response to the vicissitudes of
Fortuna will ensure victory against her. This is what virtù provides: the ability to respond to fortune at any
time and in any way that is necessary.[2]
In sum, human beings are wretched creatures, governed only by the law of their own self-interest. It
is better for a prince to be feared than loved, because love is fickle, while fear is constant. This passage
highlights the main dichotomy that traverses this treatise, namely the dichotomy between what Machiavelli
calls virtù and Fortuna. The Prince is a sustained attempt to define, in the most realistic terms possible, the
sort of virtue that a prince must possess if he wants to succeed in achieving his objectives. It is important
that we come to terms with what Machiavelli means by virtù, because it has everything to do with his
attempt to divorce politics from both morality and religion. He knew full well that he was taking a
traditional word and evacuating it of all its religious and moral connotations. Because love is fortuitous, you
cannot rely on it, it is not stable, it is treacherously shifty. Therefore it’s obviously better for a prince to be
feared rather than loved, since fear is a constant emotion, which will remain true to itself no matter how
much circumstances may shift. In any case, one is left wondering at the prodigious irony of Machiavelli’s
treatise, which proposes as the supreme exemplar of virtù the one protagonist in contemporary Italian
politics who was most beaten down and overcome by the forces of Fortuna.[8]
Let’s quote another famous passage of The Prince, which speaks about the relation between Fortuna
and virtù:
I hold that it could be true that Fortuna is the arbiter of half of actions, but that she still leaves the
other half, or close to it, to be governed by us. And she resembles one of those violent rivers which, when
they become enraged, flood the plains, tear down trees and buildings, lift up the earth from one side and
deposit it on the other... But this does not mean that men, when times are quiet, cannot take precautions with
floodgates and embankments, so that, when the rivers swell up again, either they would move along through
a canal, or their rush would not be so unchecked and harmful. The same happens with Fortuna, who
displays her force where there is no prepared resource to resist her.[5]
“The Prince”: Morality and Religion

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The basic building blocks of Machiavelli's thought have induced considerable controversy among his
readers going back to the sixteenth century, when he was denounced as an apostle of the Devil, but also was
read and applied sympathetically by authors (and politicians) enunciating the doctrine of “reason of state”.
The main source of dispute concerned Machiavelli's attitude toward conventional moral and religious
standards of human conduct, mainly in connection with The Prince. For many, his teaching adopts the stance
of immoralism or, at least, amoralism. The most extreme versions of this reading find Machiavelli to be a
“teacher of evil,” on the grounds that he counsels leaders to avoid the common values of justice, mercy,
temperance, wisdom, and love of their people in preference to the use of cruelty, violence, fear, and
deception. [2]
The more moderate schools of thought view Machiavelli as simply a “realist” or a “pragmatist”
advocating the suspension of commonplace ethics in matters of politics. Moral values have no place in the
sorts of decisions that political leaders must make, and it is a category error of the gravest sort to think
otherwise. Some says: Machiavelli simply adopts the stance of a scientist—a kind of “Galileo of politics”—
in distinguishing between the “facts” of political life and the “values” of moral judgment. Thus, Machiavelli
lays claim to the mantle of the founder of “modern” political science, in contrast with Aristotle's classical
norm-laden vision of a political science of virtue. Perhaps the mildest version of the amoral hypothesis has
been proposed by those who claim that the ruler's commission of acts deemed vicious by convention is a
“last best” option. Concentrating on the claim in The Prince that a head of state ought to do good if he can,
but must be prepared to commit evil if he must.[2]
In direct contrast, some of Machiavelli's readers have found no taint of immoralism in his thought
whatsoever. Jean-Jacques Rousseau long ago held that the real lesson of The Prince is to teach the people
the truth about how princes behave and thus to expose, rather than celebrate, the immorality at the core of
one-man rule. Various versions of this thesis have been disseminated more recently. Some scholars have
pronounced Machiavelli the supreme satirist, pointing out the foibles of princes and their advisors. The fact
that Machiavelli later wrote biting popular stage comedies is cited as evidence in support of his strong
satirical bent. Thus, we should take nothing Machiavelli says about moral conduct at face value, but instead
should understand his remarks as sharply humorous commentary on public affairs. Alternatively, some
assert that Machiavelli's agenda was driven by a desire to “trap” the prince by offering carefully crafted
advice (such as arming the people) designed to undo the ruler if taken seriously and followed.[2]
A similar range of opinions exists in connection with Machiavelli's attitude toward religion in
general, and Christianity in particular. Machiavelli was no friend of the institutionalized Christian Church as
he knew it. …Many scholars have taken such evidence to indicate that Machiavelli was himself profoundly
anti-Christian, preferring the pagan civil religions of ancient societies such as Rome, which he regarded to
be more suitable for a city endowed with virtù. Some argue that Machiavelli's cosmos, governed by the
movements of the stars and the balance of the humors, takes on an essentially pagan and pre-Christian cast.
For others, Machiavelli may best be described as a man of conventional, if unenthusiastic, piety, prepared to
bow to the externalities of worship but not deeply devoted in either soul or mind to the tenets of Christian
faith. A few dissenting voices have attempted to rescue Machiavelli's reputation from those who view him as
hostile or indifferent to Christianity. [9]
And so we ask ourselves, for example, what does human nature look like when looked at from a
demoralized or hard-nosed realist point of view? We get an unambivalent answer to that question in chapter
17 of The Prince. In this passage, Machiavelli is addressing the typically Machiavellian question of whether
it is better for a prince to be feared or to be loved: [8]
But since it is difficult for a ruler to be both feared and loved, it is much safer to be feared than
loved, if one of the two must be lacking. For this can generally be said of men: that they are ungrateful,
fickle, liars and deceivers, avoiders of danger, greedy for profit; and as long as you serve their welfare, they
are entirely yours, offering you their blood, possessions, life and children...when the occasion to do so is not
in sight; but when you are faced with it, they turn against you. And that prince who lays his foundations on
their promises alone, finding himself stripped of other preparations, falls to ruin... For men are less
concerned with hurting someone who makes himself loved than one who makes himself feared, because love

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is held by a link of obligation which, since men are wretched creatures, is broken every time their own
interests are at stake; but fear is held by a dread of punishment which will never leave you.
Machiavelli distinguished between cruelty used well or badly. Cruelty was used well when it was
employed once and for all, to defend personal safety and the good of all citizens; it was used badly when it
continued to occur, growing in intensity as time went on, without any specifically focused goal. In
Machiavelli’s view, the ends could justify the means.[6]
“The Prince” and the State
One further significant component of The Prince was Machiavelli’s categorization of principalities
into hereditary, composite, constitutional and ecclesiastical principalities. Machiavelli defined principalities
as having family rulers, with republics being left out of the discussion, presumably because they were less
likely to be controlled by prince-like figures. Machiavelli explained how new principalities could be
obtained by various means – one’s own arms and military prowess, fortune and foreign support, crime, and
constitutional astuteness – yet appeared less concerned with the ethical or human consequences of the
various methods that were outlined. For example, if criminal behavior was accompanied by audacity and
courage, then success might be the result.[6]
A factor that must be kept in mind when evaluating the general applicability of Machiavelli's theory
in The Prince stems from the very situation in which his prince of virtù operates. Such a ruler comes to
power not by dynastic inheritance or on the back of popular support, but purely as a result of his own
initiative, skill, talent, and/or strength (all words that may be translated for virtù). Thus, the Machiavellian
prince can count on no pre-existing structures of legitimation, as discussed above. In order to “maintain his
state,” then, he can only rely upon his own fount of personal characteristics to direct the use of power and
establish his claim on rulership. This is a precarious position, since Machiavelli insists that the throes of
fortune and the conspiracies of other men render the prince constantly vulnerable to the loss of his state. The
idea of a stable constitutional regime that reflects the tenor of modern political thought (and practice) is
nowhere to be seen in Machiavelli's conception of princely government…. Machiavelli's name and doctrines
were widely invoked to justify the priority of the interests of the state in the age of absolutism.[2]
Machiavelli, the Character of Republican?
While The Prince is doubtless the most widely read of Machiavelli’s works, the Discourses on the
Ten Books of Titus Livy perhaps most honestly expresses his personal political beliefs and commitments, in
particular, his republican sympathies. The Discourses certainly draw upon the same reservoir of language
and concepts that fed The Prince, but the former treatise leads us to draw conclusions quite different from—
many scholars have said contradictory to—the latter [2]
Machiavelli seems to adhere to a genuinely republican position. But how are we to square this with
his statements in The Prince? It is tempting to dismiss The Prince as an inauthentic expression of
Machiavelli's “real” views and preferences, written over a short period in order to prove his political value to
the returned Medici masters of Florence. (This is contrasted with the lengthy composition process of the
Discourses.) Yet Machiavelli never repudiated The Prince, and indeed refers to it in the Discourses in a way
that suggests he viewed the former as a companion to the latter. Although there has been much debate about
whether Machiavelli was truly a friend of princes and tyrants or of republics, and hence whether we should
dismiss one or another facet of his writing as ancillary or peripheral, the questions seems irresolvable. Mark
Hulliung's suggestion that “both” Machiavelli’s need to be lent equal weight thus enjoys a certain
plausibility (Hulliung 1983 cited in [2]).
The interpretation of Machiavelli’s political theory is to be prominently a republican one, escaping
its commonly simplified and stereotypical interpretations, which reduce his theoretical legacy to so-called
‘Machiavellianism’. While elements of ‘Machiavellianism’ do exist in all of his books (especially in The
Prince) they do not define the core line and purpose of Machiavelli’s political theory. Therefore, it must be
emphasized that the main line of Machiavelli’s thought is republican in nature. Even if there are elements of
‘power politics’ present, the concept of political power as based on a constitution and legal means, including
the minimal/ legal use of force, is the core concept of political power in Machiavelli’s case. Defending
Machiavelli from ‘Machiavellianism’ is important for the sake of intellectual scrutiny. Still, it is even more
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important to emphasize the republican legacy of Machiavelli’s thought, especially in its modern, pluralist
implications. Long before political modernity, Machiavelli closely and deeply anticipated with his theory of
humors the contemporary liberal/civic republicanism, constitutionalism and deliberative democracy.[10]
Machiavelli's Place in Contemporary Context
Now that some of Machiavelli’s most infamous ideas have been presented, various interpretations of
them and their underlying motivation can be considered. Although the word "Machiavellian" is, for many,
synonymous with immorality, cunning and even evil, few realize that Machiavelli was a republican and part
of a reform movement in Florence, Italy, which ousted the mighty Medici family from power. When they
regained their position in 1494, Machiavelli was imprisoned and tortured. Ironically, The Prince -- a
metaphor for "leader" -- was written in honor of Lorenzo the Magnificent, a Medici. Some historians have
wondered whether Machiavelli dedicated this treatise to him in order to gain a favored position at court. Yet
thinkers such as Spinoza and Jean-Jacques Rousseau believed that The Prince was a satire on despots. Still
others argue that the booklet is a diabolical work of cynicism. Most political scientists, on the other hand,
would probably describe The Prince as an unadorned, direct and brutal analysis of the means and methods of
gaining and keeping power. In this sense, the book is a type of guideline to ”realpolitik.”[1]
The Prince (especially Machiavelli’s nationalistic ideas, i.e. his pledge for the unification of Italy,
and his ‘exhortation to liberate Italy from the barbarians’) as well as his scientific ideas (his divorcing of the
study of politics from the study of ethics) attained a certain kind of positive connotation (accompanied by
Hegel’s conception of the state) in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, e.g. upon the Romantic rise of
nationalism and first attempts of building nation-states in Europe.[10]
Some believes that there is more to Machiavelli than his notorious reputation. Is Machiavelli’s
lasting reputation as the philosopher-king of political manipulation really justified? There are suggestions
that The Prince was a satire on the unruly and selfish behavior of political leaders. Enfield declared that,
since Machiavelli was an enemy of despotism in his actual conduct, The Prince was intended to ‘pull off the
mask from the face of tyranny’. [6]
There are also different ways to interpret Machiavelli’s political ideas. It must be recognized that The
Prince was only a small part of Machiavelli’s literary output. He wrote much more substantial works, such
as the Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livius, the Art of War, a History of Florence, and even
some plays, poetry and biographical sketches. In many ways these other works were more representative of
Machiavelli’s ideas than The Prince. Secondly, it must be understood that Machiavelli’s work was part of
the political and national context of a Florentine Republic that is 500 years distant from twenty-first century
liberal democracy. Machiavelli’s era was that of the Medici family, of naked conquest by military force,
Machiavelli himself being imprisoned and tortured for his beliefs and associations, something that was not at
all unusual in this period of European history. Thirdly, Machiavelli’s political thought cannot be
comprehended without an understanding of Machiavelli the man, of his personal motivations and
experiences, and of his youthful dreams and his eventual professional disappointments.[6]
Machiavelli was born into a world of drastic change, Renaissance Italy that would cause his mind to
conjure ideas about many political issues transferred into books that the entire world has profited from since.
His ideas were incredibly relevant to his time, because they suggested harsh governments, the only kind of
governments that seemed to be working. He proposed creating these harsh governments through a separation
of personal morality and political behavior. His ideas were so relevant and so universal, that they still
influence politics today. Machiavelli proposed the creating of strong central government more powerful than
anything else, including religion and morality.[7]
In contemporary usage, "Machiavellian" refers to treachery, over-ambition and ruthless power. In
Machiavelli's viewpoint, anything a ruler does should always be supported by appropriate reasons. The end,
in other words, must always justify the means. This justification for a leader's actions has been applied to
many different contexts, from just war theory to social welfare programs. Among Machiavelli's more well-
known phrases is "it is better to be feared than loved." He advocates strong leadership, and his writings
suggest that rulers should be foremost concerned with defending their territories.[8] Machiavelli ought not
really to be classified as either purely an “ancient” or a “modern,” but instead deserves to be located in the
interstices between the two.[2]
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Machiavelli’s inspirational legacy has lived on well into the twentieth century as a double-edged
sword. The science fiction writer H.G. Wells wrote a political novel entitled The New Machiavelli, Antonio
Gramsci attempted to update Machiavelli from a Marxian bent into ‘The Modern Prince’, feminist theorists
have created The Princess, and the leaders of both Nazi and Soviet totalitarianism lifted their hats
respectfully to the Italian master of realpolitik. In much more recent times the spin-masters of Tony Blair’s
New Labour Party might also be seen to owe something to Machiavelli’s treatise on cunning guile, although
they would undoubtedly deny any such connection when asked about it in public.[6]
Machiavelli’s ‘Machiavellian’ ideas from The Prince (as well as from The Discourses) are still actual
today insofar as they are helpful in understanding contemporary politics according to both the possible
dangers linked to political vices and corruption, and the possible slipping of modern democratic government
into unlimited state power. Therefore, the notion ‘Machiavellianism’ has played an important role in
contemporary political and academic discourse with good reason. Nonetheless, Machiavelli’s republican and
pluralist ideas from The Discourses have been implicitly modern and essentially relevant from the point of
view of contemporary democratic political theory and practice. For this reason, reducing Machiavelli’s
political legacy to mere ‘Machiavellianism’ is essentially wrong. Controversies related to the interpretations
of Machiavelli’s legacy and arguments in favor of its actuality in modernity/contemporaneity hinge between
his ideas of unlimited state power and corrupt politics, and his pledging for republican order and just laws
(efficient democratic government).[10]

Machiavellianism
Customarily, the name ‘Machiavelli’ was a synonym for the devil. The myth of the corrupt
immorality of Machiavelli has lasted for many centuries, the description ‘Machiavellian’ being used today
for anyone who is seen slyly to manipulate a given situation to their own advantage by means of shrewd
political insight. Machiavelli as an individual has been described as aloof, as standing to one side of life
‘with a sarcastic expression continually playing around his mouth and flashing from his eyes’. This
reputation is based on Machiavelli’s most famous work, The Prince, which was written in 1513-14.[6]
Machiavellianism is "the employment of cunning and duplicity in statecraft or in general conduct".
The word comes from the Italian Renaissance diplomat and writer Niccolò Machiavelli, who wrote The
Prince, among other works. In modern psychology, Machiavellianism is one of the dark triad personalities,
characterized by a duplicitous interpersonal style, a cynical disregard for morality and a focus on self-
interest and personal gain.[11]
In the 16th century, Machiavelli was excommunicated for espousing his views, but his arguments
had a profound effect on Renaissance attitudes toward government. In literature such as Renaissance drama,
the "machiavelle," or machiavellian villain, became a moustache-twirling stereotypical villain--the bad guy
who appears to be good in front of all his companions in order to betray them all the more effectively.
"Machiavellian" became a by-word for treachery, sneakiness, ambition, and ruthlessness.[4]
Over the years there have been many discussions about Machiavelli, his artwork and objectives of
the treatise The Prince. Critics have described Machiavelli as devil’s student or friend from hell. His works
are sometimes said to have contributed to the modern negative connotations of the words "politics" and
"politician", and it is sometimes thought that it is because of him that "Old Nick" became an English term
for the devil. Adjective Machiavellian became a pejorative term describing someone who aims to deceive
and manipulate others for personal advantage. Others have argued that his works have a moral foundation –
belief that evil and dishonesty can be justified with patriotic interests. [3]
Interpretations of The Prince from the 16th century to the 18th considered Machiavelli to be a
‘teacher of evil’ and often simply reduced his theories to this idea of ‘Machiavellianism’. His best known
treatise of The Prince has long associated Machiavelli’s name and work with the unscrupulous struggle for
political power, giving rise to the term of ‘Machiavellianism’ used in this respect. Anthony Parel (cited in
[10]) clarifies the relationship between Machiavelli and Machiavellianism; he differentiates ‘popular’ or
‘vulgar’ Machiavellianism and ‘philosophic’ Machiavellianism. Popular or vulgar Machiavellianism is
related to the type of political behavior that existed before Machiavelli and continues to exist independently
of him. In other words, with Machiavelli, we pass from the so-called vulgar Machiavellism to philosophic

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Machiavellism. Thus, in Machiavelli’s Machiavellism we can find not only an explanation of but also a
justification for culpable evil and injustice. As Parel asserts:
By a quirk of history, Machiavelli’s name has come to be associated with a certain kind of political
behavior, according to which rulers and politicians de facto act out of expediency, disregarding moral rules
and conscience, or with a devilish and manipulative cunning.
On the other hand, Parel clarifies that philosophical Machiavellianism is related to Machiavelli’s
philosophical explanation and justification for resorting to culpable evil and injustice as legitimate means of
achieving and defending certain political ends:[10]
A similar negative estimate of Machiavelli has continually persisted in the academic world, as well
as in everyday speech and popular consideration. There has been little change in Machiavelli’s reputation
with time, and the words ‘Machiavellian’ and ‘Machiavellianism’ still carry such implications in ordinary
and often in academic discourse today. Even more, encyclopaedias and dictionaries almost by rule use the
aforementioned clouded prism for explaining Machiavelli’s legacy.
Machiavelli’s works was understood to be a signal for numerous attacks against him; therein, both
political writers and dramatists from the 16th century and onward (including Shakespeare) used his name in
the sense of the negative syntagma of ‘Machiavellianism’. They consider Machiavelli as ‘an enemy of the
humanity’ and his book The Prince as the devil’s Bible which had been written by the devil’s hand.[10]
Strauss (cited in [10] maintains that the main connotation of The Prince has been diabolic and not
patriotic or scientific. He considers Machiavelli to be a ‘devil teacher’ of a ‘devil theory”:
Indeed, what other description would fit a man who teaches lessons like these: princes ought to
exterminate the families of rulers whose territory they wish to possess securely; princes ought to murder
their opponents rather than to confiscate their property since those who have been robbed, but not those
who are dead, can think of revenge; men forget the murder of their fathers sooner than the loss of their
patrimony ... If it is true that only evil man will stoop to teach maxims of public and private gangsterism, we
are forced to say that Machiavelli was an evil man.
Therefore it can be surmised that interpretations that reduce Machiavelli’s legacy to
‘Machiavellianism’ are found to remain dominant throughout the history of political and theoretical thought.
In this view Machiavelli is notorious as the classic of the evil way of political thinking and political acting.

Machiavellianism in Art and Politics

Immediately following the publication of The Prince, Machiavellianism was seen as a foreign plague
infecting northern European politics, originating in Italy, and having first infected France. It was in this
context that the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of 1572 in Paris came to be seen as a product of
Machiavellianism, a view greatly influenced by the Huguenot Innocent Gentillet, who published his
Discours contre Machievel in 1576, which was printed in ten editions in three languages over the next four
years. In fact there is little trace of Machiavelli in French writings before the massacre, not that politicians
telegraph their intentions in writing, until Gentillet's own book, but this concept was seized upon by many
contemporaries, and played a crucial part in setting the long-lasting popular concept of Machiavellianism.
[11]
One of the great critics of Machiavelli is Shakespeare. Shakespeare’s plays are filled with famous
Machiavellian villains—Lady Macbeth, Iago, Edmund. Think of King Lear, for example. There are a
number of characters in that play who have an explicitly Machiavellian cynicism about politics, who believe
that politics is nothing but efficacy, the will to power, naked ambition, pragmatism devoid of ethical
considerations. One such character is Edmund, the illegitimate son of Gloucester. Others are Lear’s two
daughters Regan and Goneril. And the other is, of course, Cornwall, Regan’s husband. That line is of what
Shakespeare envisioned as the tragedy of power, once it’s divorced from ethics. [8]
The English playwrights William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe were enthusiastic
proponents of this view. Shakespeare's Gloucester, later Richard III, refers to Machiavelli in Henry VI, Part
III, for instance:
I can add colors to the chameleon,
Change shapes with Proteus for advantages,
And set the murderous Machiavel to school.
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The Anti-Machiavel is an 18th-century essay by Frederick the Great, King of Prussia and patron of
Voltaire, rebutting The Prince, and Machiavellianism. It was first published in September 1740, a few
months after Frederick became king, and is one of many such works. Denis Diderot, the French philosopher,
viewed Machiavellianism as "an abhorrent type of politics" and the "art of tyranny."[11]
The influence of Machiavelli: Machiavelli’s ideas had a profound impact on political leaders
throughout the modern west, helped by the new technology of the printing press. English cardinal Reginald
Pole reported that The Prince was spoken of highly by Thomas Cromwell in England and had influenced
Henry VIII in his turn towards Protestantism, and in his tactics, for example during the Pilgrimage of Grace.
A copy was also possessed by the Catholic king and emperor Charles V. In France, after an initially mixed
reaction, Machiavelli came to be associated with Catherine de Medici (the queen of France) and the St
Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. As Bireley (1990:17) reports, in the 16th century, Catholic writers
"associated Machiavelli with the Protestants, whereas Protestant authors saw him as Italian and Catholic". In
fact, he was apparently influencing both Catholic and Protestant kings. During the first generations after
Machiavelli, his main influence was upon princes. One of the most important early works dedicated to
criticism of Machiavelli, especially The Prince, was that of the Huguenot, Innocent Gentillet, whose work
commonly referred to as Discourse against Machiavelli or Anti Machiavel was published in Geneva in 1576.
He accused Machiavelli of being an atheist and accused politicians of his time by saying that his works were
the "Koran of the courtiers", that "he is of no reputation in the court of France which hath not Machiavel’s
writings at the fingers ends". Another theme of Gentillet was more in the spirit of Machiavelli himself: he
questioned the effectiveness of immoral strategies, just as Machiavelli had himself done, despite also
explaining how they could sometimes work. This became the theme of much future political discourse in
Europe during the 17th century. Modern materialist philosophy developed in the 16th, 17th and 18th
centuries, starting in the generations after Machiavelli. This philosophy tended to be republican, more in the
original spirit of Machiavellian, but as with the Catholic authors Machiavelli’s realism and encouragement
of using innovation to try to control one’s own fortune were more accepted than his emphasis upon war and
politics. Not only was innovative economics and politics a result, but also modern science, leading some
commentators to say that the 18th century Enlightenment involved a "humanitarian" moderating of
Machiavellianism. Scholars have argued that Machiavelli was a major indirect and direct influence upon the
political thinking of the founding fathers of the United States. Benjamin Franklin, James Madison and
Thomas Jefferson followed Machiavelli’s republicanism when they opposed what they saw as the emerging
aristocracy that they feared Alexander Hamilton (the first United States Secretary of the Treasury, a
Founding Father, economist, and political philosopher) was creating with the Federalist Party. Hamilton
learned from Machiavelli about the importance of foreign policy for domestic policy, but may have broken
from him regarding how rapacious are public needed to be in order to survive. The 20th century Italian
Communist Antonio Gramsci drew great inspiration from Machiavelli’s writings on ethics, morals, and how
they relate to the State and revolution in his writings on Passive Revolution, and how a society can be
manipulated by controlling popular notions of morality.[3]

Machiavellianism in Psychology
Machiavellianism is also a term that some social and personality psychologists use to describe a
person's tendency to be unemotional, and therefore able to detach him or herself from conventional morality
and hence to deceive and manipulate others. In the 1960s, Richard Christie and Florence L. Geis developed
a test for measuring a person's level of Machiavellianism (sometimes referred to as the Machiavelli test).
Their Mach - IV test, a twenty-statement personality survey, became the standard self-assessment tool of
Machiavellianism. People scoring high on the scale (high Machs) tend to endorse statements such as, "Never
tell anyone the real reason you did something unless it is useful to do so," (No. 1) but not ones like, "Most
people are basically good and kind" (No. 4), "There is no excuse for lying to someone else," (No. 7) or
"Most people who get ahead in the world lead clean, moral lives" (No. 11). Using their scale, Christie and
Geis conducted multiple experimental tests that showed that the interpersonal strategies and behavior of
"High Machs" and "Low Machs" differ. Their basic results have been widely replicated. Measured on the
Mach - IV scale, males are, on average, slightly more Machiavellian than females.[11]

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A 1992 review described Machiavellian motivation as related to cold selfishness and pure
instrumentality, and those high on the trait were assumed to pursue their motives (e.g. sex, achievement,
sociality) in duplicitous ways. More recent research on the motivations of high Machs compared to low
Machs found that they gave high priority to money, power, and competition and relatively low priority to
community building, self-love, and family concerns. High Machs admitted to focusing on unmitigated
achievement and winning at any cost.[11]
Due to their skill at interpersonal manipulation, there has often been an assumption that high Machs
possess superior intelligence, or ability to understand other people in social situations. However, research
has firmly established that Machiavellianism is unrelated to IQ. Furthermore, studies on emotional
intelligence have found that high Machiavellianism actually tends to be associated with low emotional
intelligence as assessed by both performance and questionnaire measures. Both empathy and emotion
recognition have been shown to have negative correlations with Machiavellianism. Additionally, research
has shown that Machiavellianism is unrelated to a more advanced theory of mind, that is, the ability to
anticipate what others are thinking in social situations. If high Machs actually are skilled at manipulating
others this appears to be unrelated to any special cognitive abilities as such.[11]
Machiavellianism is one of the three personality traits referred to as the dark triad, along with
narcissism and psychopathy. Some psychologists consider Machiavellianism to be essentially a subclinical
form of psychopathy, although recent research suggests that while Machiavellianism and psychopathy
overlap, they are distinct personality constructs. Machiavellianism has been found to be negatively
correlated with Agreeableness (r = -0.47) and Conscientiousness (r = -0.34), two dimensions of the Big Five
personality model (NEO-PI-R). However, Machiavellianism correlates more highly with the Honesty-
humility dimension of the six-factor HEXACO model than with any of the Big Five dimensions.
Machiavellianism has also been located within the interpersonal circumplex, which consists of the two
independent dimensions of agency and communion. Agency refers to motivation to succeed and to
individuate the self, whereas communion refers to motivation to merge with others and to support group
interests. Machiavellianism lies in the quadrant of the circumplex defined by high agency and low
communion. Machiavellianism has been found to lie diagonally opposite from a circumplex construct called
self-construal, a tendency to prefer communion over agency. This suggests that people high in
Machiavellianism do not simply wish to achieve, they wish to do so at the expense of (or at least without
regard to) others.[11]
Machiavellianism in the Workplace
Machiavellianism in the workplace is the employment of cunning and duplicity in a business setting.
It is an increasingly studied phenomenon. The root of the concept of Machiavellianism is the book The
Prince by Machiavelli which lays out advice to rulers how to govern their subjects. Machiavellianism has
been studied extensively over the past 40 years as a personality characteristic that shares features with
manipulative leadership tactics. It has in recent times been adapted and applied to the context of the
workplace and organizations by many writers and academics. The Machiavellian typically only manipulates
on occasions where it is necessary to achieve the required objectives.[11]
Oliver James identifies Machiavellianism as one of the dark triadic personality traits in the
workplace, the others being narcissism and psychopathy. A new model of Machiavellianism based in
organizational settings consists of three factors:
1. Maintaining power
2. Harsh management tactics
3. Manipulative behaviors
The presence of Machiavellianism in an organization has been positively correlated with
counterproductive workplace behavior and workplace deviance.[11]
Conclusion
Perhaps one reason for Machiavelli’s continued reputation as devilish is that he made explicit and
even celebrated what we still today acknowledge only in our deepest subconscious, that declarations of
virtue and integrity are often grinning masks of deception. However, it is always as well to look beyond the
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surface appearance of something, to go beyond its initially obvious interpretation, to find the personal and
contextual motivation that inspired the ideas under consideration. In his dedication to The Prince
Machiavelli declared that ‘to comprehend the nature of the people, one must be a prince, and to comprehend
fully the nature of princes one must be an ordinary citizen’. In twenty-first century liberal democracy,
perhaps there is a little of the prince in everyone: it is only to be hoped that there is more than a little of the
people in today’s princely political elite.
Whatever we think of Machiavelli and this writings -- honest, satanic, truthful or harsh -- deep in our
hearts we know that he has chosen to openly describe the nasty realities of obtaining and keeping power,
whether your goal is to become head of your Girl Scouts troop, master of the children's shoe department
where you work, religious leader of your community, or general, Supreme Court judge or president of your
country. This is the real world, Machiavelli tells us, not some dreamy vision of how it should be. We may
not like it, we may even actively oppose it, but these are the rough realities of power politics.
Machiavelli alone cannot be responsible for what in any political reality could be characterized as
‘Machiavellianism’ in its ‘vulgar form’. Equally, what could be called ‘Machiavellianism’ in the real politics
of our own time has been the product of modern times; ‘vulgar Machiavellianism’ in the context of the
modern democratic politics cannot be the same as the one valid in Machiavelli’s age; insofar as by attacking
Machiavelli one cannot ‘save the world’ from the ‘Machiavellianism’ of modernity. Generally,
‘Machiavellianism’ in its ‘vulgar’ form has developed its own ‘life’ and doggedness independent from
Machiavelli’s own opus. This statement should be admitted in spite of the fact that Machiavelli himself
states that The Prince should or could be used as a concise manual, a handbook for those who would want to
acquire or increase their own political power. In fact, The Prince has actually been used as a handbook by
many kings, authoritarian rulers and modern dictators.
Finally, Machiavelli's political views are far too complex to be summed up in a few quick sentences.
One is much better served by reading The Prince and the Discourses on Livy and forming their own opinion.
Machiavelli is frequently cryptic and self-contradictory, and so understanding him means entering into a
dialogue with him and attempting to tease out the reasoning behind the apparent contradictions.
Bibliography
[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/obrien-browne/-machiavelli-and-the-roug_b_1407860.htm
[2] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/machiavelli/
[3] http://www.slideshare.net/MBAFuturis/analysis-of-power-competition-and-strategies-case-of-
machiavelli-the-prince
[4] https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/machiavelli.html
[5] http://classroom.synonym.com/beliefs-machiavelli-rulers-6516.html
[6] http://www.historytoday.com/vincent-barnett/niccolo-machiavelli-%E2%80%93-cunning-critic-
political-reason.
[7] http://robertjamesreese.com/essays/machiavellis-prince
[8] http://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/what-can-you-learn-Machiavelli
[9] http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/3v.htm
[10] http://psc.sagepub.com/content/40/1/43.full.pdf+html
[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machiavellianism
Remark: All websites have been seen between 10-20th of Dec. 2015

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