Machiavelli

1
Machiavelli

• The Prince

2
Renaissance Politics

• Same pattern and problems as those of the Greek
  city-states
• Inter-city warfare led to new advances in
  diplomacy
• -- balance of power
• Northern Italian communes

3
Historical Overview

• Niccolò Machiavelli (1469 1527)
• European Renaissance
• Declining power of Church
• Advancing in Science, Arts, Literature
• The Prince written in 1513 during period of
  political exile

4
Historical Overview

• Machiavelli Florence
• Medici family rules city
• French forces invade, set up republican
  government
• Machiavelli gets role in government, ends up as
  high civil servant, some diplomatic missions and
  military operations

5
Historical Overview

• Machiavelli Florence
• Spanish defeat the French, and reinstall the
  Medici
• Machiavelli is arrested, tortured, and eventually
  exiled to his country home beyond the city walls
• During this period he begins his
  philosophical/political writing, including The
  Prince

6
Historical Overview

• Machiavelli Florence
• Prince is dedicated to Lorenzo de Medici, the
  Magnificent
• But this Medici is the grandson of the founder of
  the Medici dynasty, Lorenzo il Magnifico, the
  genuine Lorenzo the Magnificent

7
Machiavelli Florence

• The Prince as extended job application?
• Two aims
• Secure a government job
• Provide recipe for stabilizing Italian city
  states to protect them from outside interference,
  whether civil or ecclesiastical

8
Human Nature and Power

• The desire to acquire is truly a very natural
  and common thing and whenever men who can, do
  so, they are praised and not condemned but when
  they cannot and want to do so just the same,
  herein lies the mistake and the condemnation.
  (Chapter 3).

9
Human Nature and Power

• Contrast with Greeks/Aquinas
• Implications?
• Human beings are selfish animals
• Need to construct a political life which is based
  on how people actually behave, not how we want
  them to be

10
Human Nature and Power

• Doesnt want to reject either rational politics
  (the Greeks) or religious salvation (the church)
  out of hand
• Rather, the goals of these two projects must come
  not from directives by external sources but
  through personal choices
• These personal choices will only come about if
  and when we appreciate the factors that motivate
  people in making their choices
• Each individual is fully responsible for his/her
  choices
• Each of us share this responsibility since we
  each share the same human nature

11
Human Nature and Power

• Power
• Machiavelli the first political thinker to focus
  on power as positive trait
• Simple recognition of the fact that the quest for
  power is an essential part of human nature
• Why?
• If we want to acquire possessions, then that
  implies that we also want the means to acquire
  those possessions
• Need to recognize that for rulers the study of
  power is vital how to acquire it, how to keep
  it, how to use it

12
Human Nature and Power

• for a man who wishes to profess goodness at all
  times will come to ruin among so many who are not
  good (chapter 15).

13
Human Nature and Power

• Indeed, Machiavelli asserts
• For one can generally say this about men they
  are ungrateful, fickle, simulators and deceivers,
  avoiders of danger, greedy for gain and while
  you work for their good they are completely
  yours, offering you their blood, their property,
  their lives, and their sons, as I said earlier,
  when danger is far away but when it comes nearer
  to you they turn away (chapter XVII).

14
Human Nature and Power

• So if a Prince or ruler wants to stay in power,
  he must
• Learn how not to be good, and to use this
  knowledge or not to use it according to
  necessity (chapter XV)
• What does this mean?
• Machiavelli is not advising us to behave badly
  simply for the sake of being evil

15

• Rather since we see power in political life we
  need to counsel rulers on how best to use it
• Basic advice, dont help others, be cruel,
  stingy, deceptive
• And get others to do the dirty work so you can
  escape blame
• You must, therefore, know that there are two
  means of fighting one according to the laws,
  the other with force the first way is proper to
  man, the second to beasts but because the first,
  in many cases is not sufficient, it becomes
  necessary to have recourse to the second
  (chapter XVIII).

16
Human Nature and Power
Since, then, a prince must know how to make good
use of the nature of the beast, he should choose
from among the beasts the

• fox and the lion for the lion cannot defend
  itself from traps and the fox cannot protect
  itself from wolves. It is therefore necessary to
  be a fox in order to recognize the traps and a
  lion in order to frighten the wolves.

17
Human Nature and Power

• Conclusion?
• In taking a state its conqueror should weigh all
  the harmful things he must do and do them all at
  once so as not to have to repeat them every day,
  and in not repeating them to be able to make men
  feel secure and win them over with the benefits
  he bestows upon them

18
Forms of Government

• What is the best way to maintain the state?
• What is the best form of government?
• What are the basic forms of government?