Niccolò Machiavelli
Thinker · 1469-1527 · Politics, stage 3: Meet the thinkers
Separated the question of how to hold power from the question of how a ruler ought to behave.
Overview
Machiavelli spent fourteen years as a senior official of the Florentine republic, and was dismissed, imprisoned and tortured when the Medici returned to power; he wrote his political works in enforced retirement. The Prince asks what a ruler must actually do to acquire and keep a state, and answers that a ruler who is good in the conventional sense among people who are not will be destroyed. Its reputation for cynicism comes from that refusal to describe politics as it ought to be. The Discourses on Livy, written in the same years and far less read, argues for republics over principalities and treats the conflict between the people and the nobility in Rome as a source of liberty rather than of disorder. Read The Prince first, then the Discourses, which is where the republican Machiavelli is found.
Where to start reading
The Prince 1532
Written in 1513 and published after his death: a short handbook on acquiring and holding a state, addressed to a ruler and judged by results rather than by virtue.
Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius 1531
A long commentary on early Roman history, arguing that a republic with open conflict between classes outlasts and outperforms a principality.
Part of
Sources
- Niccolò Machiavelli Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Machiavelli, Niccolò Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
