QuestionsWhat makes something right?Learning how not to be good
What makes something right?Consequences

Learning how not to be good

Niccolò Machiavelli 1469 · 1527Power is judged by its effects, not good intentions.
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What it claims

A prince who wants to maintain himself must learn how not to be good, and use this or not according to necessity: not depart from the good if he can, but know how to enter into evil if compelled.

Why

Whoever tries to be good in everything among men who are not will be ruined, and the state with him.

In short

"Learning how not to be good" is an argument by Niccolò Machiavelli (The Prince, 15 and 18) on the question "What makes something right?" (answer: consequences). Its claim: A prince who wants to maintain himself must learn how not to be good, and use this or not according to necessity: not depart from the good if he can, but know how to enter into evil if compelled. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P3). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 1 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

The Prince, 15 and 18
Valid with an implicit premise

Machiavelli announces that he will depart from the authors before him: he wants to follow the "effective truth" of things, not the picture people make of them. His thesis is not that evil is good. It is that a prince who wants to keep the State must know how to do evil when compelled, without departing from the good when he can.

P1How we live is far from how we ought to live. Looking at people as they really live, many are not good.
P2Whoever wants to be good in everything and everywhere cannot fail to perish among so many who are not.
P3 · implicit premiseFor a prince, maintaining the State comes before his own moral purity: his ruin would also be the ruin of the State and of those who depend on it.
P4A prince who must maintain the State, and whom goodness in everything would lead to ruin, is often forced to act against his word, charity, humanity, religion.
Therefore a prince who wants to maintain himself must learn how not to be good, and use this or not according to necessity: not depart from the good if he can, but know how to enter into evil if compelled.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P3, the computer finds a case where people are not good and goodness in everything leads to ruin, but the prince is not bound to learn evil: it is enough that he prefers to stay just, even at the cost of losing power.
With P3 the conclusion follows, and every premise is essential. In the Prince, P3 stays implicit: Machiavelli only writes "if he wants to maintain himself". He says it openly elsewhere, about the fatherland (Discourses, III, 41): when the safety of the fatherland is at stake, no consideration of just or unjust must intervene. This is the premise the moral objections (Augustine, Kant) target. P1 and P2 are observations about people; one can dispute them, but the dispute is then about facts.
Analogy. A ship's captain never lies. One day pirates ask him where the passengers are hidden. Telling the truth means handing them over. Machiavelli thinks a captain who always refuses to lie is not fit to command a ship among pirates. His opponents answer: and who decides there are pirates?

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Objection anticipated by Machiavelli attacks premise 2

Everyone understands how praiseworthy it is for a prince to keep his word and live with integrity, without craft.

Machiavel replies
Machiavel
Yet the experience of our time shows that the princes who have done great things have held their word of little account, have known how to deceive minds by craft, and have in the end overcome those who relied on loyalty.
A
Augustine 415 · attacks premise 3

Justice taken away, what are kingdoms but great robberies? A State that maintains itself only by giving up justice does not deserve to be maintained: it differs from a band of pirates only in size.

no reply
We have not yet found a direct reply by Machiavel in the texts.
The debate goes on (our summary) Machiavelli does not cite this passage. He grants, though (Prince, 8), that killing one's fellow citizens or betraying one's friends can win power, not glory. For Augustine that is not enough: it is not glory but justice that distinguishes a kingdom from a band of robbers.
Kant 1795 · attacks premise 4

In Perpetual Peace (Appendix I), Kant contrasts the moral politician, who subordinates politics to right, with the political moralist, who fashions a morality to suit the interests of power. The "necessity" invoked is usually a pretext: politics must bow before right, never the reverse.

no reply
No reply possible: objection raised in 1795, after the author's death (1527).