Nicolas Machiavel
Power is judged by its effects, not good intentions.
Nicolas Machiavel (1469 – 1527, Florence) : political realism and humanism. To speak usefully about politics, we must start from how people really live, not how they ought to live. Machiavelli draws hard advice from this for a new prince: know how not to be good when the survival of the State requires it. On AskPhilosophy: 4 reconstructed arguments, 4 quotes checked word for word against the original texts, and 3 common beliefs examined; every text carries an authenticity badge (written by the author, posthumous, student notes, reported, apocryphal).
Why he matters
He separates the study of power from moral lessons: he is often seen as the founder of modern political science. His name became an adjective ("Machiavellian"), though his texts are more nuanced than his reputation. Rousseau, Spinoza, Gramsci and modern republicans read him as a thinker of liberty.
His times
A senior official of the Florentine republic from 1498 to 1512, he met kings, popes and Cesare Borgia on missions. When the Medici returned he was dismissed, imprisoned and tortured, then withdrew to his small farm near Florence. There he wrote the Prince (1513) and the Discourses. Italy was then divided and invaded by France and Spain.
His positions
click a row to see the evidenceHe writes that "our religion has shown us the truth and the true path", and accuses the Church of Rome of making Italians "irreligious". But he mostly judges religion by its effects on the city, and what he really believed is still debated.
His knowledge comes from two sources: long experience of the affairs of his time and continual reading of the Ancients. He reasons through examples drawn from history.
He gives "general rules", but almost always with a qualification ("never or rarely"). Fortune makes the future partly unpredictable.
He does not discuss the question of soul and body.
So that our free will is not extinguished, he grants that fortune decides half our actions and leaves us the other half. But he adds that we can hardly change our nature.
He never says good and evil are conventions: he calls evil "evil" and asks the prince not to depart from the good when he can. But in politics, the survival of the State may come before just and unjust.
He examines religion as a historian: wise lawgivers have recourse to God to get their laws accepted, and religion well observed makes States great.
He does not raise the question. He values glory, the fatherland and, for himself, the study of the Ancients, "the food that alone is mine".
Men are "more prone to evil than to good" and the lawgiver must assume them wicked. But good laws can make them good, and a people ruled by laws is better than a prince.
What makes cities great is the common good, not private good. His liberty is that of a people not dominated, more than that of the individual against the State.
He builds no moral theory. In politics he judges actions by their effects: violence that founds or repairs is excused by its result, violence that destroys is blamed. But he refuses to call "virtue" the crime that only brings power.