Machiavelli

A Beginner's Guide

Cary J. Nederman

• Publisher: Oneworld Publications
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781780741642
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Liberal thinker or immoral pragmatist? You decide… Machiavelli has been among the most commented upon, criticized and feared thinkers of the modern world. Infamous for his support of brutality and repression as valid political instruments, he is often portrayed as the pantomime villain of political theorists. In this whirlwind tour of Machiavelli's writings and eventful life, Nederman highlights the complexities in his thought, showing that he actually advocated democracy as much as dictatorship, debate as much as violence, depending upon prevailing political conditions.

1

Politician/author

For a man whose career and writings were to become so widely known and controversial, Niccolò Machiavelli’s personal origins were relatively modest and inauspicious. He was born on 3 May 1469 into a once powerful and prestigious Florentine family that had fallen on hard times. His father, Bernardo, had studied law but apparently practiced his profession little or never. Rather, the family relied on a small and not especially productive farm for its main source of income, although Machiavelli and his parents and siblings (two older sisters and a younger brother) were probably raised primarily in an ancestral compound, composed of a set of small apartments, in the Santo Spirito quarter of urban Florence. (The farm still stands, but the Machiavelli complex in the city was destroyed during World War II bombing.)

Not a great deal is known for certain about Machiavelli’s early life, but the discovery in the mid-twentieth century of his father’s diary (more a notebook of accounts and possessions) gives us some idea of his daily circumstances. Bernardo quite clearly struggled to make ends meet and was constantly burdened with debt, which gave him no end of trouble. Most usefully for us, he recorded in his diary his acquisition of printed books and manuscripts, for despite his economic straits he was an inveterate collector and accumulated a library that, while small by contemporary standards, was substantial for someone of his means. All told, he mentions twenty-seven volumes in his library, some of which he purchased, while others he borrowed. Given his training as a lawyer, it is unsurprising that many of these were legal tomes – both books of classical Roman law and works of more recent vintage, including an expensive edition of Gratian’s masterwork of church (canon) law, the Decretum. He also came to possess translations of and commentaries on Aristotle’s writings, as well as a number of Latin classics on history, rhetoric, philosophy, and natural science, either through purchase or on loan. When he could not afford to buy or manage to borrow a volume, he combed libraries to which he was given access or even engaged in bartering his labor to acquire a book (he once indexed Livy’s writings for a printer in return for a copy of the volume). Bernardo was evidently an aspiring bibliophile, and his eldest son would naturally have been exposed from a very young age to a wide range of literature as a consequence.

In light of his father’s literary aspirations, Machiavelli apparently received from an early date as broad an education as the family could afford, initially from two unknown tutors and then as a pupil of a more renowned Latin teacher, Paolo da Ronciglione. It appears that he attended the Studio Fiorentino (the precursor of the University of Florence), and may have acquired a reputation in his youth for his poetry. Beyond these meager facts, all we have is speculation. Of course, even a cursory glance at his corpus reveals that he received the rudiments of a broad humanistic education in the Greek, Roman, and vernacular classics of poetry and prose typical of the Italian Renaissance. Machiavelli’s writings do not assist us very much, however, in recovering the specifics of the curriculum he followed. That he knew most of the important classical Latin authors – rhetoricians, historians, orators, and philosophers – is clear enough from direct or oblique references to them throughout his works. He also shows familiarity with the main philosophers and historians of Greek antiquity (albeit probably in translation), as well as with the major pre-humanists (such as Dante and Petrarch) and humanist authors writing in Italian and Latin between 1300 and 1500.

Political career

It is not until the later 1490s that events in Machiavelli’s life become better documented. His mother, Bartolomea (neé di Stifano Nelli), about whom very few facts are known, died in 1496 (Bernardo was to follow in 1500). By this date, his sisters had long been married off and his brother was preparing for the priesthood. Machiavelli himself had probably shifted his focus from his education at the Studio to service at the lowest rungs of the Florentine government, the details of which are not recorded. While clearly a man of some erudition, he thrived first and foremost in the world of public affairs. Once he received appointment as the Second Chancellor of the Republic of Florence in June 1498, we receive a fuller and less speculative picture of his life. The Second Chancery was one of the two central professional administrative bodies of Florence, so that Machiavelli’s headship of it placed him at the nexus of political and bureaucratic power. Technically responsible for supporting the elected government of Florence and its leaders in domestic affairs, the Second Chancery in fact overlapped in its activities so greatly with the slightly more prestigious First Chancery (supposedly the diplomacy branch) that by Machiavelli’s day there was no evident division of labor between them. The position was not only powerful, it was highly lucrative; all that was required of Machiavelli to retain it (the job had an initial two-year term, with annual reappointment thereafter) was to remain in the good graces of the Florentine government by serving it efficiently. While Machiavelli’s selection for the office might seem surprising for a previously obscure civil servant, his distance from the preceding regime of the Medici family, his father’s reputation, and no doubt his own networking skills all played important roles.

To appreciate the climate within which Machiavelli’s political career was shaped, we need to survey briefly the political landscape of Italy around 1500. The peninsula was dotted with dozens of semi-autonomous city states, ruled either by dynastic clans (such as the Medici family in Florence) or by some form of self-governing quasi-popular body styled after the traditions of the ancient republics (and especially Rome). These city states entered into an intricate and ever-shifting set of political and military alliances and pacts, built around the four ‘great powers’ of northern and central Italy: the Duchy of Milan, the Republic of Venice, the city of Florence, and the Roman Papacy. The major players on the Italian scene in turn often depended on the resources of other European states – France, Spain, and the Holy Roman Empire, most especially – in order to achieve their strategic goals. Florence had been governed by a republican constitution since 1494, when the ruling Medici family and its supporters were driven from power as the result of a complex set of military and political machinations occasioned by the invasion of the French king Charles VIII. While the Florentine Republic initially was under the sway of the charismatic preacher Fra Giralamo Savonarola, his execution in 1498 paved the way for a more stable form of self-government to emerge.

Machiavelli was thrust to the fore as one of the leading magistrates of the post-Savonarolan republic. In his role as Secretary, his duties alternated between planning the city’s military strategy and engaging in diplomacy. As a diplomat, in particular, Machiavelli seems to have excelled. During the next few years, he traveled widely, representing Florence and her interests to the major leaders of Italy as well as to the royal court of France and to the Holy Roman imperial curia of Maximilian. In his various diplomatic capacities, he observed many of the famous and infamous figures of early sixteenth-century Europe, including those (such as King Louis XII of France, Cesare Borgia, and Pope Julius II) who became central objects of study in his political works.

The large body of Machiavelli’s existing diplomatic correspondence, dispatches, and essays of commentary from these early years testifies to the facility with which he handled his delicate political assignments, not to mention his shrewd talent for understanding and analyzing the personalities and institutions with which he came into contact. These writings also provide important source materials that Machiavelli mined as examples for his political reflections in his theoretical writings. We find in them an appraisal of the tactics used by successful governments as well as recommendations for how the political masters of Florence might best ensure the city’s safety in the midst of the diplomatic and military posturing of its friends and enemies. From the first phase of his career (1497/8–1502), we also have roughly fifty letters between Machiavelli and his intimate friends, a number that multiplies exponentially in subsequent years. In this correspondence, we encounter the usual reports of daily events that we might expect, but also some insightful reflections on the rough-and-tumble world of politics as he experienced it and on the relation between his personal observations and his education in history and philosophy. Even today, these letters make for fascinating reading.

In between his extensive travels, Machiavelli managed to woo and wed Marietta Corsini, the daughter of a family similarly positioned on the social and economic ladder to his own. Details about this union are obscure, but the marriage seems to have occurred in the second half of 1501. In rapid order Marietta bore Machiavelli a daughter, Primerana, and a son, Bernardo, and eventually five more children, even though he continued to leave Florence for long periods of time on diplomatic missions (and also continued to indulge his widely known penchant for womanizing). How much genuine affection he had for his wife, as opposed to a sense of patrimonial duty to reproduce his dynasty, is an open question, but they remained a couple until his death.

As the sixteenth century dawned, Machiavelli’s political star rose even higher into the firmament. In 1502, the Florentine Republic’s Great Council authorized a constitutional restructuring that created the executive position of gonfaloniere (or chief administrator for life), to which Machiavelli’s patron and mentor, Piero Soderini, was appointed. During the following decade, Machiavelli thrived and his influence and prestige grew. Soderini relied upon Machiavelli’s advice for a number of political enterprises and added to his authority by appointing him Secretary of two august committees, initially the Ten of War (the Florentine body charged with coordinating matters of the city’s relations with foreign powers), and later the Nine of the Militia. In performing these duties, Machiavelli is commonly credited with reviving the Florentine militia as an alternative to the city’s long-standing reliance on allies and mercenaries for troops. He pushed this plan and recruited his fellow citizens tirelessly. He also pursued an ambitious (and eventually unsuccessful) plan to redirect the River Arno as part of a Florentine siege of Pisa, an enterprise apparently suggested and designed by Leonardo da Vinci, with whom Machiavelli collaborated closely. Nor did he cease his diplomatic activities, traveling to leading secular courts as well as to the papal curia. One senses that he was a primary source of many of Florence’s important initiatives throughout the first decade of the sixteenth century, enjoying the complete trust and backing of his political master, Soderini, even when his ambitious enterprises did not succeed.

At the same time, Machiavelli’s growing influence and authority drew him into conflict with some of the leading citizens of Florence. He increasingly engaged in political and personal bickering with those who opposed his plans, including individuals whom he had previously counted among his friends. The evidence suggests that this was not sheer jealousy on their part, but rather that Machiavelli himself did much to alienate powerful men by pushing forward with his own agenda and refusing to adopt a conciliatory attitude toward their objections. Perhaps with his exalted position, his head swelled and he developed what political pundits today call the ‘arrogance of power’. Nor did Machiavelli do anything to deflect opportunities for an expanding number of enemies to attack him, especially in regard to his personal affairs. He frequented prostitutes and then bragged of his escapades in correspondence to friends. He likely kept mistresses in the cities to which he regularly traveled. Of course, such behavior was hardly unknown at the time on the part of many persons occupying high office. Still, his open flaunting of sexual conventions made him an easy target – an anonymous accusation forwarded to the Florentine judiciary in 1510 called upon him to be investigated for engaging in anal intercourse with one well-known prostitute – to the point where his friend Giovan Battista Soderini, a nephew of Piero, counseled him not ‘to fool around too much’ (MF, p. 137). Whatever the merits of the gossip and the charges against him (which were evidently not vigorously pursued by the authorities), Machiavelli came to be regarded with suspicion.

In the event, Machiavelli’s political star fell almost as rapidly as it rose. In August 1512, guided by Pope Julius II and with the assistance of Spanish troops, Medici forces defeated the Republic’s citizen army and immediately forced dissolution of the government. Machiavelli helped draft Piero Soderini’s resignation letter and assisted his former mentor into exile. In turn, Machiavelli himself became a direct victim of the regime change. After having sent several cautionary letters of advice to the returned ruling family, he was removed from his position in the Chancery and placed in a form of internal exile in early November 1512. Worse still, in February 1513, he was imprisoned and tortured for several weeks as a result of (incorrect) suspicions about his involvement in a conspiracy against the Medici. Released a few weeks later when it became clear that he was ignorant of the plot, Machiavelli was forty-three years old and thrust down from the high office that he had so cherished.

Author of The Prince

Machiavelli’s enforced retirement to his farm outside Florence afforded the occasion and the impetus for him to turn to literary pursuits. The first of his major writings from this period of political exile is also ultimately the one most often associated with his name: The Prince. Written during the latter part of 1513 (and perhaps early 1514), but only published posthumously in 1532, 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 who had held office during the republican period were quickly rehabilitated and returned to service under the Medici.) In a letter to his friend and former colleague Francesco Vettori, dated 10 December 1513, Machiavelli describes his composition of ‘a short study, De principatibus’ (referring to the original Latin title of The Prince, a common generic term for rule by one man), which sets out to ‘discuss what a principality is, how many different types there are, how they are gained, how they are held, why they are lost’ (MF, p. 264). Machiavelli denies that its main teachings are directly his own, but instead reflect his gleanings from a nightly imagined ‘conversation’ among members of ‘the ancient courts of the men of old,’ who invite him to listen in to their discourses and who even permit their guest ‘to ask them why they acted as they did, and out of kindness they respond’ (MF, p. 264). In the same letter, Machiavelli debates the pros and cons of presenting the results to the new head of the Florentine wing of the Medici, Giuliano de’Medici. He feared that the book might not be read by its intended audience and would instead fall into the hands of his enemies, who could use it against him. Whether before or after Giuliano’s death in early 1516, Machiavelli apparently decided to pursue formal presentation and wrote the letter of dedication that we now possess to the subsequent Medici lord, Lorenzo de’Medici, who almost certainly did not read it when it finally came into his hands.

Scholars have disagreed about whether The Prince, in the version that has been bequeathed to us, represents a work that Machiavelli polished and added to throughout his life. Thus, for instance, some have argued the twenty-sixth and final chapter, calling upon the Medici family to unite Italy while driving out the foreign troops housed on Italian soil, constitutes an addition that reflects later events. There are, however, many good reasons to believe that the work was conceived and composed as a totality; certainly, its rhetorical development and logical structure are tightly arranged. Whatever editorial grooming Machiavelli performed on the body of his text beyond early 1514 or so was largely cosmetic.

It is commonplace, and not entirely inaccurate, to say that Machiavelli wrote The Prince as a sort of extended job application, a résumé in support of his effort to rehabilitate himself politically. From first to last, he promises to reveal ‘hidden knowledge’ about how its princely reader might learn to govern successfully (especially as a ‘new’ ruler) that no other counselor would teach. We know from his letters that almost immediately after he was sacked in 1512, and for the rest of his life, he engaged in a non-stop campaign to return to active service in Florentine government. The Prince may rightly be understood as one prong in this pursuit. Yet even after he had finished writing the main part of the treatise, as he expressed in his letter to Vettori, Machiavelli remained ambivalent about whether he should in fact present it to the ruling Medici house. Perhaps he was scared that his ideas were too novel, too extreme, for the audience he envisioned to appreciate.

The Prince, and Machiavelli with it, have stood accused over the centuries of taking a ‘cold-blooded’, ‘cynical’, even ‘evil’, stance about the vicissitudes of politics. The immediate circumstances of its composition perhaps justify Machiavelli in adopting such a tone. Yet the work, although written quickly and in the heat of the moment, is far more complex than a simple characterization suggests, representing the distillation of nearly two decades of political experience as well as the benefits of a solid humanist education. In particular, Machiavelli challenges the common view among political philosophers that there exists a special relationship between moral goodness and legitimate authority. Many authors (especially those who composed mirror-of-princes books or royal advice books during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, a genre that The Prince is very carefully designed to satirize) believed that the use of political power was only rightful if it was exercised by a ruler whose personal moral character was strictly virtuous. Thus rulers were counseled that if they wanted to succeed – that is, if they desired a long and peaceful reign and aimed to pass their office down to their offspring – they must be sure to behave in accordance with conventional standards of ethical goodness. In a sense, it was thought that rulers did well when they did good; they earned the right to be obeyed and respected inasmuch as they showed themselves to be spiritually and morally upright.

It is precisely this moralistic view of authority that Machiavelli criticizes at length in The Prince. 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 which is meant the right to rule) 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.

The political theory contained in The Prince, then, 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. According to Machiavelli, 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. 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 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 the agreement to obey is freely chosen and that one could meaningfully have done otherwise. Consequently, the perspective articulated in The Prince stands at some considerable remove from traditional teachings about why people ought to obey law. For Machiavelli, people are compelled to obey purely in deference to the superior power of the state. If a person thinks that he should not obey a particular law, what eventually leads him to ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication page
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• 1 Politician/author
• 2 Heavens/earth
• 3 Nature/innovation
• 4 Violence/law
• 5 Security/liberty
• 6 Reception/reputation
• Select bibliography
• Index