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Machiavelli

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Title: Machiavelli


1
Machiavelli
  • The Prince

2
Machiavellis The Prince
  • Historical Overview
  • Human Nature and Power
  • Fortune Virtue
  • Forms of Government

3
I. 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
Copernican Universe
5
I. 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

6
I. 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 (hes in his 40s) he begins
    his philosophical/political writing, including
    The Prince

7
I. 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

8
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

9
II. 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).

10
II. 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
  • But

11
II. 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

12
II. Human Nature and Power
  • 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

13
II. 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?

14
II. Human Nature and Power
  • 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

15
II. Human Nature and Power
  • Many writers have imagined for themselves
    republics and principalities that have never been
    seen nor known to exist in reality for there is
    such a gap between how one lives and how one
    ought to live that anyone who abandons what is
    done for what ought to be done learns his ruin
    rather than his preservation (chapter 15)

16
II. 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).

17
II. 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).

18
II. 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)

19
II. Human Nature and Power
  • What does this mean?
  • Machiavelli is not advising us to behave badly
    simply for the sake of being evil

20
II. Human Nature and Power
  • 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

21
II. Human Nature and Power
  • 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).

22
II. 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.

23
II. Human Nature and Power
  • Examples?
  • Chapter VII
  • Cesare Borgia acquired the state through the
    favour and help of his father, and when this no
    longer existed, he lost it, and this despite the
    fact that he did everything and used every means
    that a prudent and skilful man ought to use in
    order to root himself securely in those states
    that the arms and fortune of others had granted
    him

24
II. Human Nature and Power
  • Background here
  • Cesares father? Pope Alexander VI
  • The Pope put Cesare in charge of Florence, and
    issued a formal papal bull (order) authorizing
    him to expand the power of Florence
  • What were some of the means used by this
    prudent and skilful man?

25
II. Human Nature and Power
  • Later in the chapter we get one example
  • Borgia takes over Romagna, but is meeting
    resistance since it was ruled by powerless
    noblemen who had been quicker to despoil their
    subjects than to govern them, and gave them cause
    to disunite rather than to unite them

26
II. Human Nature and Power
  • He decided it was necessary to bring peace and
    obedience of the law and installed a man named
    Remirro de Orca, a cruel and efficient man to
    rule
  • Then, after the area was pacified, Borgia does
    the following

27
II. Human Nature and Power
  • Since he knew that the severities of the past
    had brought about a certain amount of hate, in
    order to purge the minds of those people and win
    them over completely, he planned to demonstrate
    that if cruelty of any kind had come about, it
    did not stem from him Borgia but rather from
    the bitter nature of the minister

28
II. Human Nature and Power
  • And having found the occasion to do this, he had
    him placed one morning in Cesena on the piazza in
    two pieces with a piece of wood and a
    bloodstained knife alongside him.

29
II. Human Nature and Power
  • The atrocity of such a spectacle left those
    people at one and the same time satisfied and
    stupefied.

30
II. Human Nature and Power
  • Story of Agathocles the Sicilian (chapter VIII)
  • Story of Oliverotto of Fermo (chapter VII)
  • Footnote
  • A year after the events described here (1512),
    Cesare had Fermo strangled and the corpse
    displayed on the main square of Senigallia for 3
    days

31
II. 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

32
II. Human Nature and Power
  • Machiavelli is not counseling the need to be
    cruel, nor denying that cruelty is sometimes
    useful, but rather showing how to limit its worst
    effects
  • The primary requirement for selfish individuals
    seeking personal goals is to enter into
    reciprocal relationships where each needs power
    or influence over the behavior of others

33
II. Human Nature and Power
  • In entering these relationships, all are equal in
    their selfishness, and all are free to seek power
  • Hes not saying that people will never act on the
    common good, only that they will do so only if
    they see an identity between their private
    interest and the common good

34
II. Human Nature and Power
  • Those who appear good or altruistic to others are
    either rational actors really motivated by desire
    for personal advantage, or ruled by laziness and
    retreating from their political responsibilities

35
II. Human Nature and Power
  • And it is essential to understand this that a
    prince, and especially a new prince, cannot
    observe all those things for which men are
    considered good, for in order to maintain the
    state he is often obliged to act against his
    promise, against charity, against humanity, and
    against religion

36
II. Human Nature and Power
  • And therefore, it is necessary that he have a
    mind ready to turn itself according to the way
    the winds of fortune and the changeability of
    affairs require him and, as I said above, as
    long as it is possible, he should not stray from
    the good, but he should know how to enter into
    evil when necessity commands (Chapter XVIII).

37
III. Fortune and Virtue
  • But what happens if you follow Machiavellis
    principles?
  • Is success guaranteed
  • Recall the passage about Cesare Borgia, the model
    for much of Machiavellis discussion

38
III. Fortune and Virtue
Cesare Borgia acquired the state through the
favour and help of his father, and when this no
longer existed, he lost it, and this despite the
fact that he did everything and used every means
that a prudent and skilful man ought to use in
order to root himself securely in those states
that the arms and fortune of others had granted
him (emphasis added)
39
III. Fortune and Virtue
  • Machiavelli recognizes that sometimes, despite
    the best planning, education, and skill, events
    still turn out badly
  • That is, fortune or luck is also a part of our
    political life

40
III. Fortune and Virtue
  • Chapter XXV
  • I judge it to be true that fortune is the
    arbiter of one half of our actions, but that she
    still leaves the control of the other half, or
    almost that, to us.
  • Flooding river analogy

41
III. Fortune and Virtue
  • What to do?
  • Follow Machiavellis prescriptions. That is,
    learn the virtues of ruling
  • I also believe that the man who adapts his
    course of action to the nature of the times will
    succeed and, likewise, that the man who sets his
    course of action out of tune with the times will
    come to grief (XVIII).

42
III. Fortune and Virtue
  • In other words, a good ruler is one who can adapt
    to changing circumstances
  • It means knowing when to be cautious and
    hesitant, or bold and forceful, as the occasion
    demands.

43
III. Fortune and Virtue
  • Knowing what to do and when to do it is part of
    Machiavellis understanding of virtue
  • Unlike the ancient philosophers or Christian
    theologians, virtue is divorced from the idea of
    a code of conduct, of good versus bad ways of
    acting

44
III. Fortune and Virtue
  • Instead, for Machiavelli, virtue is
    individualistic contra the Greeks and Romans
    and secular contra the Church
  • Not some idealistic merit or moral goodness, but

45
III. Fortune and Virtue
  • A true selfishness that enables individuals to
    get what they value, whether power, wealth, fame,
    etc.
  • Those who get what they seek have demonstrated
    their virtue and they are judged, in
    Machiavellis criteria, as good.
  • By adapting by adjusting cunning and strength,
    by following the fox and the lion a virtuous
    ruler is one who can see trouble on the horizon
    (the work of fortune) and act rather than be
    taken off-guard by changing events

46
III. Fortune and Virtue
  • Because a political state is passive (events
    happen to it), it needs constant attention
    devoted to creating order and avoiding disorder

47
IV. 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?

48
IV. Forms of Government
  • Unlike Aristotle, Machiavelli argues that
    basically we have two forms
  • Republic
  • Monarchy
  • All the states, all the dominions that have had
    and still have power over men, were and still are
    either republics or principalities (first
    sentence, Chapter 1)

49
IV. Forms of Government
  • But throughout The Prince, that distinction blurs
    a bit, with monarchies or civic principalities
    ending up looking very similar to republics
  • The real distinction is then between republics
    and tyrannies (i.e., those monarchies or
    principalities which differ from republics).

50
IV. Forms of Government
  • Republics
  • Founded by a strong, inspirational leader
    rallying the citizenry
  • Based on law
  • Governed in the interest of the majority, not of
    a special elite
  • Mixed class members of all classes have
    opportunity to participate

51
IV. Forms of Government
  • Note, republics require a special citizenry
    active, engaged, public spirited
  • Unlikely to have those conditions in every area,
    so tyranny is inevitable

52
IV. Forms of Government
  • Tyrannies
  • Masses are subjects, not active participants in
    political life
  • Ruling classes enjoy more liberty, and when
    interests of rulers conflict with liberty of the
    masses, the rulers prevail

53
IV. Forms of Government
  • The masses are content with this arrangement
    since they recognize that without the ruler,
    anarchy would ensue, or
  • Theyre content because they are either fearful
    or awestruck of the powers that be

54
IV. Forms of Government
  • Lacking the virtue of citizens in a republic, the
    masses under tyrannical regimes both merit and
    need tyranny
  • And when a tyrant is stuck governing a bunch of
    corrupt, vulgar masses who lack virtue, then
    ordinary morality is not binding and he/she/they
    can pretty much do what they must to stay in power

55
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