Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli (3 May 1469 – 21 June 1527) was a Florentine diplomat, author, philosopher, and historian who lived during the Italian Renaissance. He is best known for his political treatise The Prince (Il Principe), written around 1513 but not published until 1532, five years after his death. He has often been called the father of modern political philosophy and political science.
For many years he served as a senior official in the Florentine Republic with responsibilities in diplomatic and military affairs. He worked as secretary to the second chancery of the Republic of Florence from 1498 to 1512, when the Medici were out of power. He would be expelled from his duties as a diplomat when the Medici retook power in Florence in 1512, and soon thereafter would be mistakenly suspected of treason, and sent into exile. A year later, he would take up the life of a political writer.
After his death Machiavelli's name came to evoke unscrupulous acts of the sort he recommended in his most famous work, The Prince. In the treatise, Machiavelli stated that rulers will have to take on unsavory policies in the furtherance of their political society, in contradiction to classical political thought. He advised rulers to engage in evil when political necessity requires it, for example, stating that successful founders and reformers of governments should be excused for killing their political enemies. Machiavelli's Prince has been surrounded by controversy since it was published, with many commentators viewing The Prince as a manual that aims to teach would-be tyrants how they should seize authority and establish an absolute regime. Even into recent times, scholars such as Leo Strauss have restated the traditional opinion that Machiavelli was a "teacher of evil".
Even though Machiavelli has become most famous for his work on principalities, scholars also give attention to the exhortations in his other works of political philosophy. The Discourses on Livy (composed c. 1517) has been said to have paved the way for modern republicanism. His works were a major influence on Enlightenment authors who revived interest in classical republicanism, such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and James Harrington. Machiavelli's philosophical contributions have influenced generations of philosophers, academics and politicians, with many of them debating the nature of his ideas.
Life
Niccolò Machiavelli was born in Florence, Italy, the third child and first son of attorney Bernardo di Niccolò Machiavelli and his wife, Bartolomea di Stefano Nelli, on 3 May 1469. The Machiavelli family were a second rate elite Florentine family in the late 13th to 14th centuries, and likely originated south of Florence near Giogoli and later became substantial landowners around Sant’Andrea in Percussina, possibly descending from minor feudal nobility in the Val di Pesa. Machiavelli's father, Bernardo, was born illegitimately and thus could not become a full citizen of Florence, nor could he participate in Florentine politics. This affected Niccolo as well, who himself could not obtain full citizenship rights. Not much is known about Machiavelli's early life, thus one of the main sources that historians rely on regarding his experiences during his childhood and adolescence exists in his father's diary, often referred to as Libro di Ricordi, found in the 20th century. His family was a massive influence on his life, and it is said that it was his father which influenced Machiavelli with his later preference in adulthood for a republican form of government. There isn't much known about Machiavelli's mother as few facts have been found about her life by historians. There are no surviving letters or written accounts to describe her or her life.
Machiavelli was born and raised in a tumultuous era. Machiavelli was nine years old when a conspiracy by the illustrious Pazzi family was hatched which aimed to assassinate both Lorenzo and Giuliano de' Medici in a church. The leaders of the conspiracy were arrested and hanged. As a young man he would listen, but not be swayed by, the lengthy sermons of Girolamo Savonarola. Machiavelli stated that Savonarola colored his "untruths" according to the situation. Machiavelli's civil service would begin shortly after Savonarola was burned at the stake for heresy.
Machiavelli was taught grammar, rhetoric, and Latin by his teacher, Paolo da Ronciglione. It is unknown whether Machiavelli knew Greek; Florence was at the time one of the centers of Greek scholarship in Europe. In 1494 Florence restored the republic, expelling the Medici family that had ruled Florence for some sixty years.
Diplomatic career
Shortly after the execution of Savonarola, Machiavelli was appointed to an office of the second chancery, a medieval writing office that put Machiavelli in charge of the production of official Florentine government documents. Shortly thereafter, he was also made the secretary of the Dieci di Libertà e Pace, the Florentine council responsible for diplomacy and warfare. His appointment remains a mystery to scholars as he was a very young man, 29 at the time, with no experience in law or public office.
Machiavelli was originally a middle rank civil servant after Savonarola's death, however, his duties and his position within the Florentine Republic would rise during Piero Soderini's tenure as gonfaloniere of the republic. He was very crucial to Soderini's government, essentially acting as his right-hand man, which led many of Machiavelli's contemporaries to view him as a mere extension of Soderini's orders. This led to jealousy within many factions of the Florentine Republic, and Machiavelli was often the subject of much gossip by some of his colleagues. Because he was head of the Chancery of the Ten, this gave him a leading role in the government. He would be dispatched to the courts of various powerful rulers and personally represent Florence during these excursions. Like other chancery officials, he was given the task of preparing documents, ususally in the form of letters sent on behalf of the Signoria.
Machiavelli married Marietta Corsini in 1501. They had seven children, five sons and two daughters: Primerana, Bernardo, Lodovico, Guido, Piero, Baccina and Totto.
Machiavelli's first diplomatic missions occurred in 1499, where he was sent to the respective courts of Iacopo di Appiano in Piombino, and Caterina Sforza in Forli. His first major mission was to France in order to placate King Louis XII, and to provide reasons for the failed Florentine assault at Pisa. During the French mission he met and had discussions with Georges d'Amboise, who was the cardinal of Rouen, an experience he would later discuss in his political works.
Machiavelli's position as a secretary enabled him to witness firsthand the state-building methods of the Pope Alexander VI, and his son, Cesare Borgia. Machiavelli often wrote highly about Cesare, stating in one letter that "this lord is splendid and magnificent", and that his pursuit of glory he "knows neither danger or fatigue". Machiavelli personally witnessed the brutal retribution Cesare Borgia inflicted on his rebellious commanders, Oliverotto Euffreducci and Vitellozzo Vitelli in Sinigaglia on 31 December 1502, an event he famously chronicled in a political work, The Description. In many of his early writings, Machiavelli emphasized the danger of offending a ruler and then expecting to trust him afterward. In 1503, Machiavelli was dispatched to Rome to observe the papal conclave that ultimately selected Julius II, who was a bitter rival of the Borgia family, as pope, despite Cesare's support for his election. As Cesare's power waned, Machiavelli documented his downfall in his poem First Decennale.
Machiavelli was also a witness to Pandolfo Petrucci's consolidation of his rule in Siena, later noting in his works that he "governed his state more with those who were suspected of him than with others".
In the first decade of the sixteenth century, he carried out several diplomatic missions, most notably to the papacy in Rome. Florence sent him to Pistoia to pacify the leaders of two opposing factions which had broken into riots in 1501 and 1502; when this failed, the leaders were banished from the city, a recommendation which Machiavelli had disagreed with from the outset, and would later advise governments in similar situations to do the opposite. Machiavelli's official duties within the Florentine Republic, including his involvement in the disturbances of Pistoia and the rebellion of Arezzo, served as experiences that shaped his later intellectual development. Biographers noted that he advocated for firm punishment of rebellious cities, a stance consistent with his counsel in his later political treatises. These events, and the evident structural weaknesses of Florence's government compared to figures like Cesare Borgia, offered Machiavelli insights into political life. Though he wrote an official report, De rebus pistoriensibus, during this time, his later discourse Del modo di trattare i sudditi della Valdichiana ribellati was notable in that it aimed to combine historical knowledge of Rome's conduct with subject cities with the current political situation in Florence, and is considered his first mature, literary political work not driven by immediate bureaucratic necessity.
At the start of the 16th century, Machiavelli conceived of a militia for Florence, and he then began recruiting and creating it. He viewed that mercenary armies were inferior and instead preferred an army staffed with loyal, professional soldiers, a policy which he derived from observing antiquity. By February 1506 he was able to have four hundred farmers marching on parade, suited (including iron breastplates), and armed with lances and small firearms. Under his command, Florentine citizen-soldiers conquered Pisa in 1509. He was also tasked in gathering soldiers to aid Pope Julius II's papal army in overthrowing the local lords of Perugia (Gian Paolo Baglioni) and Bologna (Giovanni Bentivoglio), noting first-hand Julius' audacious conduct.
Exile and later years
Machiavelli's success was short-lived. In August 1512, the Medici, backed by Pope Julius II, used Spanish troops to defeat the Florentines at Prato. In the wake of the siege, Piero Soderini resigned as Florentine head of state and fled into exile. The experience would, like Machiavelli's time in foreign courts and with the Borgia, heavily influence his political writings. The Florentine city-state and the republic were dissolved. Machiavelli was ordered to remain in Florence for a year, and to pay a surety of one thousand florins. He was falsely implicated in a conspiracy to remove the Medici family from power merely because his name was on a list of possible sympathizers. Despite being subjected to torture ("with the rope", in which the prisoner is hanged from his bound wrists from the back, forcing the arms to bear the body's weight and dislocating the shoulders), he denied involvement and was released after three weeks. He was freed due to Pope Leo X granting amnesty to all political prisoners.
Machiavelli then retired to his farm estate at Sant'Andrea in Percussina, near San Casciano in Val di Pesa, where he devoted himself to studying and writing political treatises. During this period, he represented the Florentine Republic on diplomatic visits to France, Germany, and elsewhere in Italy. Despairing of the opportunity to remain directly involved in political matters, after a time he began to participate in intellectual groups in Florence and wrote several plays that (unlike his works on political theory) were both popular and widely known in his lifetime. Politics remained his main passion, and to satisfy this interest, he maintained a well-known correspondence with more politically connected friends, attempting to become involved once again in political life. As he frequently sent letters during this time to his friends, his personal correspondence is also of interest to historians and scholars of Italian correspondence. Machiavelli had a lengthy correspondence with his close friend, Francesco Vettori. In one of his letters which he details his life after his exile, he described his latest project as one of his "whimsies" that would later be called Il Principe (The Prince), and that he is planning on filling the work "with everything he knows".
As the letter to Vettori continues, he described his current situation:
When evening comes, I go back home, and go to my study. On the threshold, I take off my work clothes, covered in mud and filth, and I put on the clothes an ambassador would wear. Decently dressed, I enter the ancient courts of rulers who have long since died. There, I am warmly welcomed, and I feed on the only food I find nourishing and was born to savour. I am not ashamed to talk to them and ask them to explain their actions and they, out of kindness, answer me. Four hours go by without my feeling any anxiety. I forget every worry. I am no longer afraid of poverty or frightened of death. I live entirely through them.
Though scholars often debate on the time of the composition of the Discourses on Livy, it is often said that he was composing the work in the years between 1515 and 1517.
From 1516 Machiavelli had frequented the Orti Oricellari gardens, a place where it was common for humanists and philosophers to discuss anti-tyrannical themes, and it was in these gardens where Machiavelli gained a friendship with Bernardo Rucellai and Zanobi Buondelmonti, men whom Machiavelli would dedicate his Discoursi to.
In 1520, Machiavelli won the favor of the Medici family, and Giulio Cardinal de Medici commissioned him to write a work of history of the city of Florence. Machiavelli saw this as an opportunity to get back into his political career, thus he began working on what would later be known as The Florentine Histories. During this period, Machiavelli also wrote the Dell'arte della guerra, which was the only work published during his lifetime.
In his exile, he also wrote plays, including Clizia, The Mandrake (La Mandragola), and The Golden Ass.
After the 1527 Sack of Rome, the Medici were thrown out of Florence once more, and citizens set up a republican form of government. There were discussions to give Machiavelli a post in this new government, which were rejected due to the favors he was given to by the Medici.
Death and burial
Machiavelli died on 21 June 1527 from a stomach disease that he had been suffering from since 1525. He died at the age of 58 after receiving his last rites. He was buried at the Church of Santa Croce in Florence. In 1789 George Nassau Clavering, and Pietro Leopoldo, Grand Duke of Tuscany, initiated the construction of a monument on Machiavelli's tomb. It was sculpted by Innocenzo Spinazzi, with an epitaph by Doctor Ferroni inscribed on it.
Major works
The Prince
Machiavelli's best-known book Il Principe is a manual on succeeding in royal politics. Instead of solely appealing to the more traditional target audience of a hereditary prince, it also focuses on men whom Machiavelli deems "new princes", who have founded their dynasties. To retain royal authority, the hereditary prince does not have to do much to keep his position, as Machiavelli states that only an "excessive force" will deprive him of his rule. By contrast, a new prince has the more difficult task in ruling: He must first stabilize his newfound power in order to build an enduring political structure. Machiavelli views that the virtues often recommended to princes actually hinder their ability to rule, thus a prince must learn to be able to act opposite said virtues in order to maintain his regime. A ruler must be concerned not only with reputation, but also must be positively willing to act unscrupulously at the right times. Machiavelli believed that, for a ruler, it was better to be widely feared than to be greatly loved; a loved ruler retains authority by obligation, while a feared leader rules by fear of punishment. As a political theorist, Machiavelli emphasized the "necessity" for the methodical exercise of brute force or deceit, including extermination of entire noble families, to head off any chance of a challenge to the prince's authority.
Scholars often note that Machiavelli glorifies instrumentality in state building, an approach embodied by the saying, often erroneously attributed to Machiavelli, "The ends justify the means". Fraud and deceit are held by Machiavelli as necessary for a prince to use. Violence may be necessary for the successful stabilization of power and introduction of new political institutions. Force may be used to eliminate political rivals, destroy resistant populations, and purge the community of other men strong enough of a character to rule, who will inevitably attempt to replace the ruler. In one passage, Machiavelli subverts the advice given by Cicero to avoid duplicity and violence, by saying that the prince should "be the fox to avoid the snares, and a lion to overwhelm the wolves". It would become one of Machiavelli's most famous maxims. Machiavelli's view that acquiring a state and maintaining it requires evil means has been noted as the chief theme of the treatise. Machiavelli gives advice on how a prince should go about foreign policy, and how he should proceed in building a competent military.
Many early readers were shocked at many of the conclusions which Machiavelli makes in The Prince. Due to the treatise's controversial analysis on politics, in 1559, the Catholic Church banned The Prince, putting it on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. Machiavelli is fascinated by, and focuses mainly on, those who aim to create entirely new political societies. In contrast with—and in opposition to—Plato and Aristotle, Machiavelli insisted that "imaginary republics and principalities" i.e. the realization of the best political regime is not possible, and as such a prince must seek the "effectual truth" (verita effetuale).
Machiavelli gives recommendations on how a prince should proceed in domestic and foreign affairs, and gives a classification of the various types of principalities, and how they are organized. It also has gained notoriety for its lionization of bold and ferocious statesmen such as Cesare Borgia and Septimius Severus.
There is an ongoing debate on the timeline of the composition of The Prince and his other works. Scholar William Connell views that the composition and development of The Prince was a lengthy process with his ideas being revised from 1513 to 1515. The title of the finished work, Il Principe differs from the original title De Principatibus and appeared after the book was published in 1532. Scholars do not possess any existing manuscript in Machiavelli's own handwriting. Concerning the differences and similarities in Machiavelli's advice to ruthless and tyrannical princes in The Prince and his more republican exhortations in Discourses on Livy, some commentators have proposed a synthesis between the two works and assert that The Prince also contains arguments for the superiority of republican regimes, similar to those found in the Discourses.
In the 18th century, the work was called a satire by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), and other thinkers of the Enlightenment. This however is an interpretation that is often refuted by scholars. Isaiah Berlin states that he cannot find anything other than Machiavelli's work that "reads less" like a satirical piece. Maurizio Viroli writes that the claim "misrepresents the meaning of the text."
Scholars such as Leo Strauss and Harvey Mansfield have stated that sections of The Prince and his other works have deliberately esoteric statements throughout them. However, Mansfield states that this is the result of Machiavelli's seeing grave and serious things as humorous because they are "manipulable by men", and sees them as grave because they "answer human necessities".
The Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) argued that Machiavelli's audience was the common people, as opposed to the ruling class, who were already made aware of the methods described through their education.
Discourses on Livy
The Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livius, written around 1517, and published in 1531, often referred to simply as the Discourses or Discorsi, is nominally a discussion regarding the classical history of early Ancient Rome, although it strays far from this subject matter and also uses contemporary political examples to illustrate points. Machiavelli presents it as a series of lessons on how a republic should be started and structured. It is a larger work than The Prince, and while it more openly explains the advantages of republics, it also contains many similar themes from his other works. For example, Machiavelli has noted that to save a republic from corruption, it is necessary to return it to a "kingly state" using violent means. He excuses Romulus for murdering his brother Remus and co-ruler Titus Tatius to gain absolute power for himself in that he established a "civil way of life", or a kingdom with laws suitable for a republic. Commentators disagree about how much the two works agree with each other, as Machiavelli frequently refers to leaders of republics as "princes". Machiavelli even sometimes acts as an advisor to tyrants. Other scholars have pointed out the aggrandizing and imperialistic features of Machiavelli's republic. In the largest chapter in the Discourses, Machiavelli goes into specific detail on conspiracies against princes. Unlike his classical predecessors who debated the morality of such an act, Machiavelli goes into the ways and means private individuals have tried to overthrow their rulers. It became one of the central texts of modern republicanism, and has been argued by Pocock to be a more comprehensive work than The Prince.
Florentine Histories
Art of War
Originality
Major commentary on Machiavelli's work has focused on two issues: how unified and philosophical his work is and how innovative or traditional it is.
Coherence
There is some disagreement concerning how best to describe the unifying themes, if there are any, that can be found in Machiavelli's works, especially in the two major political works, The Prince and Discourses. Some commentators have described him as inconsistent, and perhaps as not even putting a high priority on consistency. Others such as Hans Baron have argued that his ideas must have changed dramatically over time. Some have argued that his conclusions are best understood as a product of his times, experiences and education. Others, such as Leo Strauss and Harvey Mansfield, have argued strongly that there is a strong and deliberate consistency and distinctness, even arguing that this extends to all of Machiavelli's works including his comedies and letters. There is also some considerable debate as to Machiavelli's status as a philosopher proper, and to what extent Machiavelli aimed for a systematic approach to politics. Some commentators view Machiavelli to be an unsystematic thinker, while others believe that Machiavelli ultimately was a philosopher and took an ultimately systematic approach to his political project.
Influences
Commentators such as Leo Strauss have gone so far as to name Machiavelli as the deliberate originator of modernity itself. Others have argued that Machiavelli is only a particularly interesting example of trends which were happening around him. In any case, Machiavelli presented himself at various times as someone reminding Italians of the old virtues of the Romans and Greeks, and other times as someone promoting a completely new approach to politics. Machiavelli emphasizes the originality of his endeavor in several instances. Many scholars note that Machiavelli seems particularly original and that he frequently seems to act without any regard for his predecessors.
The Mirror of Princes genre
Gilbert (1938) summarized the similarities between The Prince and the genre it imitates, the so-called "Mirror of Princes" style. This was a classically influenced genre, with models at least as far back as Xenophon and Isocrates. While Gilbert emphasized the similarities, however, he agreed with all other commentators that Machiavelli was particularly novel in the way he used this genre, even when compared to his contemporaries such as Baldassare Castiglione and Erasmus. One of the major innovations Gilbert noted was that Machiavelli focused on the "deliberate purpose of dealing with a new ruler who will need to establish himself in defiance of custom".
Classical republicanism
Commentators such as Quentin Skinner and J.G.A. Pocock, in the so-called "Cambridge School" of interpretation, have asserted that some of the republican themes in Machiavelli's political works, particularly the Discourses on Livy, can be found in medieval Italian literature which was influenced by classical authors such as Sallust. These commentators also consider thinkers such as Dante Alghieri, Petrarch, and Leonardo Bruni amongst those who could have been possible major influences on Machiavelli.
Classical political philosophy: Xenophon, Plato and Aristotle
Political thinkers usually engage to some extent with their forerunners, even (or perhaps particularly) those who aim to fundamentally disagree with prior thoughts. Therefore, even with a figure as seemingly innovative as Machiavelli, scholars have looked deeper into his works to consider possible historical and philosophical influences. Although Machiavelli examined ancient philosophers, he does not frequently reference them as authorities. He mentions neither Plato nor Aristotle in The Prince, and he mentions Aristotle only once in The Discourses. He usually does not speak of philosophers as such, but mentions "writers" and "authors". One of the writers Machiavelli mentions the most is Xenophon. In his time, the most commonly cited discussion of classical virtues was Book One of Cicero's De Officiis. Yet, Cicero is never directly mentioned in The Prince, and is mentioned only three times in the Discourses.
The major difference between Machiavelli and the Socratics, according to Strauss, is Machiavelli's materialism, and therefore his rejection of both a teleological view of nature and of the view that philosophy is higher than politics. With their teleological understanding of things, Socratics argued that by nature, everything that acts, acts towards some end, as if nature desired them, but Machiavelli claimed that such things happen by blind chance or human action.
Classical materialism
Strauss argued that Machiavelli may have seen himself as influenced by some ideas from classical materialists such as Democritus, Epicurus and Lucretius. Strauss however sees this also as a sign of major innovation in Machiavelli, because classical materialists did not share the Socratic regard for political life, while Machiavelli clearly did.
Thucydides
Some scholars note the similarity between Machiavelli and the Greek historian Thucydides, since both emphasized power politics. Strauss argued that Machiavelli may indeed have been influenced by pre-Socratic philosophers, but he felt it was a new combination: