Machiavelli is principally known for his writings, “The Prince” composed in 1513 and dedicated to Lorenzo de’ Medici in 1515-16, printed in 1531 and “The Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livy”, 1513-17. “The Prince” is called one of the most radical books in the history, because the ideas expressed by Machiavelli differ greatly from the previous philosophical tradition running form Plato and Aristotle to Aquinas. “The Prince” is a kind of a textbook for those who want to maintain power and gain control. The book consists of 26 chapters with a separate plot development.
Machiavelli’s reputation as a political theorist is due, first, to his new scientific method. “The Prince” includes theoretical interpretation of the role of politics and a ruler, and gives practical advice how to keep power and maintain strict control. Machiavelli distinguishes two types of power: republics and principalities. Machiavelli claimed novelty for his method, which he defined as drawing maxims or rules for successful political behaviour from history and experience. The method is illustrated in Chapter 3, where ‘the general rule’ that he who enables someone to become powerful ruins himself is drawn from Machiavelli’s practical experience of Louis XII’s campaign in Italy that made Popes Alexander VI and Julius II strong at his own expense. Machiavelli’s method has been called inductive or scientific in drawing conclusions from practical or historical experience of human nature that is unchanging in political regimes experiencing a natural cycle of growth and decay.
The radical element of his ideas is that they are based on a pragmatic approach to politics, trying to be useful by getting at the real truth of the matter instead of dealing merely with imaginary situations. This involves a realistic assessment of politics in terms of power and control. According to Machiavelli “government consists in nothing else but in so controlling subjects that they will not be able to nor have cause to do you harm” and of human nature in terms of its passions, to control which he must be like a centaur, half man and half beast, combine the cunning of a fox with the strength of a lion, cruel or parsimonious as ‘necessity’ demands. Machiavelli views the state as an organic structure governed by its own laws of development and enjoying its own justification in terms of its success.
In contrast to previous philosophical tradition, Machiavelli does not subordinate moral standards to political ones, recognizing “how praiseworthy it is for a prince to keep his word and to live by integrity and not deceit’ and that ‘it is wrong not only according to Christian standards but by any human standards’ to treat people as inhumanely as Philip of Macedon did in moving them from province to province”.
Plato’s suggestion that philosophers will never be kings and must concentrate on surviving the storm finds an echo in Augustine’s ambivalence about the values of earthly politics. The heavenly city has no politics; neither the theory nor the practice of elections, committees, government by the rule of law and the rest can make any sense. Machiavelli’s realism involves an acceptance of the limits of human nature, but it does not imply that the politician’s task is to rule in accordance with nature, let alone that there are natural rulers and natural subjects.
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