Machiavelli and The Prince

1. Life and works

Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) served the Florentine Republic for fourteen years as secretary to the Second Chancery and as a diplomat, sent to the courts of France, the Emperor, the Pope and Cesare Borgia. When the Medici returned to power in 1512 he lost office, was imprisoned and tortured, and retired to his farm near Florence. There he wrote The Prince (written 1513, published 1532, after his death), dedicated to Lorenzo de’ Medici in the hope of returning to service, and the Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy, a study of the Roman Republic. He also wrote The Art of War and Florentine Histories.

2. Historical background

• A divided Italy. Italy was split into five main powers (Naples, the Papal States, Florence, Milan and Venice) and many small principalities, constantly at war, and invaded by France and Spain from 1494. Machiavelli wanted a strong ruler who could unite Italy and drive out the “barbarians”; the last chapter of The Prince is an exhortation to do exactly that.
• The Renaissance. Renewed study of Greek and Roman texts, humanism, interest in this world rather than the next, and confidence in human ability.
• Decline of the Church’s authority. The papacy had become a worldly Italian power. Machiavelli blamed it for keeping Italy divided: too weak to unite the country and too strong to let anyone else do it.
• Rise of nation-States. France, Spain and England were becoming strong centralised monarchies, and Italy suffered by comparison.
• Corruption in Italian public life, which persuaded him that men are generally bad and must be governed with that in mind.

3. Historical method

Machiavelli broke with medieval thought, which reasoned from Scripture and natural law. He studied politics as it is, not as it ought to be: “it appears to me more appropriate to follow up the real truth of a matter than the imagination of it.” His sources were history (Roman history, above all Livy) and his own observation as a diplomat. From these he drew practical rules of statecraft. Sabine noted that his method is less a scientific induction than the shrewd generalisation of a man of affairs: he used history to illustrate conclusions he had already reached. Still, this empirical turn is why he is placed at the start of modern political science.

4. Human nature

Men are “ungrateful, fickle, liars and deceivers, fearful of danger and greedy for gain”. They forget the death of a father sooner than the loss of a patrimony. They are good only when necessity compels them. This pessimistic view is the foundation of his advice: the ruler must rely on what is in his own power, which is fear, and not on men’s gratitude.

5. The Prince: advice and qualifications

The Prince is a handbook on how a new ruler can acquire and keep power. Its main counsels:

1. Lion and fox. The prince must be a fox to recognise traps and a lion to frighten wolves. Force alone or cunning alone is not enough.
2. Feared rather than loved. It is best to be both, but if one must choose, it is safer to be feared, because love is held by a chain of obligation that men break when it suits them, while fear is held by a dread of punishment that never fails. But he must avoid being hated, and above all must not touch the property and women of his subjects.
3. Appearance of virtue. He need not have the qualities of mercy, faith, integrity, humanity and religion, but must seem to have them. He should keep his word only when it is to his advantage.
4. Virtù and fortuna. Fortune controls half of our actions, but leaves the other half to us. Virtù (energy, skill, boldness, the capacity to act decisively) can master fortune, as a dyke controls a river in flood.
5. Own army. Mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous; a prince must have a citizen militia of his own. “Good laws and good arms” are the foundations of a State, and there cannot be good laws where there are not good arms.
6. Cruelty well used. Necessary cruelties should be done all at once at the start; benefits should be given little by little so they are savoured.
7. Liberality and parsimony. Better to be thought mean than to ruin the treasury and then tax the people heavily.
8. Advisers. Choose wise ministers, hear them when he asks, and avoid flatterers.
9. Model. Cesare Borgia, who used both cruelty and cunning to build a State in the Romagna.

6. Politics and morality; politics and religion

Machiavelli is said to have separated politics from ethics. More precisely, he held that the ruler is judged by a different standard from the private individual: the test of a political act is whether it preserves the State. Where the safety of the country is at stake, no consideration of justice or injustice, mercy or cruelty, praise or shame, should prevail. This is the idea later called raison d’état, reason of state. In ordinary life he did not reject morality.

He treated religion as useful to the State, because it makes men obedient and brave, but subordinate to it. He criticised Christianity for glorifying humility and other-worldliness, and admired the civic religion of Rome.

7. Contributions

• Called the father of modern political thought: he freed politics from theology and made the State, not the Church, the centre of study.
• First to use the word lo stato in its modern sense.
• Gave a secular, realistic and empirical account of power.
• Pointed to the nation-State and to Italian unification, achieved more than three centuries later.
• Influenced theories of sovereignty (Bodin, Hobbes) and of power politics.

Criticism. The adjective “Machiavellian” came to mean cunning and unscrupulous. He ignored the moral basis of the State, took too dark a view of human nature, wrote for his own time and place, and offered rules rather than a theory. Compare Kautilya, who also gave a realist manual of statecraft but within the frame of dharma.

How this is examined

January 2026 (80-mark): “Discuss Machiavelli’s ‘The Prince’” (10 marks). June 2025: “What are the qualifications required to be a Prince according to Machiavelli?” (6 marks). January 2025 (100-mark): “Niccolo Machiavelli” as a short note. April 2023: “Discuss briefly the contributions of Niccolo Machiavelli towards political philosophy” (10 marks). For “The Prince”, write the background, human nature and the nine counsels; for qualifications, the counsels alone; for contributions, add method, separation of politics from ethics and religion, and the criticism.