Early modern Europe · 1469–1527
Niccolò Machiavelli
Florentine diplomat who studied power as it actually works
A ruler who wants to keep his state must sometimes act against conventional virtue, and is judged by results. In the Discourses he praised republics in which free citizens and well-managed conflict sustain liberty.
Life and thought
Niccolò Machiavelli served the Florentine republic from 1498 as secretary of its Second Chancery, travelling on missions to the king of France, to Cesare Borgia and to the papal court, and organising a citizen militia. When the Medici returned to power in 1512 he lost his post; early in 1513 he was imprisoned and tortured on suspicion of conspiracy. Released, he retired to his farm near San Casciano, where he wrote The Prince at the end of 1513 and, over the following years, the Discourses on Livy.
The Prince asks how a new ruler can keep a state. Machiavelli looks at “the effectual truth of the matter” rather than imagined commonwealths: a ruler who tries to be good in every situation is ruined among so many who are not, so he must be ready to be feared, to break his word or to be cruel when the state requires it. Fortune can be resisted only by virtù — energy, foresight and nerve. The Discourses praise republics, where conflict between nobles and people, kept within laws, preserves liberty. Whether read as a manual for tyrants or a realist’s warning, his work founded the modern study of politics.
Works
Shaped
1891–1937Antonio GramsciGramsci recast the revolutionary party as a “modern Prince”, after Machiavelli.Argued against
106–43 BCECiceroThe Prince inverts Cicero’s On Duties: where Cicero condemned the force of the lion and the fraud of the fox, a prince must know how to use both.Meanwhile, in other traditions
1472–1529Wang YangmingMing official, general and master of the School of Mind1501–1570Yi Hwang (Toegye)Leading Neo-Confucian scholar of Joseon KoreaOn the record
The Prince is dated 1513 and the Discourses on Livy 1517.
The Prince was written at the end of 1513 (perhaps early 1514) and printed only in 1532, after his death. The Discourses were begun around 1514–15, finished in 1518–19 and printed in 1531. The atlas gives the years of writing; 1517 stands for the middle of that span.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Niccolò Machiavelli”