Our next work will be Machiavelli’s The Prince, a foundational text in the history of political philosophy. (Recommended editions include those by Mansfield or Codevilla, but feel free to use whichever edition you happen to have at hand or can access for free online.) Machiavelli saw himself as a new voyager, like his contemporary Christopher Columbus; he saw himself doing something new, doing something no one had done before. As such, Machiavelli is credited with being the first modern, as the one who initiated the battle between the ancients (most notably Plato and Aristotle) and the moderns. Incidentally, there is a book by Jonathan Swift about this fight titled Battle of the Books.
It is difficult to truly appreciate the radicality of Machiavelli because he has won the fight – we are thoroughly modern, and he is seen to be simply practical and realistic, whereas Plato and Aristotle, who were the philosophical and scientific authorities in Machiavelli’s time, are seen to be impractical and utopian or naive.
Machiavelli also saw himself as the founder of political science and in politics he has become well-known; he has a reputation. In fact, there is an entire type of politics that has been named after him: Machiavellian politics, a politics of power-seeking where the ends justify the means and where it is recognized that one must break a few eggs to make an omelet.
But before we simply condemn him we should think, what other than the ends could ever justify the means? It is necessary to recognize that saying ‘the ends justify the means’ is not the same as saying ‘the ends justify any means.’
Regardless, Machiavelli may have been the first to condone ‘evil’ actions in writing. In fact, it is for this very reason that the old-fashioned opinion concerning Machiavelli is that he is, as Leo Strauss asserted:
…a teacher of evil. Indeed, what other description would fit a man who teaches lessons like these: princes ought to exterminate the families of rulers whose territory they wish to possess securely; princes ought to murder their opponents rather than confiscate their property since those who are robbed, but not those who are dead, can think of revenge; men forget the murder of their fathers sooner than the loss of their patrimony; true liberality consists in being stingy with one’s own property and in being generous with what belongs to others; not virtue but the prudent use of virtue and vice leads to happiness; injuries ought all to be done together so that, being tasted less, they will hurt less, while benefits ought to be conferred little by little, so that they will be felt more strongly; a victorious general who fears that his prince might not reward him properly may punish him for his anticipated ingratitude by raising the flag of rebellion; if one has to choose between inflicting severe injuries and inflicting light injuries, one ought to inflict severe injuries; one ought not to say to someone whom one wants to kill ‘Give me your gun, I want to kill you with it,’ but merely, ‘Give me your gun,’ for once you have the gun in your hand, you can satisfy your desire. If it is true that only an evil man will stoop to teach maxims of public and private gangsterism, we are forced to say that Machiavelli was an evil man.
But we might want to ask why he would teach such things, what possible end might justify such teachings? This is all the more important given Machiavelli’s reputation as both a republican and an Italian patriot. Moreover, he is a, if not the, founder of modernity – can he be both evil and republican? Both evil and modern? Next week we will turn to the text itself to see what answers we can find.