Humanist movement machiavelli biography
Home / General Biography Information / Humanist movement machiavelli biography
and trans.), 2005, The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli with Related Documents, Boston: Bedford/St. Napoleon is said to have kept a copy under his pillow and taken it very seriously.
However, in his other writings, such as Discourses on Livy, Machiavelli is more supportive of the Republican government.
The idea of a stable constitutional regime that reflects the tenor of modern political thought (and practice) is nowhere to be seen in Machiavelli’s conception of princely government.
Indeed, one might wonder whether Machiavelli, for all of his alleged realism, actually believed that a prince of complete virtù could in fact exist.
However, in 1494, after the death of Lorenzo, Florence became a Republic, and the ruling Medici family were expelled.
Machiavelli_by_Santi_di_Tito
In the new Republic, Machiavelli was given an important administrative post and served as a diplomat, travelling around Europe and frequently to the Vatican.
Filippo Casavecchia has seen it; he can give you some account in part of the thing in itself and of the discussions I have had with him, though I am still enlarging and revising it.
After his release, he retired to his farm and estate near San Casciano in Val di Pesa, where he concentrated on writing.
In order to “maintain his state”, then, he can only rely upon his own fount of personal characteristics to direct the use of power and establish his claim on rulership. To Machiavelli, the ideal leader’s virtu was his ability to maintain his power and achieve great things.
The Prince has been seen as revolutionary for promoting modern political philosophy rooted in realism and not idealism.
Someone can choose not to obey only if he possesses the power to resist the ruler or is prepared to risk the consequences of the state’s superiority of coercive force.
Machiavelli’s argument in The Prince is thus designed to demonstrate that politics can only properly be defined in terms of the effective employment of coercive power, what Yves Winter (2018) has termed “the orders of violence.” Authority as a right to command has no independent status.
- The Prince (in Volume 1, pp. Non-republican regimes, because they exclude or limit discursive practices, ultimately rest upon coercive domination and can only be corrected by violent means.
8. In particular, Machiavelli employs the concept of virtù to refer to the range of personal qualities that the prince will find it necessary to acquire in order to “maintain his state” and to “achieve great things”, the two standard markers of power for him.
By contrast, the vast majority of people confuse liberty with security, imagining that the former is identical to the latter: “But all the others, who are infinite, desire liberty in order to live securely (viveresicuro)” (Discourses CW 237). The ruler of virtù is bound to be competent in the application of power; to possess virtù is indeed to have mastered all the rules connected with the effective application of power.
Machiavelli’s name and doctrines were widely invoked to justify the priority of the interests of the state in the age of absolutism.
Yet, as Harvey Mansfield (1996) has shown, a careful reading of Machiavelli’s use of lo stato in The Prince and elsewhere does not support this interpretation. Likewise, cases have been made for Machiavelli’s political morality, his conception of the state, his religious views, and many other features of his work as the distinctive basis for the originality of his contribution.
Yet few firm conclusions have emerged within scholarship.
(Prince CW 90)
Fortune may be resisted by human beings, but only in those circumstances where “virtù and wisdom” have already prepared for her inevitable arrival.
Machiavelli reinforces the association of Fortuna with the blind strength of nature by explaining that political success depends upon appreciation of the operational principles of Fortuna.
The wanton behavior of Fortuna demands an aggressive, even violent response, lest she take advantage of those men who are too retiring or “effeminate” to dominate her.
Machiavelli’s remarks point toward several salient conclusions about Fortuna and her place in his intellectual universe.
Perhaps the mildest version of the amoral hypothesis has been proposed by Quentin Skinner (1978), who claims that the ruler’s commission of acts deemed vicious by convention is a “last best” option. Where the latter confuse their liberty with their ability to dominate and control the popolo, the masses are more concerned with protecting themselves against oppression and consider themselves “free” when they are not abused by the more powerful or threatened with such abuse (Discourses CW 203).
561–726)
Secondary Literature
- Anglo, Sydney, 2005, Machiavelli: The First Century, (Oxford-Warburg Studies), Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Baluch, Faisal, 2018, “Machiavelli as Philosopher”, The Review of Politics, 80(2): 289–300.
In 1509, Machiavelli led his citizen’s army to victory over Pisa. He published numerous works during this period, including The Complaint of Peace (1517), a passionate plea for the end of war and the promotion of peace, and On Civility in Children (1530), a guide to good manners and moral education.
Despite the controversies surrounding his work, Erasmus remained committed to his vision of a peaceful and tolerant Christianity.