<center>{{cquote|Machiavellianism cuts both ways; and it is generally true that political leaders who practise it will increase the number of evil-doers in their own country until finally public wrath will rise up and overthrow them. It would seem as if the [[Apostle Paul]] prophesied the events of our day when he wrote in his [[Epistle to the Romans|letter to the Romans]] (chap. i. 18): 'For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness.'|||[[Samuel Igra]], ''[[Germany's National Vice]]'' (1945), p. 13<ref>Igra, Samuel (1945). [https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.80851/page/n15/mode/2up?view=theater Germany's National Vice], p. 13. ''Internet Archive''. Retrieved October 5, 2023.</ref>}}</center>
[[Image:Nicolo.jpg|right|thumb|Portrait of [[Niccolò Machiavelli]] by Santi di Tito.]]
'''Niccolò Machiavelli''' (May 3, 1469 – June 21, 1527), was the leading political theorist of the [[Renaissance]] and one of the best nonfiction writers in all of Italian literature. A politician and writer based in [[Florence]], he is best known for his book ''[[The Prince]]'', which showed how a self-serving an aspiring ruler will follow the policy that the "end justifies the means," whereby a ruler can gain power (the "means") in any deceitful or unjust manner possible in order to achieve his often undisclosed goals (the "end"). During his time and long afterward, Machiavelli was considered to have been inspired by the devil, and his name has been used for centuries to describe the use or approval of unscrupulous, self-serving political action. ''The Prince'' made the world Machiavellian a byword for deceit, despotism and political manipulation, as in a politician who spends all his time and effort on obtaining and retaining power for himself.
Was Machiavelli a Machiavellian? The question much debated by scholars is whether Machiavelli intended ''The Prince'' to be an actual guide book in how to be a ruthless tyrant, or—as most scholars argue—wrote it as a warning to citizens. <!--While the book was written in the form of a guide for princes, there was no actual prince involved, unlike guide books written by others. For that matter, no tyrant has ever needed the book to get ideas how to oppress people. On the other hand, good --> Good citizens do need a guide to evil so that they can recognize it and fight back to keep their institutions, distrust politicians, and keep watch for corruption. Machiavelli, most scholars believe, was dedicated to republicanism as the best form of government and opposed tyranny. ''The Prince'' was a warning that it could happen like this if citizens let down their guard.
In other books he took an opposite view, emphasizing that when a state does not have a prince (a king), the people must have civic virtue. In ''Discourses on Livy'' Machiavelli has been a major positive influence of modern conservative thought through his impact on civic humanism. He took the lead in defining what civic virtue means for a citizen of a republic—a state where the people are sovereign and not some king. For example, a citizen has the duty to oppose corruption and when called upon fight for his country. His ideas strongly influenced British, French and American thought on the duties of the good citizen, and can be traced through American history from the days of [[Benjamin Franklin]] and [[James Madison]] down to the 21st century.<ref>Paul A. Rahe, ed. ''Machiavelli's Liberal Republican Legacy'' (2005)</ref>
===Florentine diplomacy===
Italy was a scene of intense political conflict involving four dominant city-states (Florence, Milan, Venice, and Naples), along with the [[Papacy, history|Papacy]], [[France, history|France]], Spain, and the Holy Roman Empire.
When Machiavelli was growing up Florence was under the control of Lorenzo de' Medici. Italy was invaded in 1494 by Charles VIII of France, who forced the [[Medici]] family to flee. A republic was established but it immediately came under the dictatorship of religious fanatic [[Girolamo Savonarola]]. The people turned against the monk and executed him in 1498.
:"Every one admits how praiseworthy it is in a prince to keep faith, and to live with integrity and not with craft. Nevertheless our experience has been that those princes who have done great things have held good faith of little account, and have known how to circumvent the intellect of men by craft, and in the end have overcome those who have relied on their word....But it is necessary to know well how to disguise this characteristic....Therefore it is unnecessary for a prince to have all the good qualities I have enumerated, but it is very necessary to appear to have them."<ref>''The Prince'' ch. 18</ref>
Machiavelli uses "virtù" to refer to the range of personal qualities, such as ruthlessness in dealing with friends or adversaries, and the flexibility to rapidly respond to changing circumstances regardless of past promises, that the prince will need to keep remain in power and achieve great resultsbe successful. However, this "virtù" has nothing in common with refers to personal skills and qualities, not necessarily universal moral virtue. Machiavelli uses "fortune" to refer to things outside one's control. "Fortune is responsible for half of what happens to us, leaving the half to ourselves" (our own virtue or merit). Fortune provides the matter or opportunity for our own merit or virtue to be acted upon.
The ''The Prince'' advocated desperate measures for a desperate situation; Machiavelli's ridiculed half-measures and his dramatic statements and antithesis combined to produce bold and startling generalizations. Politics, he argued, is an art that is independent of morality and religion in its necessary methods. He has often been charged with cynicism for trying to discover permanently valid rules for political behavior based on observation of how men do in fact behave rather than on moral evaluation of how they ought to behave. That is, he advocated "realism" rather than "idealism" as a research technique in political science.
==== Quotes from The Prince<ref name="Guinness"/>====
{{Cquote|''I have not found among my possessions anything which I hold more dear than, or value so much as, my knowledge of the actions of great men, acquired by long experience in contemporary affairs, and a continual study of antiquity. Having reflected upon it with great and prolonged diligence, I now send, digested into this little volume, to your Magnificence.''<ref>Dedication</ref>}}
{{Cquote|''Fortune is a woman, and if she is to be mastered, she must be beaten and seduced.''}}
{{Cquote|''Is it better to be loved or feared? Love is a bond men will break when it is to their advantage to do so. So I say it is better to be feared. But above all, avoid being hated.''}}
{{Cquote|''There are two forms of government, principalities and republics.''}}
{{cquote|''A prince has never lacked legitimate reasons to justify his breach of faith. ...But it is necessary to know how to disguise this nature well and how to pretend and dissemble. Men are so simple and so ready to follow the needs of the moment that the deceiver will always find someone to deceive. ...So a prince need not have all the aforementioned good qualities, but it is most essential that he appear to have them. Indeed, I should go so far as to say that having them and always practising them is harmful, while seeming to have them is useful. It is good to appear clement, trustworthy, human, '''religious''', and honest, and also to be so, but always with the mind so disposed that, when the occasion arises not to be so, you can become the opposite. ... a prince should stick to the path of good but, if the necessity arises, he should know how to follow evil.''}}
{{Cquote|''A man who tries aspires to be good all the time must of necessity come to grief among so many who are so bad.''}}{{Cquote|''There never was a new prince who has disarmed his subjects; rather when he has found them disarmed he has always armed them, because, by arming them, those arms become yours, those men who were distrusted become faithful, and those who were faithful are kept so, and your subjects become your adherents. And whereas all subjects cannot be armed, yet when those whom you do arm are benefited, the others can be handled more freely, and this difference in their treatment, which they quite understand, makes the former your dependents, and the latter, considering it to be necessary that those who have the most danger and service should have the most reward, excuse you. But when you disarm them, you at once offend them by showing that you distrust them, either for cowardice or for want of loyalty, and either of these opinions breeds hatred against you.''<ref>Chapter 20, section 2.</ref>}}
====Impact of ''The Prince''====
Pocock (1981) traces the Machiavellian belief in and emphasis upon Greco-Roman ideals of unspecialized civic virtue and liberty from 15th century Florence through 17th century England and Scotland to 18th century America. Thinkers who shared these ideals tended to believe that the function of property was to maintain an individual's independence as a precondition of his virtue. Consequently, in the last two times and places mentioned above, they were disposed to attack the new commercial and financial regime that was beginning to develop. However, Paul Rahe (1992) takes issue with Pocock on the origins and argues Machiavelli's republicanism was not rooted in antiquity but was is entirely novel and modern. Scholars have argued that [[James Madison]] followed Machiavelli's republicanism when he set up the [[Jeffersonian Republicans]] in 1792, a party opposed to [[Alexander Hamilton]] and the [[Federalist Party|Federalists]].<ref>Gary Rosen in Rahe, ed. ''Machiavelli's Liberal Republican Legacy'' (2005) [https://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0521851874/ref=sib_dp_pop_toc?ie=UTF8&p=S008#reader-link p. 231 online]</ref> Conservative historians likewise conclude that [[Thomas Jefferson]]'s republicanism was "deeply in debt" to Machiavelli, whom he praised.<ref>Rahe, ''Jefferson's Machiavellian Political Science'' in Rahe, ed. ''Machiavelli's Liberal Republican Legacy'' (2005) [https://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0521851874/ref=sib_dp_pt#reader-link p. 209 online]</ref>
=== Usage of the term Machiavellianism in political science ===
Generally speaking, the term "Machiavellian" is used by people who are unfamiliar with the works of Machiavelli, or do not understand them.
Shortly after arrival of the [[Bolshevik]] leader [[Lenin]] to the [[Petrograd]], the [[French]] [[ambassador]] to [[Russia]] Maurice Paléologue named him in his diary a [[Machiavellian]]. Paléologue thought the [[Marxist]] theorist Lenin to be all the more dangerous because Lenin was said to be pure-minded, temperate and [[Ascesis|ascetic]], whereas in Paléologue's view Lenin was in fact a combination of an [[utopian]] dreamer and fanatic, prophet and [[metaphysician]], blind to any idea of the impossible and absurd, a stranger to feelings of [[justice]] or [[mercy]], violent, and crazy with vanity. Paléologue further described Lenin as being a compound of Savanorola and [[Jean Paul Marat|Marat]], [[Blanqui]] and [[Leftist#Bakunin|Bakunin]].<ref name="HRappaport2016">{{cite book |title=Caught in the Revolution: Petrograd 1917 |author=Hellen Rappaport |publisher=Windmill books |place=Great Britain |year=2016 |chapter=9 Bolsheviki! It Sounds 'Like All that the World Fears' |pages=166 |isbn=978-00995-92426 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Ao-GCwAAQBAJ}}</ref>
Today it is often spoken in tone of admiration but Machiavelli's Florentine contemporaries were shocked by his views,<ref name="Guinness"/> some in fact to such degree that they regarded his works to be inspired by [[devil]].<ref name="BriefIdeas">{{cite book |author=William Raeper, Linda Edwards|title=Brief guide to ideas|publisher=Lion Hudson |year=1997 |pages=175–181|isbn=9780310227748|url=http://books.google.sk/books?id=EMidlIvMw0cC&dq=editions:PaSJTIVMIEsC&hl=en&sa=X&ei=8UypUKe4F4bysgbAvoDoCw&redir_esc=y}}</ref> We don't know if Machiavelli wrote ''the Prince'' as a satire on the way the princes of his day behaved or as serious advice. We do know that more than a few leaders have taken his advice seriously.<!--Fcf{{#tag:ref|Florentine Catherine de' Medici, Queen consort of French king Henry II and regent for Charles IX, has traditionally been blamed by historians to be the one of the first who adopted Machiavellian principles in what was later coined as the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew's Day (Aug. 2425, 1572). Whatever his objectives were, Machiavelli made his position clear: leaders are essentially selfish, self-interested, and self-protected; they view other people simply as objects to be [[Psychological manipulation|manipulated]]. That's why from their perspective, ''virtuous character'' is not just irrelevant but also even obstructive and foolish. This is in sharp contrast to [[Plato]] who wrote in his ''Republic'' that characters of leaders{{#tag:ref|cf.-->''"we compel them to have some care and responsibility for others"'' from Plato:''The Parable of the Cave''are extremely important for public welfare: ''"the States are as the men are; they grow out of human characters".''<ref name="Guinness">{{cite book|first=Os |last=Guinness|editor= Virginia Mooney Withrow|title=When no one sees: Character and leadership in an age of Image|publisher=[http://www.ttf.org/ TheTrinityForum.org]|location=McLean, Virginia|year=2007|pages=59–65,305|isbn= 1-57683-159-0}}</ref> The contemporary society of Machiavelli's period based its morale on conviction that evil acts in temporal life will cause punishment in [[eternal life]]. He turned this perception upside down and refrained from mentioning [[Bible]] or [[Christianity]] in his writings. His ostentatious avoidance of addressing the question of the [[Last Judgement]] in this respect excited resentment.<ref name="BriefIdeas"/>{{#tag:ref|cf."Marx called religion 'the opium of the people'. However, the Nobel Prize winner Czeslav Milosz argued: 'A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death - the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders we are not going to be judged.'"<ref>{{cite web |title=What is life about? |publisher=EVS and JPK |url=http://www.ilife101.com/ |accessdate=2012-11-18}}</ref>}}
== "Machiavellism and " in the field of psychology ==
''See also:'' [[Machiavellianism (Psychology)]]
Generally speaking, the term "Machiavellian" is used by people who are unfamiliar with the works of Machiavelli, or do not understand them. Machiavellianism in the field of [[Machiavellianism (Psychology)|Machiavellianismpsychology]] has a different connotation than as in the field of [[psychologypolitical science]] . It is defined as a manipulative strategy of social interaction and personality style that uses other people as tools to achieve for personal gain.<ref name="Braiker">{{cite book
|author=Harriet B. Braiker
|title=Who's pulling your strings? How to break the cycle of manipulation and regain the control of your life
|isbn=0-07-144672-9
|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wGbZ2ynQOokC&q=inauthor:%22Harriet+Braiker%22&dq=inauthor:%22Harriet+Braiker%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=h1-KUNPDFIWq0QXWo4DgCw&redir_esc=y
}}</ref> This alleges that a prince or ruler of a society always, and only, acts out of selfish-motives, and not for the benefit of the whole of society, or the rulers of a republic on behalf of its citizens. According Machiavelli's political recommendations to PsychCentral.com:{{Cquote|“A Machiavellian personality the prince aspiring to power is manipulative and strategic,” says Aimee Daramus, a clinical psychologist in Chicago. “When they have a goal, they think through merely how to achieve it very skillfully, but without any consideration for the feelings of other people involved.” They might also use manipulative behaviors to get what they want, as well as deception or exploitation. They often come off as unemotional. Machiavellianism tends to survive and be more commonTrusted Source in men, but it can affectTrusted Source anyone and at any age. “When interacting with them, you might find their behavior charming and engaging, and yet you never really feel ‘close’ to them,” says clinical psychologist Dr. Bethany Cook. “They lack empathy.” Unlike a [[Narcissistic personality disorder|narcissist]], they will seek to gain their goals without becoming the center of attention. “They tend to enjoy being the person pulling the strings, rather than the puppet on the stage,” Cook says.<ref>[https://psychcentral.com/lib/machiavellianism-cognition-and-emotion-understanding-how-the-machiavellian-thinks-feels-and-thrives All About Machiavellianism], PsychCentral.com</ref>}} == Quotes == *successful "There never was a new prince among so many who has disarmed his subjects; rather when he has found them disarmed he has always armed them, because, by arming them, those arms become yours, those men who were distrusted become faithful, and those who were faithful are kept so, and your subjects become your adherents. And whereas all subjects cannot be armed, yet when those whom you do arm are benefited, the others can be handled more freely, and this difference in their treatment, which they quite understand, makes the former your dependents, and the latter, considering it to be necessary that those who have the most danger and service should have the most reward, excuse you. But when you disarm them, you at once offend them by showing that you distrust them, either for cowardice or for want of loyalty, and either of these opinions breeds hatred against youbad." Chapter 20, section 2.
==See also==
* [[Republicanism]]
* [[Machiavellianism]]
* [[Goebbels' maxim]]
==Further reading==