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Unit 5: Niccolo Machiavelli

Machiavelli probed into the causes and effects of social disturbances and in particular conspiracies. Notes
He identified: (a) rivalries among the great, namely the rich and the socially superior; and (b) the
endemic and natural enmity between the great and the people, or the rich and the poor, as the two
main causes for disturbances. After Aristotle, it was Machiavelli who discussed social dissensions
and their causes. He was particularly concerned with factional strife, and saw equality of treatment
as a possible cure. He categorically asserted that the stability of a government would depend on
the satisfaction of the dominant interests within it.
Self-Assessment

Fill in the following:
1. Medici rule was ended in ............... .
2. Among all the dynamic statesmen ............... left a lasting impressions and was quoted in the
prince for his ruthless and daring leadership.
3. Leonardo was an architect of ..............., the hero of the Prince.
4. Like Aristotle, Machiavelli characterized the individual as a ...............
5. The Belfagor was authored by ............... .

5.5 Summary

• Machiavelli’s importance was in providing an outlook that accepted both secularization and
amoralization of politics. He took politics out of the context of theology, and subordinated
moral principles to the necessities of political existence and people’s welfare. He had very
little interest in non-political matters. Even his interest in spiritual and religious matters was
strictly political. His philosophy was public and not private. The absence of religious polemics
in Machiavelli led the theorists who followed to confront issues like order and power in
strictly political terms:
The leitmotiv of Machiavelli’s posthumous life was his great assertion as a thinker, representing
his true and essential contribution to the history of human thought, namely, the clear
recognition of the autonomy and the necessity of politics “which lies outside the realm of
what is morally good or evil”. Machiavelli thereby rejected the mediaeval concept of “unity”
and became one of the pioneers of the modern spirit.
• Machiavelli was also the first to speak of the raison d’etat of the state. He could perceive the
forces shaping the modern nation state like nationalism, national security, and territorial
integrity, militarism as forces to safeguard and further state interests. His achievement lay in
confronting the secular state and scientifically enquiring into its nature and behaviour. His
political realism allowed him to remain neutral towards the means that were to be employed
for achieving the ends. Political activities were to be analyzed and appreciated keeping in
mind whether they would achieve the objectives for which they were intended. Like the
Sophists, he “judged actions not as actions, but solely in terms of their consequences”. He
could foresee the rise of science and capitalism. Some recent interpretations even view him
as the earliest exponent of liberalism and pluralism.
• Machiavelli was the first to state and systematically espouse the power view of politics,
laying down the foundations of a new science in the same way as Galileo’s Dynamics became
the basis of the modern science of nature. Machiavelli identified politics as the struggle for
the acquisition, maintenance and consolidation of political power, an analysis developed by
Hobbes and Harrington in the seventeenth century, Alexander Hamilton (1755–1804) and
James Madison (1751–1836) in the eighteenth century, Pareto, Mosca, and Michels in the
nineteenth century, and Edward Hallett Carr, Robert Dahl, David Easton, Hans Morgenthau,
Morton Kaplan and Harold Lasswell in the twentieth century.

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