Renaissance/Early Modern
Niccolò Machiavelli
1469–1527
“A man who wishes to act entirely up to his professions of virtue soon meets with what destroys him among so much that is evil.”
Niccolò Machiavelli was a Florentine diplomat and secretary of the republic who wrote after his fall from office and a brief imprisonment. and the judge politics by the maintenance of the state and the security of the city under conditions of fortune. Effectiveness becomes the measure of rule. The prince must know when necessity requires departure from conventional virtue. Hobbes and the realists take up his challenge. Moralists have never left it unanswered, and neither has the theory of legitimacy.
In the Conversation
11 of the Great Ideas
Ethics
Politics
Government
Legitimacy is a question of effective power. Rulers must learn how 'not to be good.'
War and Peace
War is the prince's primary concern. The question is not justice but survival.
Revolution
Popular tumults are the lifeblood of a republic; conflict between classes, properly channeled, produces liberty.
Tyranny
A new prince must sometimes act tyrannically to secure the state; cruelty well-used, applied once and decisively, may be necessary.
Monarchy
The prince must master both law and force, learning when to be lion and when to be fox.
Aristocracy
The nobles want to dominate and the people want not to be dominated; every republic must manage this conflict or perish.
Oligarchy
Aristocracies inevitably decay into oligarchies as ruling families pursue private advantage; only popular institutions can check this cycle.