Books purporting to offer a guide to young princelings on the rudiments of statecraft—a genre known as the specula principi (mirror of the prince)—had been a staple in Western literature since at least the time of Xenophon and Plato.v They survived the transition from the pagan to the Christian era with only a slight change in emphasis, reaching their apogee in the high Middle Ages when writers like Dante and Thomas Aquinas tried to reconcile Platonic and Aristotelian notions of government with a worldview based on the teaching of the Gospels. The tradition remained vital in Machiavelli’s own day, with distinguished thinkers like Erasmus and Thomas More offering their own variations on a time-honored theme.vi
The origins of the form can be traced back to Plato’s Republic, a work that, like all its successors until Machiavelli’s fundamental reworking of the genre, is less concerned with the nuts and bolts of governing than with providing readers a vision of the ideal state.vii Plato is not unaware of the kinds of arguments Machiavelli will make two thousand years later—he places many of them in the mouth of the pompous Thrasymachus, who declares, “I proclaim justice is nothing else than the interest of the stronger”—but he quickly rejects them in favor of an idealism that bears little relation to the way men live. According to Plato, political science was “the knowledge by which we are to make other men good.” Machiavelli rejects this description. He insists the only sensible role for political science (a phrase he never uses), is to deal with men as they actually are.
Superficially at least, Machiavelli would seem to have more in common with Aristotle, Plato’s pupil, a far more down-to-earth philosopher who based his theories on the study of real states and constitutions. Aristotle criticized Plato as an impossible idealist, noting, sensibly enough, that “the good lawgiver and the genuine politician will have regard both to the ‘absolute best’ and to the ‘best in the circumstances.’ ” But despite this pragmatic beginning, neither he nor those who followed in his footsteps believed their job was to provide a how-to manual for the aspiring ruler, a task they would have regarded as either trivial or corrupt. Their treatises remained abstract exercises, meditations on the nature of good government. Even when they were written for a living prince, they contained little he could use in the day-to-day management of his affairs. Justice, not power, was their subject—a pointless exercise according to Machiavelli, who knew that a prince without power has no ability to dispense justice or anything else to his people.
Aristotle gave the classic formulation of the state “as an association of persons formed with a view to some good purpose.” Before Machiavelli, very few philosophers questioned the basic premise that man found his fulfillment in the well-run polity. Philosophers were willing to admit that governments often fell short of the ideal in practice, but they never doubted that the common good was the goal toward which human society was striving, and that it was the philosopher’s function to point the prince in the right direction. In their writings they define the nature of Justice, the meaning of the Good, and the blessings of Mercy, but ignore the actual conduct of real men and women. The discussion is removed from reality, the advice heavily moralistic and short on practical solutions. What should be receives far more attention than what is.
Erasmus’s Institutio principis Christiani (“Education of a Christian Prince”) provides perhaps the most useful comparison with The Prince. Not only is it almost exactly contemporaneous—written in 1516, it was dedicated to Charles I of Spain (soon to become the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V)—but as a typical, if atypically elegant, example of the form, it offers the strongest possible contrast to Machiavelli’s groundbreaking effort. “Wisdom is not only an extraordinary attribute in itself, Charles, most bountiful of princes,” Erasmus begins, “but according to Aristotle no form of wisdom is greater than that which teaches a prince how to rule beneficently.” From the first line Erasmus sets a high-minded tone for his book. It will deal with qualities like wisdom, clemency, piety, and so on that define the ideal prince; it will ignore the grubby details of actual governance. Had Charles wished to discover any practical advice on how to keep his throne, he would have leafed through its pages in vain.
Machiavelli’s approach couldn’t be more different. While he doesn’t dispense altogether with empty phrases lauding his master’s virtue, he insists his work should be useful to his patron, who, he strongly implies, is going to need all the help he can get. Unlike Charles, whose greatness is assured regardless of whether he studies the text set before him, Lorenzo will achieve his rightful place in history only by paying close attention to Machiavelli’s counsel: “Should you read diligently and consider [this book] with care, you will discover therein my deepest desire, which is that You will rise to that greatness which fortune and your own qualities promise.” For Machiavelli, the issue of greatness remains in question; it lies in the future. “[A]ll things,” he declares, “have conspired to show your greatness,” but, he insists, “[t]he rest you must do yourself.”
The world as pictured in The Prince is far more dynamic and uncertain than the one Erasmus contemplated. When he first told Vettori about his latest project, Machiavelli insisted that “it ought to be welcomed by a prince, and especially by a new prince”—that is, one who could not count on traditional allegiances or institutions but had to survive by his own wits, often against fierce resistance. Machiavelli had no interest in metaphysics, what he called “dreams,” but instead wished to offer sensible rules of thumb to a young lord who faced a difficult road ahead. As Machiavelli explained to his friend, his book will not only define the nature of princely government but will discuss how principalities “are acquired, how they are retained, and why they are lost”—topics that would not have occurred to those writing on behalf of monarchs securely seated on their thrones. To suggest to Charles, or any other monarch who believed himself appointed by divine right, that his rule was precarious would have smacked of treason. In Renaissance Italy, by contrast, such insecurity was the norm. Each despot lived in perpetual fear of the usurper, exhibiting a well-grounded paranoia that helps explain much of the cruelty of the age. As Pope Pius II observed: “In our change-loving Italy, where nothing stands firm, and where no ancient dynasty exists, a servant can easily become a king”—a state of affairs likely to whet the ambition of an impoverished orphan and cause the prince many a sleepless night. All Machiavelli’s experience told him that life was unpredictable, and politics—which is merely life played out on a greater stage and for higher stakes—even more so; that the best laid plans of princes and prelates often lead to disaster; and that well-meaning rulers (like Piero Soderini) might forfeit the confidence of their citizens while ruthless tyrants (like Valentino) could win the loyalty of theirs. Given this reality, what’s the point of meditating on situations that never arise and offering models of conduct for people too pure ever to have walked the face of the earth? “Many have imagined republics and principalities that never were,” he scoffs, dismissing such exercises as pointless speculation.
Erasmus starts with a basic premise: that the prince aspires to rule his subjects as well as he can, and that his instructor need only hold up a model of perfection for his eager pupil to be drawn to it like a moth to a flame.viii “Let the teacher paint a sort of celestial creature,” Erasmus urges the hypothetical tutor of a future king, “more like to a divine being than a mortal: yea, sent by the God above to help the affairs of mortals by looking out and caring for everyone and everything; to whom no concern is of longer standing or more dear than the state; who has more than a paternal spirit towards everyone; who holds the life of each individual dearer than his own; who works and strives night and day for just one end—to be the best he can for everyone.”
To Machiavelli such a picture is laughable. In the course of his career he met many rulers and none of them resembled the celestial creature Erasmus describes. Of course Erasmus’s essay doesn’t derive from a study of real-life princes but of revered authors, including Aristotle, who wrote in The Politics:
“[W]e take it for granted that a good ruler is both good and wise, and wisdom is essential for one engaged in the work of the state.” Both the Greek philosopher and his Christian disciple predicate their philosophy on the assumption, so deeply held as to remain largely unexamined, that the universe is essentially rational; that it promotes virtue and punishes wickedness; that society yearns to achieve a more perfect union, no matter how far short it falls in practice.ix The prince plays a vital role in this divinely ordered universe as God’s representative on earth, a shepherd to his flock, a father to his children. As Aquinas expressed it: “The worthy exercise of the kingly office requires . . . excelling virtue and must be requited by a high degree of blessedness.” It is through the good prince that the order inherent in the universe is made manifest and the divine plan brought to fruition.
How different is the world Machiavelli conjures! Instead of a rationally ordered universe unfolding according to divine plan, he presents a world governed by caprice, filled with violence, subject to sudden, inexplicable transformations, plunged into chaos and inhospitable to man and all his works. “[A]ll human affairs are ever in a state of flux,” he declares, and a prince must be willing to change his course readily since “the things of this world are so variable.”x Having observed at close hand the meteoric careers of men like Savonarola and Valentino—not to mention the twists and turns of his own—Machiavelli was keenly aware that nothing is certain but change itself. It is foolhardy to bask in today’s success for it will almost certainly be followed by tomorrow’s calamity. Presiding over this anarchic muddle we call the world is the trickster goddess Fortuna, who “turns states and kingdoms upside down as she pleases,” and “deprives the just of the good that she freely gives to the unjust.” She is an “unstable and fickle deity [who] often sets the undeserving on a throne to which the deserving never attains.”xi
Faced with such a topsy-turvy world, the very notion of “the good prince” becomes problematic. To Thomas Aquinas, who wrote in his Commentary on Politics “No one can be called a good prince unless he is good in the moral virtues and prudent,” Machiavelli might well have responded: No one can be a considered a good prince, or any prince at all, who loses his kingdom through a foolish adherence to such platitudes. The very notion of a fixed morality is preposterous in a lawless world. The prince, he insists, “must be prepared to shift according to the winds of fortune and as changing circumstances dictate. And if possible, as I have already said, he must not depart from the good, but if compelled by necessity he must know the ways of evil.”
Necessity, not any abstract notion of the Good, must determine our behavior. The prince must play the hand he is dealt, for he who does not adapt to circumstances is doomed to failure. A prince is successful, Machiavelli says, “when he acts in harmony with the times, and similarly comes to grief when his actions are discordant with them.”xii While most writers asked themselves: What is the best form of government? Machiavelli ponders what he considers to be the only real question: What kind of government, if any, is possible? In a violent and unpredictable world there is no point in dreaming of societies that can never be. Indeed, he spends little time analyzing stable states with established dynasties or ecclesiastical states—which, he remarks with tongue in cheek, “are sustained by superior causes [and so] transcend human understanding”—but instead devotes his efforts to describing the kind of states that were familiar to him, petty principalities insecurely held by upstarts and freebooters. His heroes are those often illegitimate usurpers like Valentino who improvise on the fly and survive on their wits and their courage. They are the men who master capricious fortune. Only by the gravest exertions can we stave off, and then only temporarily, the forces of chaos, Machiavelli insists. Under the circumstances we would be far better served if instead of building models of perfection we concentrated our efforts on cobbling together a serviceable government for the moment, recognizing we must adapt our solutions to evolving circumstances.
Machiavelli was a true child of the Renaissance, shaped by both the values and pathologies of a creative and tumultuous age. His apparent indifference to traditional moral strictures was in large part a response to the chaos he saw all around him. In early-sixteenth-century Italy, kings and princes rose and fell with startling rapidity; conquering armies were quickly conquered in their turn and no state was secure from outside forces or from internal dissension. Nowhere were these lessons as stark as in Florence, whose history was a bloody parade of factional strife and political turmoil. The placid contemplation of ideal states seemed a luxury when governments were collapsing about one’s ears and marauding armies burned villages, laid waste the land, and raped and killed with impunity.
For Aquinas and Erasmus, accustomed to a more predictable course, what is at stake for the ruler is simply his virtue—whether he will follow the path of righteousness or of the tyrant. For Machiavelli what is at stake is the more fundamental question of whether or not he will hold on to power. The traditional “mirror of princes” assumes the ruler’s place in the hierarchy is secure, the only question being whether he discharges his duties with honor. The Prince begins with the assumption that his office and even his life are under constant threat, which makes his virtue rather beside the point. Most of the cruelty advocated in The Prince is a result of the insecurity of the ruler’s position. “Anyone who gains [new territories] and wishes to hold on to them must do two things,” Machiavelli enjoins in a typical passage; “the first is to extinguish the ancient lineage of the previous ruler; the other is to alter neither the law nor the taxes.”
This and similarly cold-blooded proposals have sent chills down the spines of generations of readers, but Machiavelli, who had seen close-up both the ruthlessness of princes and the far more devastating consequences of anarchy, cared only about results. “Cesare Borgia was considered cruel,” he points out, “yet his cruelty brought an end to the disorders in the Romagna, uniting it in peace and loyalty. If this is considered good, one must judge him as much kinder than the Florentine people who, in order to escape being called cruel, allowed Pistoia to be destroyed.” A ruler’s first responsibility is to rule, and whatever secures that end can be regarded as just, even if this demands the violation of ethical norms.
Indeed Machiavelli strongly implies that those concerned for their immortal souls might want to find a different line of work. After praising Philip of Macedon as the model of an effective ruler, Machiavelli admits that his policies of ethnic-cleansing were “infinitely cruel, and inimical to society . . . and every man should flee them, preferring to live as a private citizen than to live as a king with such ruin on his account.” One can either be a saint or a king, he implies, but not both. He follows with a characteristic warning against the dangers of splitting the difference, a spineless tactic so often pursued by his own government: “Nonetheless, for he who would not wish to follow that first path of goodness, desiring to hold on to what he has, it behooves him to follow the path of evil. But most men prefer to take the middle road, which is most harmful, since they know not how to be completely good nor completely bad.”xiii
In the beginning of his Ethics, Aristotle declares “that ‘the good’ is ‘that at which all things aim.’ ” Machiavelli’s universe bears little resemblance to the orderly mechanism proposed by Aristotle or the divinely inspired cosmos envisioned by Aquinas or Erasmus.xiv Fortune is so perverse that even Machiavelli, the most clear-sighted of guides, must on occasion throw up his hands in despair. After analyzing the career of his hero Valentino, Machiavelli admits the limitations of his prescriptions: “Having reviewed all the Duke’s actions, then, I would not know how to fault him. Indeed, it seems to me that . . . he should be held up as an example to all those who through fortune or the arms of others have seized the throne. He, possessing greatness of spirit and high ambition, could not have acted otherwise, and it was only the swiftness of Alexander’s death, coupled with his own illness, that foiled his designs.” If even such a giant as Valen
tino can come to grief, what hope is there for lesser men?
Such a worldview taken to an extreme would argue for fatalism; passivity is the only rational response to a universe in which the consequences of one’s actions are completely unpredictable.xv But Machiavelli rejects that conclusion. He had nothing but contempt for pious monks who retired from the world in order to prepare for the next, and little more respect for hedonists who responded to life’s travails by losing themselves in meaningless pleasures. He dismissed those who believed “that the prudence of men cannot manage [the affairs of the world], and indeed cannot improve them” and who thought “that there is no point in sweating much over these matters and that they should submit to chance instead.” Though the world is ruled by a fickle goddess, it remains in our power to improve the odds:
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