Machiavelli Niccolò - Machiavelli

AN EARLIER VERSION OF THIS introduction was published in the Past Masters series in 1981. I remain greatly indebted to Keith Thomas for inviting me to contribute to his series, to the staff of the Oxford University Press (especially Henry Hardy) for much editorial help at that time, and to John Dunn, Susan James, J. G. A. Pocock, and Keith Thomas for reading my original manuscript with meticulous care and providing me with many valuable comments. For expert help with the preparation of this new edition I am again very grateful to the editorial staff at the Press, and especially to Shelley Cox for much patience and encouragement.

For this new edition I have thoroughly revised my text and brought the bibliography up to date, but I have not altered my basic line of argument. I still think of Machiavelli essentially as the exponent of a neoclassical form of humanist political thought. I argue in addition that the most original and creative aspects of his political vision are best understood as a series of polemicalsometimes even satiricalreactions against the humanist assumptions he inherited and basically continued to endorse. While my principal aim has been to provide a straightforward introduction to Machiavellis views on statecraft, I hope that this interpretation may also be of some interest to specialists in the field.

When quoting from Boethius, Cicero, Livy, Sallust, and Seneca, I have used the translations published in the Loeb classical library. When I cite from Machiavellis Correspondence, Legations, and so-called Caprices (Ghiribizzi), the translations are my own. When quoting from The Prince I have used the translation by Russell Price in Machiavelli, The Prince, ed. Quentin Skinner and Russell Price (Cambridge, 1988). When quoting from Machiavellis other works I have relied (with kind permission) on the excellent English versions in Allan Gilbert, trans.: Machiavelli: The Chief Works and Others (3 vols., Duke University Press, 1965). When I cite from the Correspondence and the Legations, I identify the source by placing a C or an L in parentheses, as appropriate, together with the page reference after each quotation. When I refer to other works by Machiavelli, I make it contextually clear in each case which text I am citing, and simply add the page references in brackets. Full details of all the editions I am using can be found in the list Works by Machiavelli Quoted in the Text on page 142.

I need to make two further points about translations. I have ventured in a few places to amend Gilberts renderings in order to keep closer to Machiavellis exact phraseology. And I have held to my belief that Machiavellis pivotal concept of virt (virtus in Latin) cannot be translated into modern English by any single word or manageable series of periphrases. I have consequently left these terms in their original form throughout. This is not to say, however, that I fail to discuss their meanings; on the contrary, much of my text can be read as an explication of what I take Machiavelli to have meant by them.

MACHIAVELLI DIED NEARLY FIVE hundred years ago, but his name lives on as a byword for cunning, duplicity, and the exercise of bad faith in political affairs. The murderous Machiavel, as Shakespeare called him, has never ceased to be an object of hatred to moralists of all persuasions, conservatives and revolutionaries alike. Edmund Burke claimed to see the odious maxims of a machiavellian policy underlying the democratic tyranny of the French Revolution. Marx and Engels attacked the principles of machiavellianism with no less vehemence, while insisting that the true exponents of machiavellian policy are those who attempt to paralyse democratic energies at periods of revolutionary change. The point on which both sides agree is that the evils of machiavellianism constitute one of the most dangerous threats to the moral basis of political life.

So much notoriety has gathered around Machiavellis name that the charge of being a machiavellian still remains a serious accusation in political debate. When Henry Kissinger, for example, expounded his philosophy in a famous interview published in the New Republic in 1972, his interviewer remarked, after hearing him discuss his role as a presidential adviser, that listening to you, one sometimes wonders not how much you have influenced the President of the United States but to what extent you have been influenced by Machiavelli. The suggestion was one that Kissinger showed himself extremely anxious to repudiate. Was he a machiavellian? No, not at all. Was he not influenced by Machiavelli to some degree? To none whatever.

What lies behind the sinister reputation Machiavelli has acquired? Is it really deserved? What views about politics and political morality does he actually put forward in his major works? These are the questions I hope to answer in the course of this book. I shall argue that, in order to understand Machiavellis doctrines, we need to begin by recovering the problems he evidently saw himself confronting in The Prince, the Discourses, and his other works of political thought. To attain this perspective, we need in turn to reconstruct the context in which these works were originally composedthe intellectual context of classical and Renaissance philosophy, as well as the political context of Italian city-state life at the start of the sixteenth century. Once we restore Machiavelli to the world in which his ideas were initially formed, we can begin to appreciate the extraordinary originality of his attack on the prevailing moral assumptions of his age. And once we grasp the implications of his own moral outlook, we can readily see why his name is still so often invoked whenever the issues of political power and leadership are discussed.