Catherine H. Zuckert - Machiavellis Politics

Machiavelli is popularly knownfor obvious reasonsas a proponent of Machiavellian politics. Certain aspects of his work support his dubious reputation and the implied opprobrium. He is often listed along with Thucydides and Hobbes as a classical realist, who presents a realistic view of politics, because he takes such a dim view of human nature. Neither Thucydides nor Hobbes openly and explicitly advises a prince that he must murder the bloodline of the ruler he supplants if he wishes to maintain his conquest, however. Nor do they advocate cruelty well-used. Especially in his Prince, Machiavelli appears to advocate the necessity of using force and fraud in politics with much more glee than the other realists.

Serious students of Machiavellis writings have nevertheless come to hold very different views of his works. The sixteenth-century English playwright Christopher Marlowe is usually included among those who popularized the view of Machiavelli as a teacher of evil. Yet by beginning The Jew of Malta with a prologue delivered by a character named Machevill who declares that he count[s] religion but a childish toy, and hold[s] there is no sin but ignorance, Marlowe also suggests that Machiavelli was a Socratic philosopher. Seventeenth-century political theorists such as Baruch Spinoza, James Harrington, and Algernon Sidney insisted that Machiavelli was a republican political thinker.

The plethora of scholarly interpretations of the import of Machiavellis work suggests that each is partial, emphasizing one aspect of his work at the expense of others. In the following study I strive to present a fuller, more comprehensive view.

At present there appear to be three major approaches to reading and understanding his work. The first is contextual or historical; the second is rhetorical, literary, and ironic; the third is theoreticalscientific, philosophical, or political-theoretical. Each of these kinds of interpretation has characteristic advantagesand limitations.

Contextual or historical readings of Machiavelli begin from the undeniable fact that he presents himself in all of his major prose writings as an author who is seeking a position as a political advisor. He thus writes at a certain time and place and addresses the concerns of specific individuals. What he claims to offer his addressees, on the basis of his own practical political experience as well as his extensive reading and study of the ancient histories, is specific political advice about what they should do in their own immediate circumstances. David Wootton, for example, argues that the subject matter and advice contained in