Machiavelli, Niccolò (1469–1527)

Niccolò Machiavelli continues to influence the thoughts and affairs of humans 500 years after his death. As time has passed, his writing and thoughts have become increasingly polyvalent; that is, they include multiple meanings and motives. Where once he was considered an evil master manipulator of the dark side of human affairs, personified in the character of Iago in Shakespeare's Othello, he has in recent times been elevated to the position of a more sophisticated and objective analyst of government, politics, social change, and war.

Machiavellian scholar Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr., of Harvard University has noted that Machiavelli was the first philosopher to not only show disrespect for the just, the sacred, and the noble, but also to advise everyone else to act similarly. Machiavelli has also been referred to as the first modern analyst of power and his formal writing as an example of a previously unexpressed political realism. He brought to his works a hard and uncompromising edge that shed idealistic trappings of how things should or might work in the affairs of humans to show how in fact they did work. Inasmuch as his realism included the activities of the church, he was vilified by clerical authorities and his books were banned by them.

It is known that the Machiavelli family had been living around Florence for some time before Niccolò was born. Niccolò's father, Bernardo, was reasonably well schooled for his time, a member of the lawyer's guild. His mother, Bartolomea Nelli, had some literary talent. Niccolò was her third child and her first son. Beginning at age 7, Niccolò began being schooled in Latin by members of learned clergy, and his reading in the classics was robust.

As young man, Machiavelli secured a government post, where he performed as a secretary (secretarius) and as an unofficial ambassador to kings and courts from Florence. He took notes and wrote executive summaries of his conversations and observations while abroad for his superiors. He was remembered as a man of great energy. Over his life, he wrote in many forms. In addition to successive chronicles beginning in 1501, Machiavelli wrote a fable, Belfagor, the Devil Who Took a Wife, in 1517; The Ass, an incomplete fantasy, in 1517; Andrea, a comedy translated into the vernacular from the Roman playwright Terence, in 1517; Mandragola, a play, in 1518; The Life of Castruccio Castracani, a short biography, in 1520; The Art of War in 1521; Florentine Histories in 1520–1525; and Clizia, a comedy from the Roman playwright Plautus, in 1525. Machiavelli's high art and his most remembered works, however, were on politics: The Prince, released in 1513, and The Discourses of 1513–1517.

As Florentine secretary, Machiavelli made some enemies, among them an influential political group called the optimates. When the Florentine republic fell in 1512, Machiavelli was severed from the privileged life he had known functioning in high government circles of the day. Unexpectedly, his name appeared on a list of conspirators given to the Medici, the most powerful family in Italy. He was investigated, imprisoned, and tortured. He was released when it was revealed that he had been falsely accused. At about this time Machiavelli wrote The Prince, his most famous treatise, which was [Page 886]followed by The Discourses. These texts cement his place in the pantheon of works about the foibles, follies, and politics of his times, which still resonate with students of politics and power to this day. In The Prince, Machiavelli raised the still relevant issue of whether it is better to be loved or feared as a leader. He replied that while it would be good if a leader could be both, if one had to make a choice, it should be on the side of being feared. The reason, he said, was that if people only loved a leader, they might not always do what is right, because they are selfish. The bonds of love are fragile. On the other hand, if they feared the leader, they are more likely to do the right thing because of a possible punishment. The bonds of fear are more binding in hard times than those of love, which are apt to be more forgiving (and hence less reliable).

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