Niccolò Machiavelli

Niccolò Machiavelli
Portrait by Santi di Tito, c. 1550–1600
Born(1469-05-03)3 May 1469
Florence, Republic of Florence
Died21 June 1527(1527-06-21) (aged 58)
Florence, Republic of Florence
Spouse
Marietta Corsini
​
(m. 1501)​
Children7
Philosophical work
EraRenaissance philosophy
RegionWestern philosophy
School
Main interestsPolitics and political philosophy, military theory, history
Notable works
Notable ideasClassical realism, virtù, modern republicanism
Signature

Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli[a] (3 May 1469 – 21 June 1527) was a Florentine[4][5] diplomat, author, philosopher, and historian who lived during the Italian Renaissance. He is best known for his political treatise The Prince (Il Principe), written around 1513 but not published until 1532, five years after his death.[6] He has often been called the father of modern political philosophy and political science.[7]

For many years he served as a senior official in the Florentine Republic with responsibilities in diplomatic and military affairs. He wrote comedies, carnival songs, and poetry. His personal correspondence is also important to historians and scholars of Italian correspondence.[8] He worked as secretary to the second chancery of the Republic of Florence from 1498 to 1512, when the Medici were out of power.

After his death Machiavelli's name came to evoke unscrupulous acts of the sort he advised most famously in his work, The Prince.[9] He concerned himself with the ways a ruler could succeed in politics, and believed those who flourished engaged in deception, treachery, and violence.[10] He advised rulers to engage in evil when political necessity requires it, at one point stating that successful founders and reformers of governments should be excused for killing other leaders who would oppose them.[11][12][13] Machiavelli's Prince has been surrounded by controversy since it was published. Some consider it to be a straightforward description of political reality. Many view The Prince as a manual, teaching would-be tyrants how they should seize and maintain power.[14] Even into recent times, scholars such as Leo Strauss have restated the traditional opinion that Machiavelli was a "teacher of evil".[15]

Even though Machiavelli has become most famous for his work on principalities, scholars also give attention to the exhortations in his other works of political philosophy. The Discourses on Livy (composed c. 1517) has been said to have paved the way for modern republicanism.[16] His works were a major influence on Enlightenment authors who revived interest in classical republicanism, such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and James Harrington.[17] Machiavelli's philosophical contributions have influenced generations of academics and politicians, with many of them debating the nature of his ideas.[18]

  1. ^ "Machiavelli, Niccolò". Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English. Longman. Retrieved 5 August 2023.
  2. ^ "Machievelli, Niccolò". Lexico US English Dictionary. Oxford University Press. Archived from the original on 10 February 2022.
  3. ^ "Machiavelli". The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.). HarperCollins. Retrieved 9 February 2022.
  4. ^ Dietz, Mary G.. Machiavelli, Niccolò (1469–1527), 1998, https://doi.org/10.4324/9780415249126-S080-1. Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Taylor and Francis
  5. ^ Berridge, G.R., Lloyd, L. (2012). M. In: Barder, B., Pope, L.E., Rana, K.S. (eds) The Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Diplomacy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137017611_13
  6. ^ For example: "Niccolo Machiavelli – Italian statesman and writer". 17 June 2023. and "Niccolò Machiavelli". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 1 November 2018.
  7. ^ For example: Smith, Gregory B. (2008). Between Eternities: On the Tradition of Political Philosophy, Past, Present, and Future. Lexington Books. p. 65. ISBN 978-0739120774., Whelan, Frederick G. (2004). Hume and Machiavelli: Political Realism and Liberal Thought. Lexington Books. p. 29. ISBN 978-0739106310., Strauss (1988). What is Political Philosophy? And Other Studies. University of Chicago Press. p. 41. ISBN 978-0226777139.
  8. ^ Najemy 1993, p. missing
  9. ^ "Niccolo Machiavelli". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 8 August 2019.
  10. ^ Cassirer, Ernst (1974) [January 1946]. The Myth of the State. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-00036-7.
  11. ^ For example, The Prince chap. 15, and The Discourses Book I, chapter 9
  12. ^ Strauss, Leo; Cropsey, Joseph (2012). History of Political Philosophy. University of Chicago Press. p. 297. ISBN 978-0226924717.
  13. ^ Mansfield, Harvey C. (1998). Machiavelli's Virtue. University of Chicago Press. p. 178. ISBN 978-0226503721.
  14. ^ Giorgini, Giovanni (2013). "Five Hundred Years of Italian Scholarship on Machiavelli's Prince". Review of Politics. 75 (4): 625–640. doi:10.1017/S0034670513000624. ISSN 0034-6705. S2CID 146970196.
  15. ^ Strauss, Leo (2014). Thoughts on Machiavelli. University of Chicago Press. p. 9. ISBN 978-0226230979.
  16. ^ Harvey Mansfield and Nathan Tarcov, "Introduction to the Discourses". In their translation of the Discourses on Livy
  17. ^ Theodosiadis, Michail (June–August 2021). "From Hobbes and Locke to Machiavelli's virtù in the political context of meliorism: popular eucosmia and the value of moral memory". Polis Revista. 11: 25–60.
  18. ^ Berlin, Isaiah (31 December 2012). The Proper Study of Mankind: An Anthology of Essays. Random House. ISBN 978-1-4464-9695-4.


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