Niccolo Machiavelli is traditionally associated with The Prince, a piece of writing that was originally meant to be advice to the Medici Family of Florence. It was originally written as a means for him to gain political ascendancy at a time when his political career was in metaphorical tatters. It was subsequently published posthumously and very quickly became an indicator of his legacy.
What does being Machiavellian mean? If Machiavellian connotes crass opportunism in the name of acquiring or maintaining power for its own sake, then Machiavelli arguably does not deserve to be tarred with the brush of his own name. Machiavelli has acknowledged that there are degrees in the judgment of political affairs. He declined, unlike Plato or other ancient philosophers to insist that a single type of constitutional order afforded the only viable way of living.
The ambivalent aspects of his political legacy deserves greater scrutiny and analysis. Since the time when his works were disseminated and read following his death, it has resulted in a wide variety of fates for his reputation.
On the one hand, his supposed immoralism was reviled by a vast arrays critics, including not least the Prussian crown prince Frederick, who composed a treatise called Anti-Machiavel in the middle of the eighteen century. In this vein, Machiavelli was both lauded and condemned for his supposed “formulation” of the doctrine of raison d’erat (reason of state), which placed “political realism”/realpolitik at the forefront of justifications for the state to act solely for its own good, without regard for constraints for religious piety and moral convention.
Even today, one of the common schools of interpretation concerning Machiavelli depicts him as a “teacher of evil” and the very definition of tyrannical rule. In this regard, this school of political thought not merely rejects the role of ethical considerations in political affairs, but even revelled in the use of cruelty, treachery and violence as worthy political affairs.
On the other hand, the republican dimension of Machiavelli’s thought enjoyed a slightly diminished reception. The diffusion of his republican thought has been observed throughout the so-called Atlantic world. Specifically, his republican thought has been observed in the ideas that guided the framers of the American constitution regarding the inevitability of factions and the construction of a system of checks and balance. His less well-known but equally seminal piece Discourses received wide praise and acclaim as an antidote to the view of Machiavelli as a “tyrant” author.
According to some authors, his version of republicanism is of a civic humanist variety whose roots are to be found in classical antiquity; Machiavelli is therefore thought by some to be conveying a political tradition with considerable pedigree. Others however, when weighing against The Prince and his subsequent writings, it can be stressed that the intellectual substance of his republicanism is more modern as opposed to classical.
Given that as he conveys a sense of mixed pedigree when it comes to the originality of his political thought, both from a “tyrannical” and a republicanism angle, history continues to debate his political morality, his conception of his state, and many other features of his work.
Does the above mean that Machiavelli is fundamentally inconsistent? Rather, the apparently conflicting features of his thought may be credited to his attempt to innovate by means of looking back to widely known historical examples and genres of political writing, while attempting to draw different conclusions from the commonplace expectations of his audience.
For example, in Chapter XVIII of The Prince, he seemed to advise would-be-rulers to prepare themselves to commit immoral acts in order to succeed, yet he never explicitly proposes that evil actions are worthy or meritorious in themselves. This may seem contradictory, but it can be best understood as a reflection of the fact that Machiavelli cannot bring himself to reverse totally the standard moral convictions of the day.
In spite of his repeated assertions of his own originality, his attention to pre-existing traditions indicate that he was never fully able to escape his intellectual confines. Thus, Machiavelli might be best understood as simultaneously “original” and “conventional”, as both an “ancient” and a “modern”, a thinker of great vision who still remained deeply indebted to the context which he wrote.
