Is Machiavelli So Machiavellian?
Re-reading Machiavelli's The Prince
Cyrille Ozanne
8/24/20263 min read
The presentation of Machiavelli's Prince needs no introduction. This book, written and dedicated to Lorenzo the Magnificent, marks and foundations all Western political thought. It is characterized by a very dark vision of the human being. This vision forever colors the Western approach to politics.
Yet, looking more closely, the misanthropic reading of The Prince may be excessive. It denotes a very sadistic and Mandevillian vision of society and the human being. At no point does Machiavelli perform the reversal of values observable in these authors. For him, good remains good and evil is evil. He posits that in certain circumstances, the prince or king may be led to do evil for the good of his politics and for the good of his society. But this evil is never very generalized. It essentially consists of sometimes doing evil to certain individuals, to a few, in particular circumstances—according to him, often the seizure or restoration of power. At no point does he instruct the prince to behave dictatorially or capriciously toward the people and his entourage. On the contrary, while he recommends that people fear him, he also warns against people hating him.
The formula summarizing his thought, although not his own ("the end justifies the means"), is interpreted as an authorization of means according to the end. One can even push it further by saying that the end effectively makes the employed means just. But this is not a reversal of values here. We are rather in a legal fiction. In French labor law, night is between 9 o'clock in the evening and 7 o'clock in the morning. This is a legal fiction. Depending on the time of year, night will not correspond to these hours. For practical reasons, the legislator fixes once and for all the hours beyond which work is surcharged. For Machiavelli, the situation is similar. The end creates a fiction authorizing the prince to do bad things. Yet these things outside situations remain bad. Machiavelli says so anyway. The prince must do good without fearing to sometimes go toward evil. Evil remains evil and is only "good" within the framework of his action. In our society, this kind of configuration usually gives rise today to compensations. This is the case of expropriation, for example. Besides this, Machiavelli widely warns the prince against any slippages, reminding him well that he must watch over the good opinion of the people, that he must be esteemed, etc. There is never a question of the prince behaving sanguinarily in the long term.
He indeed gives one of the most negative definitions of the human being. He judges him ungrateful, opportunistic, inconstant and without morals. But these defects merely describe humans in their various aspects: toward others, toward themselves, toward situations, etc. Humans are not all equally ungrateful or opportunistic. Each of these defects falls on an importance scale varying for each individual. This one will be more opportunistic, that one more egoistic. Certainly overall people are not reliable. This is human nature. But the statement is shocking because society emerges from the Middle Ages where soldiers, knights and princes were guided and framed by a quite strict chivalry code. This society fading behind new elites, and politics being more open, behaviors diversify. This new society brings out even more the absence of intrinsic value of the human being. Indeed, whatever the motivation, these values are dictated by individuals for individuals, and not by nature.
This is in fact the main criticism that can be made of the book. In chapter 18, "How Princes Should Keep Their Word", Machiavelli explicitly poses that "as they are wicked and would not keep their word toward you, you have no obligation to keep yours toward them". The underlying question is that of the value of the given word. Once again we emerge from a chivalry society where a oath and a word have more value than writings. In Middle Age society where writing is rare, people capable of writing and reading are few; the given word and oath are fundamental. Lying under oath, not keeping one's word or oath are acts punishable in themselves. In Renaissance society, things evolve. And the development of writing makes the word lose its moral value. Yet must we deduce from this that the individual becomes bad? Not exactly. Multiple reasons can push a person not to keep their word. Certainly they can do it because they see a more or less immediate interest therein. But they can also do it to not be too penalized or to protect themselves. The true reason of human word inconstancy comes mainly from the impermanence of things. The world, reality is in perpetual movement and evolution. It would be stupid for the king, the prince, to cling to their word against all odds. Similarly, at different levels and degrees, his subjects adapt to the situation permanently.
We thus see that Machiavelli is not so negative as he appears. He arrives right after a society where the Church had framed violence through morality by valorizing acts conforming to its values. If the author renounces defining that one type of government or politics is good against another, it is to reflect on the question of the prince's attitude in the circumstances of his reign. The negative coloring of his description comes rather in reaction to the previously envisioned ideal than on a darkness, new or fundamental, of human reality.
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