Scientific Revolution

Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527), in Florence on born May 3, was a Florentine statesman and Renaissance Italy's greatest political philosopher; he died in Florence on June 21. He is often regarded as the first to take a scientific approach to politics.

Machiavelli is known chiefly as the author of two books, The Prince and The Discourses on Livy (both c. 1517). The former concerns the acquisition of principalities, a form of government in which the state belongs to an individual or a family. The latter is a meditation on republics, in which the state is public rather than private property. The notoriety of these books is largely due to the absolute ruthlessness advocated by Machiavelli. In The Prince, he recommends acting against faith, charity, humanity, and religion. In The Discourses, he criticizes Giovampagolo Baglioni because that tyrant had the opportunity, but not the courage, to murder the Pope.

Despite their practical orientation, The Prince and The Discourses are works of political science. Machiavelli asks theoretical questions: how states are born and what sustains them. But his work marks a fundamental break with premodern political thought. Classical and medieval thinkers were concerned above all with the difference between good and bad forms of government; Machiavelli ignores that distinction in favor of hard realism. In the first chapter of The Prince, he classifies states solely according to how they are acquired. In chapter fifteen, he dismisses those whodream of imagined principalities; perhaps referring to heaven, or Plato's Republic. Machiavelli thus narrows the horizon of political science; the question is not what kind of government is best, but how do people get the kind they want.

To answer this question, Machiavelli first explains the origin of states. He observes that hereditary principalities are established based on habit: People accept the regime because they are accustomed to it. But every established government was once new. How does a new state survive long enough to become hereditary? Machiavelli ignores the traditional answers: God's blessing or natural development. Perhaps just dumb luck? But fortune is fickle by definition, and does not sustain any one thing for long. Because all states originated from some source, Machiavelli proposes that certain people have, within themselves, the power to conquer fortune, to create armies, and to establish and maintain states.

He calls this power virtue, a word suggesting the premodern idea of moral excellence. But in fact, Machiavelli's definition of virtue supports the ruthlessness he advocates. Morality and justice as commonly understood exist only as the products of established states. Machiavellian virtue must exist before the state is founded, and is therefore beyond ordinary right and wrong. It does, however, require that certain temptations be resisted: The prince must never rely on fortune or the grace of others, or put off until tomorrow a murder he needs to commit today.

Whereas ancient philosophers were conservative, more concerned with preserving decent governments than with creating new ones, Machiavelli encourages innovators. He especially admires those who create principalities and republics from scratch, or rejuvenate existing ones. In all cases, he insists that the innovator must rely on his own virtue, and have arms of his own. By this, Machiavelli means soldiers, loyal to the prince alone. He severely criticized Italian states for their reliance on mercenary and auxiliary arms. Paid soldiers, or those borrowed from another prince, have no connection to the innovator's virtue, and so cannot be a secure foundation for the state.

Machiavelli is regarded by some as the founder of value-free political science. He describes politics as it is, not as it might be, and shows how this knowledge can be exploited to bring greater order into human affairs. But Machiavelli's science is anything but value-free: He prefers glory to security, and admires innovators more than conservatives. Though he writes both for republics and tyrants, many have argued that he favors one over the other. In fact, he clearly has a preference for republics, but believes that the founding father of every republic needs to possess unrestrained power.

Machiavelli's writing has never gone out of fashion. Perhaps this is because he had the courage to face certain hard truths about modern thought. In order to conquer chance and nature, the early moderns were willing to reject the authority both of divine and natural right, thus imposing no moral restraints on the technological power unleashed by their new sciences. Machiavelli's political science vividly illustrates the consequences of their boldness.

Machiavelli paid relatively little attention to the rise of modern science and technology, concentrating much more on the topic of political reform. It was left to Francis Bacon and others to apply Machiavellian principles to the conquest of nature as a whole. But Machiavelli's thought did at least hint at the Baconian project. He speculates that it was natural famine that drove large populations of barbarians out of their homelands in the east to inundate the Roman empire. He likens the movement of such peoples to floods, and speaks of strong political institutions as dams and dikes that can restrain such floods. Machiavelli is thus developing a science of politics that is technological in the modern sense.

Modernization;; Scientific Revolution.

Machiavelli, Niccolò. (1996). The Discourses on Livy, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield and Nathan Tarcov. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Machiavelli, Niccolò. (1998). The Prince, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Mansfield's translations are by far the best available. They are readable and precise, and include useful introductions and a glossary of Machiavelli's terms.

Skinner, Quentin. (2001). Machiavelli: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. A very brief introduction to Machiavelli aimed at the general reader.

Strauss, Leo. (1995). Thoughts on Machiavelli. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. A difficult but penetrating study of Machiavelli. Strauss argues that Machiavelli was the founder of modern political thought.

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