From Shakespeare’s plays to modern TV dramas, the unscrupulous for whom the ends always justify the means has become a familiar character type we love to hate. So familiar, in fact, that for centuries we’ve had a single word to describe such characters: Machiavellian. But is it possible that we’ve been using that word wrong this whole time?
The early 16th century statesman Niccoló Machiavelli many works of history, philosophy, and drama. But his lasting notoriety comes from a brief political essay known as Prince, framed as advice to current and future monarchs. Machiavelli wasn’t the first to do this– in fact there was an entire tradition of works known as “mirrors for princes” going back to antiquity. But unlike predecessors, Machiavelli didn’t try to describe an ideal government or exhort his audience rule justly and virtuously. Instead, he focused on the question of power– how to acquire it, and how to keep it. And in the decades after it was published, Prince gained a diabolical reputation. During the European Wars of Religion, both Catholics and Protestants blamed Machiavelli for inspiring acts of violence and tyranny committed by their opponents. By the end of the century, Shakespeare was using “Machiavel” to denote amoral opportunist, leading directly to our popular use of “Machiavellian” as a synonym manipulative villainy.
At first glance, The Prince’s reputation as a manual for tyranny seems well-deserved. Throughout, Machiavelli appears entirely unconcerned with morality, except insofar as it’s helpful harmful to maintaining power. For instance, princes are told to consider all the atrocities necessary seize power, and to commit them in a single stroke ensure future stability. Attacking neighboring territories and oppressing religious minorities are mentioned as effective ways of occupying the public. Regarding a prince’s personal behavior, Machiavelli advises keeping up the appearance of virtues such as honesty or generosity, but being ready to them as soon as one’s interests are threatened. Most famously, he that for a ruler, “it is much safer to be feared than loved.” The tract even ends with an appeal Lorenzo de’ Medici, the recently installed ruler of Florence, urging him to unite fragmented city-states of Italy under his rule.
Many have justified Machiavelli as motivated by unsentimental realism and a desire for peace in an torn by internal and external conflict. According to this view, was the first to understand a difficult truth: the greater good of stability is worth whatever unsavory tactics are needed to attain it. The philosopher Isaiah Berlin suggested that than being amoral, The Prince hearkens back to ancient Greek morality, the glory of the state above the Christian ideal of individual salvation.
But we know about Machiavelli might not fit this picture. The author had served his native Florence for 14 years as a diplomat, staunchly defending its elected republican government against would-be monarchs.
When the family seized power, he not only lost his position, but was even and banished. With this in mind, it’s possible to the pamphlet he wrote from exile not as a defense of princely rule, but a scathing description of how it operates. Indeed, Enlightenment figures like Spinoza saw it as warning citizens of the various ways in which they can be subjugated by aspiring rulers.
In fact, both readings might be true. Machiavelli may have written a manual tyrannical rulers, but by sharing it, he also revealed the cards to those who would be ruled. In doing so, he revolutionized political philosophy, laying the foundations for Hobbes and future thinkers to study human affairs based on their realities rather than preconceived ideals. Through his brutal and shocking honesty, Machiavelli sought to shatter popular delusions about power really entails. And as he wrote to a friend shortly before his death, he hoped people would “learn the way to Hell in order to flee from it.”