Nicolas Machiavelli (in Italian Niccolò Machiavelli) (born May 3, 1469 in Florence - died June 21, 1527) was an Italian Renaissance thinker, political and war theorist.
The proper name Machiavelli has given rise to several terms in French:Machiavellianism and its derivatives, which refer to a cynical political interpretation of the work of Machiavelli and Machiavellian, which directly refers to the concepts developed by Machiavelli in his work.
"Machiavelli was born with his eyes open", Q. Skinner, biographer.
Born in Florence, into a noble family, Nicolas Machiavelli was the son of Bernard Machiavelli, pontifical treasurer in Rome and doctor of law, and Bartolomea de' Nelli. He became secretary of the second chancellery in 1498, and led diplomatic missions, in Italy and abroad, thus already forming an opinion on the political mores of his time. He writes on these occasions diplomatic dispatches, gathered under the title Diplomatic Relations, as well as reports (Reports on things in Germany, Report on things in France). We find there the beginnings of his political conception, which he will develop in The Prince.
The Medici returned to power in Florence, following the defeat of Prato in 1512. Machiavelli was suspected of having participated in the conspiracy fomented by Pier Paolo Boscoli, he was imprisoned, tortured, then, banished from Florentine territory, retired at his property in Sant'Andrea in Percussina near San Casciano in Val di Pesa. Here Machiavelli begins his Discourse on the first decade of Livy, where, speaking of Antiquity, he actually criticizes the Italian political situation of his time.
The following year, he interrupted the writing of the Discourses... to write, in 1513, his most famous work, The Prince (in Italian:Il Principe), which, in order not to be misinterpreted, must be read in parallel with his Discourse on the first decade of Livy, a work exploring, in the light of the example of Rome, the means necessary for the construction in Italy of a true republic and, the project dearest to Machiavelli, the reconstruction of a united Italy (the internal wars and the papal policy being according to him the two greatest wounds of Italy, responsible for the miseries of the people and the weakness of the country). The fact remains that The Prince, dedicated to Lorenzo de Medici, is for Machiavelli an attempt to find a place in the political life of Florence. He is above all a politician, who far from the affairs of his country feels completely useless. Interesting work therefore, The Prince nevertheless contains, between the lines of this call for the reunification of Italy made to the Medici, all his republican theories that he concealed there with cunning. Machiavelli, the theoretician of cunning, did not lack it himself:The Prince, seemingly easy to read, is a work of great density in which strong and new theories are inscribed.
Returning to Florence in 1515, Machiavelli wrote a comedy, La Mandragore, in 1518. At the request of Cardinal Julius de Medici, he began The History of Florence in 1520, and completed it in 1526 (this masterpiece of political and economic analysis was later considered the first work announcing Marx's historical materialism). It is a new disgrace for him at the advent of the republic, in 1527, when he is reproached for his compromise with the Medici. He died that same year in Florence.
Machiavelli is still presented today as a cynical man devoid of ideals, of any moral sense and of honesty, which is defined by the adjective Machiavellian. However, his writings show a politician above all concerned with the public good, who sought to give Italy the political strength it lacked at a time when, paradoxically, it dominated the world of the arts and the economy. However, he harbored no illusions about the virtues of men.
From his masterpiece could be retained these quotes:“For force is just when it is necessary”, and “If you can kill your enemy, do it, if not make him a friend”. This is how the political philosophy of Machiavelli is defined and which is reminiscent of that of Lenin for whom the end often justified the means. However, let us beware of considering Machiavellianism in a mere second degree, Machiavelli's will, through cunning, demagogic and often treacherous calculations, is to preserve the people from uprisings that could lead them to famine and armed repression. . Jean-Jacques Rousseau will write:"By pretending to give lessons to kings, he gave great lessons to peoples. The Prince is the book of republicans".
In 1578, Innocent Gentillet published an essay after the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre to refute Machiavelli's work. The work achieved considerable circulation throughout Europe and helped to establish lasting misunderstandings about Machiavelli's work and its interpretations. And until the twentieth century when a political philosopher like Leo Strauss will continue to present Machiavelli as THE cynical theorist of power whose books have been burned in public places many times. As if the public revelation of the springs of power made Machiavelli responsible for his corruption and for the means that have always been used to preserve it. By revealing these mechanisms, possibly by recommending their use when the situation requires it and when weakness of character could have even worse consequences, Machiavelli tried to show a way out of them (while never evacuating from his reasoning his mistrust constant vis-à-vis human nature, it is the birth of a unique point of view of a man of the field, of a theoretician of genius, of a writer whom Nietzsche will praise stylistically, and of a complete practical and intellectual honesty. Althusser will say of him that he was for all these reasons a thinker of the impossible).
Despite this reputation tainted by ignorance and the Church, Machiavelli holds an important place in political thought. He is particularly appreciated in his native country, particularly in Florence, where there is a monument to his glory, erected by the Grand Duke Pierre-Leopold-Joseph, next to the tombs of great geniuses such as Galileo and Michelangelo. It is written there:
"Tanto nomini nullum by elogium
Nicolaus Machiavelli”
Which means:Is there praise that can equal that contained in its name?
Fortuna is a non-human force, luck, good or bad, which intervenes in human affairs. Virtù, the main quality of the prince, refers to a human disposition of reaction, or non-reaction, in the face of the event. Exercised in and through fortuna, virtù is at the heart of the prince's art. The themes of fortuna and virtù are developed in Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince (written in 1513, published in 1532).
Philosophy
For Machiavelli, politics is characterized by movement, by conflict and violent ruptures. In order to take, keep and then stabilize his power in a State, the Prince must show virtù, to best adapt to the vagaries of fortune. Indeed, politics is the art of managing the city well but also that of learning to stay in power in a situation open to all reversals. This state is reflected in the Machiavellian notions of fortuna and virtù.
Fortuna and Virtu, two independent notions at the origin of political action?
La Fortuna is an external necessity that generally needs to be answered in an emergency. This illustrates the element of unpredictability with which political actors must deal. Also, political action cannot be reduced solely to the imposition of a will, even the most determined one; intentions are not enough and the success of political action therefore requires something more than will. Fortuna dictates its law to those who abdicate before it and opposes nothing to it:“Where the virtù of men fails, fortuna strikes its most effective blows”. "I judge that it may be true that fortune is the arbiter of half of our actions, but also that the other half, or thereabouts, she lets us govern." In his work The Capitoli, Machiavelli uses a long prosopopeia to define fortuna:"I am the occasion, I bring before me all my flowing hair and I reveal under them my throat and my face so that men do not recognize me. Behind my head, not a hair floats, and the one in front of which I would not have passed would tire in vain to catch up with me".
Virtu defined by fortune
Virtù is the other side of Machiavelli's thought of political action. It must above all be understood as the ability to impose one's will on fortune. Also, the virtù of political actors does not refer directly to their virtuous character but rather to their courage, to the quality with which they approach fortune and try to master it. It is flexibility more than rigidity that Machiavelli intends to defend; virtù implies that political actors above all know how to adapt to circumstances. Thus Machiavelli recommends a pragmatic conduct of political action; conduct that knows how to adapt political action to the contingency of circumstances. The analogy of the raging river and the dykes explains that the fortuna “shows its power above all where no resistance was prepared”. Fortuna without virtù is in the image of uncontrolled nature (cf. Discourse on the first decade of Livy, III, 12). The role of virtu is therefore to foresee catastrophes, to prevent them.
The fortuna/virtù relationship [
In chapter VI, Machiavelli clearly shows that virtu is the ability to impose its law on fortune. Indeed, he clearly shows that “what the great founders of States owe to fortune, it was the opportunity that provided them with material to which they could give the form they deemed suitable”. It is therefore an opportunity to demonstrate one's political talents; without it, the opportunity might have disappeared. Fortune flies to the aid of those who know how not to delude themselves and who know how to be clever. Where virtu is at its maximum, fortuna has only a supporting role. Faced with lucidity, fortuna appears as the spur of necessity:which means that it shows the need to act, and to analyze the balance of power present. Virtue is therefore an effort of lucidity in particular circumstances, an intellectual effort at work in the concreteness of history. The concept of “necessity” thus indicates the place of inescapable circumstances, but never completely clear, except for a shrewd political thought.
The concepts of Fortuna and Virtù in literature and philosophy
J.G.A. Pocock, in his work The Machiavellian Moment (1970), presents the complexity and richness of the opposition between virtu and fortuna in the Prince. This opposition is, according to him, at the heart of the “Machiavellian moment” and of the republican idea. It also gains in thickness in the republican writings of Machiavelli.
According to Plessner (contemporary of Heidegger) politics is defined, in a very "Machiavellian" way, as "the art of the favorable moment, of the propitious occasion", what the Greeks called the kairos and what Machiavelli associated the fortuna to the virtù necessary for the politician.
For Aristotle, virtù consists in acting and suffering "when it is necessary, in the cases where and with regard to whom it is necessary, in view of the end it is necessary and in the way it is necessary" (Ethics to Nicomachus, II, 5, 1106b 21-23).
Among the Greeks, the 'kaïros' defines the favorable occasion, the opportune time, the coincidence of human action and time, a coincidence which not only qualifies an action as being good, and the time as being propitious. “The kaïros is the moment when the course of time, insufficiently directed, seems to hesitate and waver, for the good as well as for the evil of man” for Aubenque in his work La prudence chez Aristote.
Works of Nicolas Machiavelli
Main works:
* Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio, 3 vols., (Discourse on the first decade of Livy) 1512-1517
* Il Principe, 1513 (The Prince), published in 1532
Other books:
* Discorso sopra le cose di Pisa, 1499
* Del modo di trattare i popoli della Valdichiana ribellati, 1502
* Del modo tenuto dal duca Valentino nell’ammazzare Vitellozzo Vitelli, Oliverotto da Fermo, etc., 1502
* Discorso sopra la provisione del danaro, 1502
* Decennale primo (poem in terza rima), (The Decennials) 1506
* Ritratti delle cose dell’Alemagna, (Reports on things from Germany) 1508-1512
* Decennale secondo (The decennials) 1509
* Ritratti delle cose di Francia, (Reports on the things of France) 1510
* Andria, comedy translated by Terence, 1513 (?)
* Mandragola, (The Mandrake), 1513
* Della lingua, (dialogue), 1514
* Clizia, comedy in prose, 1515 (?)
* Belfagor arcidiavolo, 1515
* Asino d'oro, (poem in terza rima), 1517
* Dell'arte della guerra, 1519-1520 (The Art of War)
* Discorso sopra il riformare lo stato di Firenze, 1520
* Summary of the case of the city of Lucca, 1520
* Vita di Castruccio Castracani da Lucca, 1520 (Life of Castruccio Castracani da Lucca)
* Istorie fiorentine, 8 books, 1521-1525 (History of Florence)
*Frammenti storici, 1525.
French translations
* Complete Works, ed. by E. Barincou, Pléiade Library, Gallimard, Paris 1974.
* Story of the devil who took a wife, trans. and posface by Joël Gayraud, One Thousand and One Nights, Paris, 1995.
* The Prince, trans. by V. Périès, afterword by Joël Gayraud, One Thousand and One Nights, Paris, 2003.