"WE are much beholden," said the 16th-century English philosopher Francis Bacon, "to Machiavelli and others that write of what men do, and not of what they ought to do." Majority opinion, however, disagrees, Nicolo Machiavelli's amoral but influential writings on statecraft have turned his name into a synonym for cunning and duplicity, and have come down to us as the classic recipe for cruelty and bad faith.
Machiavelli was born in Florence in 1469, entered government service as a clerk, and rose to prominence when the Florentine Republic was proclaimed in 1498. His duties as one of the chief ministers of the new state included missions to all the important courts of Europe, and gave him an unrivalled insight into the politics of power. In 1512, however Machiavelli fell from favour with the advent of a new regime, and he retired to his estates where he wrote his enduring masterpiece, The Prince.
Much of the advice for government in that famous work is very practical even if a little short on ethics. He advises, for example, that "Harsh measures should be introduced all at one time so that being tasted less frequently, they offend the less; benefits ought to be given little by little, so that their flavour may last all the longer.
And at the individual level he remarks:
Our experience has been that those Princes have done great things have held good faith to be of little account, and have known how to circumvent the intellect of man by craft, and in the end have overcome those who have relied upon their word."
At one point, Machiavelli uses a hydrological metaphor to warn princes to learn from experience, and not to allow themselves to be disadvantaged in the same way twice: "Fortune," he says, "is the arbiter of only half of our actions. I compare her to one of those raging rivers, which, when in flood, overflows the plains, sweeping away trees and buildings and bearing away the soil from place to place; all yield to its violence without being able to withstand it. And yet, though the nature of the flood be such, does it not follow that when the weather becomes fair, men shall make provision both with defences and barriers, in such a way that when they rise again, the waters may pass away by canal, and their forces be neither so unrestrained or dangerous?"
Machiavelli wrote many other works on a variety of subjects during his long retirement, but none attained the notoriety of The Prince. He died in Florence, 270 years ago today, on June 21st, 1527.