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ISBN: 978-184831-978-3
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Originating editor: Richard Appignanesi
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
“Old Nick”
Renaissance Florence
Emblem of Florence
What is Humanism?
Civic Republicanism: the Good Citizen
Birth of Machiavelli
A Divided Italy
Nation States and the Holy Roman Empire
Guelfs and Ghibellines
The Dream of Republican Liberty
The Medici take Power
The Medici
The Republic Reborn
Savonarola
The Bonfire of Vanities
Machiavelli Goes to Work
The Diplomat at Work
Who Were the Borgias?
Cesare Borgia’s Genius
Leonardo and Machiavelli
A Change of Fortune
Secretary of the Militia
The Return of the Medici
Macmavelli’s Downfall
Machiavelli at Sant’Andrea
The Prince
The Whims of Fortune
The Fortunes of War
The Lion and the Fox
Pagan Virtù and Christian Virtue
The Fine Balance of Power
Prophet of the Risorgimento
Still Unemployed
A Machiavellian Comedy
Republican Friends: the Orti Oricellari
The Citizens’ Free State
The Discourses …
… an Argument for Liberty
The Republican Ideal of Liberty
The Case of Caesar
Trading the Future
Civic Duties
A Law unto Themselves
A Modern Separatist Élite
Checks and Balances
The Place of Religion
Other-worldly Christianity
An Argument for Imperialism
Immigration
Hope of Employment
The Art of War
The Balancing Act
Fortune and Misfortune
Machiavelli Applied in Practice
The Way of the Fox
The Iron Lady
Machiavelli’s Lessons
Machiavelli and the Foundation of the Modern Political Theory of Civic Republicanism
Machiavellian America
The Social Contract
Post-Enlightenment Historicism
Post-Modern Machiavelli
Civic Virtue versus Civil Society
The Free Market
Republican Critics of the Free Market
Post-Communist Civil Society
“No Such Thing as Society”
The Origins of Liberal Democracy
Modern Liberal Democracy
What Becomes of “Civic Virtue”?
Republicanism of the Left and Right?
A Right-wing Machiavellian
A Left-wing Machiavellian
Gramsci’s Rethinking of Marxism
Post-Modern Gramsci “The People is the Prince”
Communitarianism
Positive versus Negative Liberty
Republicanism Now
Machiavelli Now
Further Reading
Index
“Old Nick”
For over four hundred years, Niccolò Machiavelli has been a byword for cynicism, immorality and
cruelty in politics. In the 16th century, his first name was often shortened to “Old Nick”, the popular
nickname for Satan. The Jesuits (themselves accused of Machiavellism by Protestants) called him
“the Devil’s partner in crime”. “Murderous Machiavel” became a favourite reference in Elizabethan
plays, including those of Shakespeare.
As Lord Macaulay wrote in 1827, “We doubt whether any name in literary history be so generally
odious …”
This is how the philosopher Bertrand Russell, in our own century, described Machiavelli’s most
famous book, The Prince.
Fittingly, one of the people Russell probably had in mind, Benito Mussolini, praised it. He had a
strong view about whom the new Prince was meant to be and wrote a foreword to a new edition.
This undoubtedly explains the response of Henry Kissinger, for several years the power behind the
presidential throne in American politics, to an interviewer’s suggestion in 1972 that he was a
Machiavellian: “No, not at all!” Was he not influenced by Machiavelli’s ideas to at least some extent?
As we shall see, Machiavelli had his fans too, and many of these, like the philosopher Francis Bacon,
were not thugs.
But Machiavelli’s bad press continues today. The Prince, says the Guardian newspaper, is “the
ultimate handbook in political expediency”. And the latest edition of Chambers English Dictionary
has Machiavellian as an adjective, meaning “politically cunning and unscrupulous, seeking power or
advantage at any price; amoral and opportunist”.
So what was Machiavelli: evil genius or brilliant political theorist? And what does he have to tell us
today? To answer that you have to know who he was, and what he wrote in relation to his own time
and problems.
Renaissance Florence
The golden age of Florence was in the 15th century. Florence’s wealth became legendary. Its coin, the
florin, was respected everywhere, and its merchants conducted business far and wide, first in the wool
industry and then in silk and trade with the East. One of the richest and most successful families was
the Medici. Originally from the Mugello valley, they amassed great wealth as merchant bankers and
became bankers to the Papacy. Soon their ambitions extended to politics, the Papacy itself, and the
rulership of their native city. But the Medici were also renowned as generous patrons of the arts and
humanities. They were no petty tyrants.
Emblem of Florence
This combination of commerce, culture and enlightened despotism made Florence the Renaissance
equivalent of Athens in classical antiquity, another turning point in European culture and civilization.
Thanks to the patronage of wealthy merchant families like the Medici, in a time of almost
unprecedented creativity and optimism, Florence became the principal centre for Western arts and
sciences. Around 1420, Filippo Brunelleschi designed the huge dome of the cathedral of Santa Maria
del Fiore, near the Tower by Giotto, and, together with Ghiberti, oversaw its construction. It was
completed in 1436, although the lantern was not finished until after Brunelleschi’s death. Along with
Alberti, he also developed linear perspective.
Discoveries in anatomy, combined with artistic creativity, distinguished the sculptures of Donatello
and the paintings of Piero della Francesca. Botticelli’s Birth of Venus and Primavera exquisitely
expressed the new interest in pagan classical subjects.
Leonardo da Vinci was a Florentine and in his life and work perhaps best exemplifies its intellectual
curiosity, humane scepticism, and sensitivity. He rubbed shoulders in Florence with Michelangelo, the
giant of Western sculpture and painting, as he developed his mastery of the human form.
And, incredibly, the still younger Raphael – from Urbino, but painting in Florence – visited and
watched both men’s work in progress.
At the same time, ideas about the frontiers of the known physical world were also being challenged.
Christopher Columbus set sail on his first historic trip in 1492. Shortly afterwards, he was followed by
a Florentine, Amerigo Vespucci, who gave his name to the Americas.
In philosophy, Cosimo de’Medici commissioned Marsilio Ficino to translate the mystical writings of
Hermes Trismegistus and Plato’s dialogues into Latin. Ficino upturned the old Aristotelian–Christian
synthesis with his translations. Lorenzo the Magnificent continued this support, underwriting the
foundation of the Platonic Academy, Ficino’s own work, and the short but extraordinary career of Pico
della Mirandola, whom Machiavelli described as “a man almost divine”. Pico’s meditations on the
dignity of man, combining Christian theology, Platonic philosophy and hermetic magic, set the seal on
Renaissance humanism.