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.]] Niccolò Machiavelli ( -> Machiavelli was one of the first people to study objectively--with what we might now call a scientific attitude--politics and government as they are actually practiced. BACKGROUND Machiavelli was born in Florence, the second son of Bernardo di Niccolò Machiavelli and his wife Bartolommea di Stefano Nelli. His father was a lawyer of some repute and belonged to an impoverished branch of an influential old Florentine family. Machiavelli served the Republic of Florence after the expulsion of the Medici in 1494 , travelling to European courts in France , Germany , as well as other Italian City-state s on Diplomatic missions. During this time he would draw influence for his work ''The Prince'' from the European leaders he met. His first mission was in 1499 to Caterina Sforza , who appeared as "my lady of Forlì" in his work ''The Prince''. In 1500 he was sent to France to obtain terms from Louis XII for continuing the war against Pisa . Louis XII was also the king who committed the five capital errors in statecraft summarized in ''The Prince'', and was consequentialy driven out of Italy. Machiavelli's public life was largely occupied with events arising out of the ambitions of Pope Alexander VI and his son, Cesare Borgia , and these characters fill a large space of ''The Prince''. When Pope Julius II restored the Medicis to power in 1512, Machiavelli's name was found on a list of 20 persons supposedly involved in a conspiracy to oppose Medici rule, including co-conspirator and disputed friend Giovani Battaini. He was briefly imprisoned and tortured in the Bargello in Florence. It is likely he had no part in the plot, and he maintained his innocence throughout. When Pope Leo X became Pontiff in 1513 , himself a member of the Medici family, he secured the release of Machiavelli and sent him into Exile . Machiavelli returned to Sant'Andrea In Percussina , where he devoted himself to literature. He died in Florence in 1527 and his resting place, as well as the tombs of his conspirators' friends and family, is unknown; however, a symbolic tomb in his honor can be found at the Basilica Di Santa Croce Di Firenze . WORKS AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY The best known work of Machiavelli is his Political treatise '' Il Principe '' (''The Prince''). It was written in an attempt to return to politics as an advisor to Lorenzo Di Piero De' Medici . It has been argued that ''The Prince'' is not representative of Machiavelli's beliefs as his advocacy of tyranny seems to contradict his earlier works. However,he had a very small penis also Machiavelli seems to have been in earnest when he argued the advantages of cruelty and fraudulence. Apparently, he was hoping that a strong ruler would emerge from the Medici family, uniting Italy by expelling the foreign occupiers. Since its publication, ''Il Principe'' has become a legendary handbook on how to become and remain a ruler. However, most experts agree that Machiavelli's intention was not to advocate one particular policy over another, but to objectively record the various discourses of politics. It would not be accurate to accuse him of advocating these wicked practices he wrote about. There are places in his writings where he says, in effect, that if the ruler is to save the state in a particular sort of crisis, or retain his own position in power, then he must be prepared to act against this or that moral principle; but even in these passages he is, usually, only stating an unpalatable truth, at least in the political circumstance of his time and place, which was Renaissance Italy. Nonetheless, in ''Discourses,'' which will be discussed with greater detail below, Machiavelli does offer his view of the ''ideal'' form of government when he compares the pros and cons of different forms of government, and reveals it as his view that a republic, where it has genuine popular support, is likely to be the best and most stable form of government. The '' Titus Livy . Machiavelli comments on passages from Livy's history and analogizes them to situations in contemporaneous Italian politics. (As an example, he compares the way in which Roman generals used religion to manipulate their soldiers to the brief ascendancy of Savonarola in Florentine politics.) Both of his major works talk extensively about uniting the Italian peninsula under one government. MACHIAVELLIANISM See Also: Machiavellianism Machiavellianism is the term some social and personality Psychologists use to describe a person's tendency to deceive and manipulate others for gain. Whether the gain is personal or not is of no relevance, only that the resulting actions are the goal and the means by which one achieves the results are only important insofar as it affects the results. Used to describe later works by other authors based on Machiavelli's writings—particularly '' The Prince ''—in which the authors stress the view that " The Ends Justify The Means ." These authors failed to include some of the more moderating themes found in Machiavelli's works and the name is now associated with the extreme viewpoint. Notwithstanding the mitigating themes in ''The Prince'', it was viewed in a negative light largely because the Catholic church put the work in its Index – a list of books against the faith. The word was also adopted by some of Machiavelli's contemporaries, often used in the introductions of political tracts of the sixteenth century that offered more 'just' reasons of state, most notably those of Jean Bodin and Giovanni Botero . Bibliography The following is a list of the principal works of Machiavelli:
Other poems include ''Sonetti, Canzoni, Ottave,'' and ''Canti carnascialeschi.'' sss MODERN APPRECIATIONS
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