BOOK THE PRINCE

Description

Let us also recall that in his Discourse on the First Decade of Livy, Machiavelli sought the reasons for the greatness of Rome, which he sets up as a model of political success. Its goal is therefore to create a manual for the use of princes.
The Machiavellian Prince must be equipped with moral and political virtues (based on cunning and force), must master the art of war, the sole object of power. All peace is thus an armed peace. A good Prince will survive if he possesses virtu, the sense of anticipation, and prudence, the art of grasping unique situations. Fortune being a “rushing river”, the Prince must prevent the throes of destiny and act to anticipate the future.

The Prince must always attract the sympathy of the people and rely on the powerful. Loved and feared at the same time, the Prince can be cruel if the situation requires it, but always conceal and appear fair to the people (difference between the Prince’s being and his appearance). Reasons of state take precedence over respect for morality.

The extract below well summarizes the Florentine thinker’s conception of the exercise of power:

“It is undoubtedly very commendable for princes to be faithful to their commitments; but among those of our time who have been seen doing great things, there are few who have prided themselves on this loyalty, and who have scrupled to deceive those who relied on their loyalty. You must therefore know that there are two ways of fighting, one with the laws, the other with force. The first is specific to men, the other is common to us with animals; but when the laws are powerless, force must be resorted to; a prince must know how to fight with these two types of weapons; this is what the ancient poets finely give us to understand in the allegorical story of the education of Achilles and many other princes of Antiquity, by the centaur Chrion, who in the double form of man and the beast teaches those who govern that they must use in turn the weapon specific to each of these two species, given that one without the other cannot be of any lasting use. Now, the animals whose forms the prince must know how to assume are the fox and the lion. The first defends himself poorly against the wolf, and the other easily falls into the traps that are set for him”
Machiavelli describes the foreign policy of states as being marked by distrust. This distrust is justified by the survival instinct that all States must develop. The world being threatening, Machiavelli defends an aggressive conception of foreign policy: attack before being attacked. Thus, the defense of a State justifies all means: a “homeland is defended either by ignominy, or by glory, or by any other means” (quotes from Machiavelli). Machiavelli removes the moral connotation from the notion of violence. Violence serves to thwart the plans of fortune against men.

The power of a State is inseparable for Machiavelli from its military power. In fact, a country whose defense is delegated is in great danger.

For Machiavelli, war is the external means of maintaining peace, peace an internal means of maintaining power. But at no time is war valued as such. The Prince must be a military leader (lion) and a skilled political leader (fox).
The citizen must value active, civic life at the expense of contemplative life (contrary to Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics). Inhabited by the desire for glory and grandeur, the citizen must escape corruption and act for the community. The citizen must be a soldier concerned with preserving the common good.

Conclusion on The Prince:
Machiavelli’s lessons are important, beyond politics. It describes a contingent world, where the place of will and human action are decisive. Man, faced with chaos, is never condemned, he has the means to overcome fate and chance: his freedom.
Machiavelli is very clear. There are only two forms of government: the republic or the principality (what we would call a “monarchy” today). He expresses it this way in this first chapter. Moreover, it is curious to note that since 1532, we still encounter one system or the other. Monarchies in countries such as Spain, the United Kingdom or the Netherlands. Republics in nations like France, Germany, Greece or Eastern European countries.

However, would you say that all principalities are the same? Machiavelli makes a division, because the nature of the monarchy, its origin and its history are key elements in understanding the government. For the author, there are, broadly speaking, hereditary principalities (as is the case with the Bourbons in Spain, who have reigned for years) or new ones, either because a new monarchy has been established where there was none before, either because a lineage was replaced.

There may be no recent examples in the strict sense of this second type, but a glance at a history book shows us that in the 16th century this was common when there were wars and that several noble families fought to seize political power in a territory. Thinking about it further, if we look at the Kim dynasty in North Korea, Assad in Syria, Saud in Arabia, we see practices of maintaining power over several generations.