How did Machiavelli's work reflect political realities of renaissance Italy?

Answer 1

Although Machiavelli was forced into what turned into an early retirement from Florence, by changes in its government, he remained quite active in keeping up with the politics of the city. William refers to him as a modern day C-Span junkie. His farm work was perhaps spent with thoughts on Louis XII or the Pope, and how their various spheres of influence could interact to the best interests of the Italian peninsula. He desired the foreign powers, or barbarians, to be driven out of the peninsula altogether, and realized that since two of the five areas in Italy were not under the control of the same family, the Medici family ruling Florence and the Medici Pope Leo X in Rome, it was a perfect chance to bring Law and Order to the disorder everywhere about him. His letters to Francesco Vettori in Rome make this clear enough. This combination of political elements, and Machiavelli's contemplative lifestyle, produced a work he wrote in just his first several months on the farm in late in 1513; The Prince. He originally dedicated it to the de' Medici family who were in control of the government, led by Lorenzo II, but then he changed it to Lorenzo "the magnificent." The Prince is traditionally seen as a job application to the family, but we'll discuss that soon enough. One initial feeling one gets from the book is a sense of newness. Thus the reason for some view Machiavelli as the first modern man. Yet this type of book has been around for quite awhile actually. The popular genre of treatises of advise written for rulers is sometimes referred to as "mirrors of princes." Xenophon wrote one in 400 BCE, and William refers to a work read during his recent class on medieval history, where they read a document to Charlemagne, which was also of this genre. Princeton professor Maurizio Viroli suggests is not a work of flattery, but rather a deep criticism of the way the de' Medici are running the city. Not that it isn't a job application, but it was more in the way of honest advise than sucking up to the boss. Here we get into the area of William's expertise, the literary content. He is an expert on Dante, so one can see many parallels to Machiavelli here. The list of figures in The Prince falls into two categories, the ancient and modern. The ancient Greek and Roman figures include a wide range of names well know to us, and those which are obscure, though perhaps more well known to Machiavelli's contemporaries no doubt. The figures from Machiavelli's own time, or those who recently died, include some he worked with directly while working for the republic. This leaves the large gap of time between antiquity and the Renaissance, the middle ages. This term is coming from William, who is a medievalist, meaning that the time period of the late middle ages extends to the time of Machiavelli himself, but to a medievalist such as himself, it doesn't extend that far. The Renaissance began perhaps a century earlier and the middle ages ended. Thus the continual confusion in such terms. Regardless, there is a thousand year chunk of time from which no people appear in The Prince. There is no Louis IX of France, or Richard the Lionhearted, or Edward I the father of parliament. This was typical of other works from the Renaissance, since that period means so little to them. The ancients were followed by a period of decline, and now the contemporary period was looking back at them, emulating their era in ways the medieval folks never did. This continued through the Enlightenment, and William even points out how Harvard taught their history courses without a medieval historian until the 19th century when they hired Henry Adams! The Humanist thought of Machiavelli's day was influential indeed. Machiavelli steers clear of religious morality, salvation, and ethics, sticking with secular political players only. This doesn't imply he is an atheist, since he talks of God and Moses in these works, and William mentions that he does go to church. But he is not interested in theology as a guide to politics, in religious reasoning, or even as any motivational aspect. He does make a quote to a friend that "I love Florence more than my own soul," which may imply his priorities, or that he even believes that he has a soul. Getting back to the question of whether Machiavelli is the first modern man, this work of The Prince is stunningly original. It goes against some of the classic ideas built up by Aristotle and Cicero themselves, so its neither a repetition, nor a synthesis of previous works. Aristotle viewed the basis for any city-state to be the bond of friendship and trust. Machiavelli sees power resulting from fear and coercion to be the reality of the situation. This is quite a challenge to Aristotle's influential and traditional view. The bulk of Aristotle's work has been rediscovered back in the 12th and 13th centuries, so they were well integrated before the Renaissance. Dante of course refers to his as "the" philosopher. Aristotle gathered data on his works on such imperial topics, by going around and examining the surrounding city-states. Thus was in order to discover what ought to be. But Machiavelli breaks with that form, by being more descriptive about what actual reality is like. Situations change, so that what may be true in one case, of Aristotle, may not necessarily be true in another. Machiavelli in less interested in a model, than in order and power. There are similarities between the two, but not in gathering of evidence and goals. Cicero is quite an interesting case also, since he has declined greatly from Machiavelli's time when he was seen as the great Republican writer, the highest reputation one could get in the Renaissance. Dante bases his hell on concepts from Aristotle and Cicero, which we see the latter as a second rater compared to the former. But one must keep in mind, that it was hardly that way in Machiavelli's time. Cicero was seen as the greatest of all Roman sages by the Renaissance. Cicero argued that the political leaders must exercise the standard virtues, the four classical being wisdom, temperance, justice, and fortitude. Two other standards were honesty and magnanimity. To be a great man, one must exercise these virtues. To be a great leader, one must be loved, through their exercise of these same virtues. One could not be a great leader without being a great individual person, or family man. Fear plays no role in the process, since that won't save them from harm. Morality is the primary goal. Machiavelli argues that a prince must be prepared to act immorally, by lying, cheating, and acting cruelly. Acting as a Boy Scout will surely lead to failure. The surrounding would about Machiavelli is in disorder, and being nice guys will not change that. I'm not sure this implies the disorder came from people being nice and virtuous, but to create order, one had to go beyond that stage of Aristotle and Cicero. Machiavelli saw love and fear as being required by a leader over his subjects. Yet fear was the more important, and better of the two. Thus the challenge on a so far unchallenged principle. The disaster that would result from a good Dad exercising his virtues as a leader, would be something Machiavelli would loath. Personal and political reality are divorced from one another, since the priority of maintaining a state requires one to be flexible. If that includes immorality, deceptiveness, and cruelty, then so be it. There were significant influences in Renaissance Humanism, where autonomous rules could be created that apply on earth, rather than to heaven. Machiavelli applied these rules as never before, creating an autonomous reality for rulers, in opposition to personal morality. Thus the concept of his being the first modern man, though it's less useful for our purposes.