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The author misunderstands Machiavelli. Works like De Principatibus are meant to help "subversive" democratic efforts to recognize, reveal, and hence counter tyr

by toyg 5y ago

The author misunderstands Machiavelli. Works like De Principatibus are meant to help "subversive" democratic efforts to recognize, reveal, and hence counter tyrannical strategies. Machiavelli was a supporter of democratic governments, which were rare and revolutionary in his times, and had been burnt by the success of counter-revolutionary forces; so he described what were effectively catalogs of tyrannical behaviors, in order to help people avoid their traps. The fact that tyrants also ended up reading his works and treating them like manuals, was a side-effect.

anovikov 5y ago
Agree, those wishing to actually understand Machiavelli should read "Discourses on Livy", rather than "Prince". He was an avid supporter of republicanism (not democracy, those didn't exist yet) and proven superiority of republican order vs aristocratic on many examples from his era as we as from the long past, starting with Roman Kingdom times - described by Livy.
- brnaftr186 5y ago
  Pretty sweeping statement to say democracy hadn't existed prior to, unless you've got semantic arguments to press it. I'll, of course, grant you that suffrage wasn't prefect. But I'd also be willing to further that argument with the idea that we've still yet to see a proper democracy in any modern era, forwarded by Graeber and Wengrow in "The Dawn of Everything". You'll also note that, given these passages are true, an elected representative is simply the best aristocrat - which is a coin with two sides. I'd also go so far as to posit that democratic processes are an innate form of human organization. Think of every time you've been organizing and out with your friends. Even coming to an end where you synthesize, it's nonetheless effectively informal voting. So, I'd say that indeed there were many societies, regardless of whatever precise definition is formalized, which predated Machiavelli quite probably on the order of tens of thousands of years. From Dawn of Everything: "[...] political philosophers of later Greek cities did not actually consider elections a democratic way of selecting candidates for public office at all. The democratic method was sortition, or lottery, much like modern jury duty. Elections were assumed to belong to the aristocratic mode (aristocracy meaning ‘rule of the best’), allowing commoners – much like the retainers in an old-fashioned, heroic aristocracy – to decide who among the well born should be considered best of all; and well born, in this context, simply meant all those who could afford to spend much of their time playing at politics." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pnyx https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pnyx : "The Pnyx was the official meeting place of the Athenian democratic assembly (Ancient Greek: ekklesia). In the earliest days of Athenian democracy (after the reforms of Kleisthenes in 508 B.C.), the ekklesia met in the Agora. Sometime in the early 5th century, the meeting place was moved to a hill south and west of the Acropolis. This new meeting place came to be called "Pnyx" (from the Greek word meaning 'tightly packed together.'"
- wrnr 5y ago
  That is also my reading of it, I've always liked this quote by (I think) James Burnham, The one measure the good must take form the bad.
slibhb 5y ago
One interpretation is that it's satire. Another is that it's an attempt to trick dictators into planting the seeds of a republican revolution. A third is that, while Machiavelli is a republican, he's also a realist. He understands that, sometimes, there will be a dictatorship, he accepts this and he's offering genuine advice to autocrats. That his advice is cold-blooded is a reflection of his concern with concrete reality as opposed to ideals and his belief that a dictator trying to be good is worse than a dictator who ruthlessly pursues his self-interest.
hodgesrm 5y ago
Machiavelli wrote De Principatibus to get a job with the Medici after losing his position when they returned to Florence. There are a lot of interpretations of the work but the simplest is that it's a manual for an autocrat and that Machiavelli believed that the maxims he described were true. The most important is that the ends justify the means. It's quite a different question whether Machiavelli personally believed in autocracy. In the Discourses he discussed the management of republics. He also worked for the Florentine Republic for many years. There's no question he saw the strengths of republics, but his views are also conflated with admiration for Rome, which was Republican after 510 BC. I think the simplest answer is that Machiavelli believed in Florence, desired the unity of Italy against foreign invaders, and wanted to be part of the action. That's just my own opinion. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niccol%C3%B2_Machiavelli#The_Prince https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niccol%C3%B2_Machiavelli#The_P...
drewcoo 5y ago
Did the author state anything at all about Machiavelli's intentions? If so I missed that. I think you're reading more into it than is there.

by toyg 5y ago

anovikov 5y ago

Agree, those wishing to actually understand Machiavelli should read "Discourses on Livy", rather than "Prince". He was an avid supporter of republicanism (not democracy, those didn't exist yet) and proven superiority of republican order vs aristocratic on many examples from his era as we as from the long past, starting with Roman Kingdom times - described by Livy.

brnaftr186 5y ago
Pretty sweeping statement to say democracy hadn't existed prior to, unless you've got semantic arguments to press it. I'll, of course, grant you that suffrage wasn't prefect. But I'd also be willing to further that argument with the idea that we've still yet to see a proper democracy in any modern era, forwarded by Graeber and Wengrow in "The Dawn of Everything". You'll also note that, given these passages are true, an elected representative is simply the best aristocrat - which is a coin with two sides. I'd also go so far as to posit that democratic processes are an innate form of human organization. Think of every time you've been organizing and out with your friends. Even coming to an end where you synthesize, it's nonetheless effectively informal voting. So, I'd say that indeed there were many societies, regardless of whatever precise definition is formalized, which predated Machiavelli quite probably on the order of tens of thousands of years. From Dawn of Everything: "[...] political philosophers of later Greek cities did not actually consider elections a democratic way of selecting candidates for public office at all. The democratic method was sortition, or lottery, much like modern jury duty. Elections were assumed to belong to the aristocratic mode (aristocracy meaning ‘rule of the best’), allowing commoners – much like the retainers in an old-fashioned, heroic aristocracy – to decide who among the well born should be considered best of all; and well born, in this context, simply meant all those who could afford to spend much of their time playing at politics." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pnyx https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pnyx : "The Pnyx was the official meeting place of the Athenian democratic assembly (Ancient Greek: ekklesia). In the earliest days of Athenian democracy (after the reforms of Kleisthenes in 508 B.C.), the ekklesia met in the Agora. Sometime in the early 5th century, the meeting place was moved to a hill south and west of the Acropolis. This new meeting place came to be called "Pnyx" (from the Greek word meaning 'tightly packed together.'"
wrnr 5y ago
That is also my reading of it, I've always liked this quote by (I think) James Burnham, The one measure the good must take form the bad.

slibhb 5y ago

One interpretation is that it's satire. Another is that it's an attempt to trick dictators into planting the seeds of a republican revolution. A third is that, while Machiavelli is a republican, he's also a realist. He understands that, sometimes, there will be a dictatorship, he accepts this and he's offering genuine advice to autocrats. That his advice is cold-blooded is a reflection of his concern with concrete reality as opposed to ideals and his belief that a dictator trying to be good is worse than a dictator who ruthlessly pursues his self-interest.

hodgesrm 5y ago

Machiavelli wrote De Principatibus to get a job with the Medici after losing his position when they returned to Florence. There are a lot of interpretations of the work but the simplest is that it's a manual for an autocrat and that Machiavelli believed that the maxims he described were true. The most important is that the ends justify the means. It's quite a different question whether Machiavelli personally believed in autocracy. In the Discourses he discussed the management of republics. He also worked for the Florentine Republic for many years. There's no question he saw the strengths of republics, but his views are also conflated with admiration for Rome, which was Republican after 510 BC. I think the simplest answer is that Machiavelli believed in Florence, desired the unity of Italy against foreign invaders, and wanted to be part of the action. That's just my own opinion. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niccol%C3%B2_Machiavelli#The_Prince https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niccol%C3%B2_Machiavelli#The_P...

drewcoo 5y ago

Did the author state anything at all about Machiavelli's intentions? If so I missed that. I think you're reading more into it than is there.