The Prince by Machiavelli - Essay Example

?Machiavelli "the Prince" Machiavelli’s ‘The Prince’ is lauded as one of the first treatises on modern political philosophy by many but also hated bymany as a Bible of evil for politicians and tyrants. On first reading, this literary work might seem practical, to the bone, even at the cost of ethics and morality, as far as the exercise of political power is concerned. But on deeper introspection, it can be seen that ‘The Prince’ is a discourse on power and the exercise of it. In simple words, it is a logical and strong substantiation of the age-old saying- ‘power corrupts.’ The narrative is pregnant with an element of satire, an altered eye that provides an outside and chilling perspective of what power is all about. And it is a reminder that there is nothing such as good power and bad power but only power and its necessary evils. Machiavelli starts his book with a broad categorization of “principalities there are” (21). He (Machiavelli) has further classified principalities into hereditary and new and also mixed ones (21). And he has made a distinction between republics where people are governed by people and principalities where the ruler is a prince and also made it clear that this book is all about principalities, and not about republics (21-22). The author (Machiavelli) has then gone on to elaborate upon the difficulties faced by princes in ruling principalities in establishing their power and glory. The basic principle, or rather non-principle, that Machiavelli sets for such a prince is to achieve his ends by all means, irrespective of ethics or morality. But this is a kind of reverse argument, philosophical spoonerism. For example, Machiavelli has suggested that if a new territory is annexed to a kingdom held by a prince, to be on the safer side, the prince has to take two major steps- “the one, the family of their former lord is extinguished; the other, that neither their laws, nor their taxes are altered, so that in a very short time they will become entirely one body with the old principality” (25). In this statement, Machiavelli has prescribed cold-blooded murder of the innocent family members, including children, of the conquered ruler. Throughout the text, such unethical and immoral prescriptions abound and this was the reason why social analysts and observers despised Machiavelli while tyrants and politicians loved them. For, Machiavelli’s advices that “it is much safer to be feared than loved,” and “it is unnecessary for a prince to have all the good qualities … but it is very necessary to appear to have them,” have enough vice in them to make him look like a professor of evil (90, 95). But by exploring the underlying satire and philosophy of this text, it can be seen that Machiavelli was simply drawing attention to the real nature of power and to the prevailing obscenities and inhumanity associated with it. An example of this anti-‘Machiavellian’ character of Machiavelli, as an author, can be glimpsed in the following statement among many made by him. He (Machiavelli) has said: Let a prince have the credit of conquering and holding his state, the means will always be considered honest, and he will be praised by everybody; because the vulgar are always taken by what a thing seems to be and by what comes of it; and in the world there are only the vulgar, for the few find a place there only when the many have no ground to rest on” (96). Critics of Machiavelli seem to be haunted by the same issue of distinction that Machiavelli points to- the difference between what really is and what is presented as real (84). On certain occasions, Machiavelli himself has provided clues to this method of narrative. When he (Machiavelli) said, “it is necessary for a prince wishing to hold his own to know how to do wrong, and to make use of it or not according to necessity”, it is rather a policy statement of the author himself (84). He (Machiavelli) do not shy away from the unpleasant truths. It can also be seen that, though rather fatalistic, Machiavelli’s world-view is based on a commitment towards truth, however horrible, and this is why he has observed, “it appears to me more appropriate to follow up the real truth of the matter than the imagination of it” (84). He makes this approach to truth more legible by stating, “how one lives is so far distant from how one ought to live” (84). It is evident that Machiavelli prefers the effective truth to an ideal, whatsoever great, full of abstraction. It is this commitment to truth that prompted Machiavelli to take the bold step of applying his theory of power even to the Christian religious establishment (66-67). The author (Machiavelli) of ‘The Prince’ thus refuted the very frames of reference put forth on politics and ethics by Catholicism, through his political theorization. With little hesitation, he (Machiavelli) has bluntly called Christian faith, an “ecclesiastical principality” and discussed “how a pope with both money and arms was able to prevail” just like princes did (66). He (Machiavelli) simply shocked all his contemporaries through this. And this is a strong indication that when it came to investigating the effects and consequences of power, Machiavelli decided not to spare anyone and held his loyalty only to truth. Theoretically also Machiavelli had little in common with Catholicism as he focused his discourse on the will of the person who holds power, and this was in other words, a refutation of Christian belief, which left everything to God and faith. It is not only to the true nature of power, but also to the true nature of human beings that he (Machiavelli) is making a reference to. It is possible that the corruption that prevailed in Italy during his period had an influence on him. It might have distorted his views towards absolutism. But all the same, the observations he made were purely based on historical facts and they were not contrived by any kind of romanticism or wishful thinking. From this viewpoint, Machiavelli’s work can be considered as a history of the exercise of political power. Whatever he attempts to add to that history is just logical reasoning and derivation of some assumptions from the existing political equations. His (Machiavelli) declaration that “men ought either to be well treated or crushed, because they can avenge themselves of lighter injuries, of more serious ones they cannot” is reflective of the nature of power as well as general human nature. How people react to the exercise of power is a complex question and the popular notion that people have an inherent distaste for power is totally blasted here. In this way, The Prince’ becomes a prologue to the debate of postmodernism on power and the psychology of power. Satire is the subtext of this entire narrative but it is so subdued and sublime that it can go unnoticed as a perfectly grammatical ‘cut’ in a film. And this subtext is a very important tool to understand the real politics of ‘The Prince’. From the rich resources on the exercise of power that he (Machiavelli) draws from history to a very down to earth understanding of human nature that he possessed, this author has never been understood in his true qualities and contributions. This is so because, he (Machiavelli) has somewhat used a coded text to express his views and the subtext of satire is the key to unpack it. This satire is visible when the author (Machiavelli) stated, “he who becomes master of a city accustomed to freedom and does not destroy it, may expect to be destroyed by it” (37). And his (Machiavelli) humor rises to new heights whenever he mentions Moses or the Christian religious institution, always with a preamble that he should not mention that out of fear of God and still goes own describing how they played with power just like the princes (40, 65). In one such satirical preamble, Machiavelli remarked, “I shall speak no more of them, because being exalted and maintained by God, it would be the act of a presumptuous and rash man to discuss them” (65). But from the very next sentence onwards, he (Machiavelli) has discussed how Pope Julius knew the ways of amassing money and power (67). All these instances show that Machiavelli is not justifying the princes but telling others how power acts and gets acted upon. Through this, he (Machiavelli) was imparting a blow on the unrealistic and utopian ideas of statehood that was popularized by Christainity and Scholasticism and building a narrative on modern state and power. Works Cited Machiavelli, Niccolo, “The Prince”, In Plain Label Books, n.d. web. 20 June 2011, http://books.google.com/books?id=VIAgG12gh_EC&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+prince&hl=en&ei=qz3_Ta-5BouyrAf-ypDqDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCkQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=pope&f=false Read More