NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI

Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli (3 May 1469 – 21 June 1527) was an Italian historian, politician, diplomat, philosopher, humanist and writer based in Florence throughout the Renaissance. He was for several years an official in the Florentine Republic, with responsibilities in diplomatic and military affairs. He was a founder of contemporary political science, and more specifically political ethics. He also wrote comedies, carnival songs, and poetry. His personal correspondence is renowned in the Italian language. He was Secretary to the Second Chancery of the Republic of Florence from 1498 to 1512, when the Medici were out of power. He wrote his masterpiece, The Prince, after the Medici had recovered power and he no longer held a location of responsibility in Florence. His moral and ethical beliefs led to the creation of the word Machiavellianism which has since been used to describe one of the three dark triad personalities in psychology.

LIFE

Machiavelli was born in Florence, Italy, the first son and third child of attorney Bernardo di Niccolò Machiavelli and his wife Bartolomea di Stefano Nelli. The Machiavelli family are whispered to be descended from the old marquesses of Tuscany and to have produced thirteen Florentine Gonfalonieres of Justice, one of the offices of a group of nine citizens selected through drawing lots every two months, who shaped the government, or Signoria. Machiavelli, like several people of Florence, was though not a full citizen of Florence, due to the nature of Florentine citizenship in that time, even under the republican regime. Machiavelli was born in a tumultuous era— popes waged acquisitive wars against Italian municipality-states, and people and municipalities might fall from power at any time. Beside with the pope and the major municipalities like Venice and Florence, foreign powers such as France, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, and even Switzerland battled for local power and manage. Political-military alliances continually changed, featuring condottieri (mercenary leaders) who changed sides without warning, and the rise and fall of several short-existed governments.

Machiavelli was taught grammar, rhetoric, and Latin, and became a prolific Chef. It is thought that he did not learn Greek, even though Florence was at the time one of the centers of Greek scholarship in Europe. In 1494, Florence restored the republic—expelling the Medici family, who had ruled Florence for some sixty years. In June 1498, shortly after the execution of Savonarola, Machiavelli, at the age of 29, was elected as head of the second chancery. In July 1498, he was also made the secretary of the Dieci di Libertà e Pace. He was in a diplomatic council responsible for negotiation and military affairs. Flanked by 1499 and 1512 he accepted out many diplomatic missions: to the court of Louis XII in France; to the court of Ferdinand II of Aragón, in Spain; in Germany; and to the Papacy in Rome, in the Italian states. Moreover, from 1502 to 1503 he witnessed the brutal reality of the state-structure methods of Cesare Borgia (1475–1507) and his father Pope Alexander VI, who were then occupied in the procedure of trying to bring a big part of central Italy under their possession. The pretext of defending Church interests was used as a partial justification through the Borgias.

Flanked by 1503 and 1506 Machiavelli was responsible for the Florentine militia, including the Municipality's protection. He distrusted mercenaries (a distrust he explained in his official reports and then later in his theoretical works), preferring a politically invested citizen-militia, a philosophy that bore fruit. His command of Florentine citizen-soldiers defeated Pisa in 1509. Though, in August 1512 the Medici, helped through Pope Julius II, used Spanish troops to defeat the Florentines at Prato. Piero Soderini resigned as Florentine head of state and left in exile. The Florentine municipality-state and the Republic were dissolved. Machiavelli was deprived of office in 1512 through the Medici. In 1513 he was accused of conspiracy, arrested, and imprisoned for a time. Despite having been subjected to torture, he denied involvement and was released.

Machiavelli then retired to his estate at Sant'Andrea in Percussina, and devoted himself to revise and to the writing of the political treatises that earned his intellectual lay in the development of political philosophy and political conduct. Despairing of the opportunity to remain directly involved in political matters, after a time Machiavelli began to participate in intellectual groups in Florence and wrote many plays that were both popular and widely recognized in his lifetime. Still politics remained his main passion, and to satisfy this interest he maintained a well-recognized correspondence with better politically linked friends, attempting to become involved once again in political life.In a letter to Francesco Vettori, he described his exile:

When evening comes, I go back house, and go to my revise. On the threshold, I take off my work clothes, sheltered in mud and filth, and I put on the clothes an ambassador would wear. Decently dressed, I enter the ancient courts of rulers who have extensive since died. There, I am warmly welcomed, and I feed on the only food I discover nourishing and was born to savor. I am not ashamed to talk to them and inquire them to explain their actions and they, out of kindness, answer me. Four hours go through without my feeling any anxiety. I forget every worry. I am no longer afraid of poverty or frightened of death. I live entirely through them.

Machiavelli died in 1527 at the age of 58. He was buried at the Church of Santa Croce in Florence, Italy. An epitaph honoring him is inscribed on his monument. He died in his own establishment.

WORKS

The Prince

To retain power, the hereditary prince necessity cautiously uphold the sociopolitical institutions to which the people are accustomed; whereas a new prince has the more hard task in ruling, since he necessity first stabilize his newfound power in order to build an enduring political structure. He asserted that social benefits of stability and security could be achieved in the face of moral corruption. Aside from that, Machiavelli whispered that public and private morality had to be understood as two dissimilar things in order to rule well. As a result, a ruler necessity be concerned not only with reputation, but also positively willing to act immorally at the right times. As a political scientist, Machiavelli emphasizes that occasional require for the methodical exercise of brute force or deceit.

Scholars often note that Machiavelli glorifies instrumentality in state building—an approach embodied through the saying that "the ends justify the means". Violence may be necessary for the successful stabilization of power and introduction of new legal institutions. Force may be used to eliminate political rivals, to coerce resistant populations, and to purge the society of other men strong enough of character to rule, who will inevitably effort to replace the ruler. Machiavelli has become infamous for such political advice, ensuring that he would be remembered in history through the adjective, "Machiavellian".

Notwithstanding some mitigating themes, the Catholic Church banned The Prince, registering it to the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, and humanists also viewed the book negatively. In the middle of them was Erasmus of Rotterdam. As a treatise, its primary intellectual contribution to the history of political thought is the fundamental break flanked by political realism and political idealism, because The Prince is a manual to acquiring and keeping political power. In contrast with Plato and Aristotle, Machiavelli insisted that an imaginary ideal society is not a model through which a prince should orient himself.

Concerning the differences and similarities in Machiavelli's advice to ruthless and tyrannical princes in The Prince and his more republican exhortations in Discourses on Livy, several have concluded that The Prince, although written as advice for a monarchical prince, contains arguments for the superiority of republican regimes, similar to those establish in the Discourses. In the 18th century the work was even described a satire, for instance through Jean-Jacques Rousseau. More recently, commentators such as Leo Strauss and Harvey Mansfield have agreed that the Prince can be read as having a deliberate comical irony. In the middle of commentators who have not seen the work as ironic, several still agree that the Prince is republican to some extent.

Other interpretations contain for instance that of Antonio Gramsci, who argued that Machiavelli's audience for this work was not even the ruling class but the general people because the rulers already knew these methods through their education.

Discourses on Livy

The Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livy, often referred to basically as the "Discourses" or Discorsi, is nominally talk about a classical history of early Ancient Rome. Machiavelli presents it as a series of lessons on how a republic should be started and structured. It is a superior work than the Prince, and it more openly explains the advantages of republics, but it also contains several similar themes. Commentators disagree in relation to the how much that the two works agree with each other. It comprises early versions of the concept of checks and balances, and asserts the superiority of a republic in excess of a principality. It became one of the central texts of republicanism, and has often been argued to be a superior work to the Prince.

From The Discourses:

―In information, when there is combined under the similar constitution a prince, a nobility, and the power of the people, then these three powers will watch and stay each other reciprocally in check. Book I, Chapter II

―Doubtless these means [of attaining power] are cruel and destructive of all civilized life, and neither Christian, nor even human, and should be avoided through every one. In information, the life of a private citizen would be preferable to that of a king at the expense of the ruin of so several human beings. Bk I, Ch XXVI

―Now, in a well-ordered republic, it should never be necessary to resort to extra-constitutional events....  Bk I, Ch XXXIV

―... the governments of the people are better than those of princes. Book I, Chapter LVIII

―... if we compare the faults of a people with those of princes, as well as their respective good qualities, we shall discover the people vastly superior in all that is good and glorious. Book I, Chapter LVIII

―For government consists mainly in so keeping your subjects that they shall be neither able, nor disposed to injure you....  Bk II, Ch XXIII

―... no prince is ever benefited through creation himself hated. Book III, Chapter XIX

―Let not princes complain of the faults committed through the people subjected to their power, for they result entirely from their own negligence or bad instance. Bk III, Ch XXIX

Other Political and Historical Works

Discorso sopra le cose di Pisa (1499)

Del modo di trattare i popoli della Valdichiana ribellati (1502)

Del modo tenuto dal duca Valentino nell' ammazzare Vitellozzo Vitelli, Oliverotto da Fermo, etc. (1502) — A Account of the Methods Adopted through the Duke Valentino when Murdering Vitellozzo Vitelli, Oliverotto da Fermo, the Signor Pagolo, and the Duke di Gravina Orsini

Discorso sopra la provisione del danaro (1502) — A discourse in relation to the provision of money.

Ritratti delle cose di Francia (1510) — Portrait of the affairs of France.

Ritracto delle cose della Magna (1508–1512) - Portrait of the affairs of Germany.

Dell'Arte della Guerra (1519–1520) — The Art of War, high military science.

Discorso sopra il riformare lo stato di Firenze (1520) — A discourse in relation to the reforming of Florence.

Sommario delle cose della citta di Lucca (1520) — A summary of the affairs of the municipality of Lucca.

The Life of Castruccio Castracani of Lucca (1520) — Vita di Castruccio Castracani da Lucca, a short biography.

Istorie Florentine (1520–1525) — Florentine Histories, an eight-volume history book of the municipality-state, Florence, commissioned through Giulio di Giuliano de' Medici, later Pope Clement VII.

Fictional Works

Besides being a statesman and political scientist, Machiavelli also translated classical works, and was a dramaturge, a poet, and a novelist. Some of his other work:

Decennale primo (1506), a poem in terza rima.

Decennale secondo (1509), a poem.

Andria or The Woman of Andros (1517), a Classical comedy, translated from Terence.

Mandragola (1518) — The Mandrake, a five-act prose comedy, with a verse prologue.

Clizia (1525), a prose comedy.

Belfagor arcidiavolo (1515), a novella.

Asino d'oro (1517) — The Golden Ass is a terza rima poem, a new version of the classic work through Apuleius. Frammenti storici (1525) — Fragments of stories.

Other Works

Della Lingua (Italian for "Of the Language") (1514), a dialogue in relation to the Italy's language is normally attributed to Machiavelli. Machiavelli's literary executor, Giuliano De' Ricci, also reported having seen that Machiavelli, his grandfather, made a comedy in the approach of Aristophanes which incorporated livelihood Florentines as characters, and to be titled Le Maschere. It has been suggested that due to such things as this and his approach of writing to his superiors usually, there was extremely likely some animosity to Machiavelli even before the return of the Medici.

ORIGINALITY

Commentators have taken extremely dissimilar approaches to Machiavelli, and not always agreed. Major discussion has tended to be especially in relation to the two issues, first how unified and philosophical his work is, and secondly concerning how innovative or traditional it is.

Coherence

There is some disagreement concerning how best to describe the unifying themes, if there are any, that can be establish in Machiavelli's works, especially in the two major political works, The Prince and Discourses. Some commentators have described him as inconsistent, and perhaps as not even putting a high priority in consistency. Others such as Hans Baron have argued that his thoughts necessity have changed dramatically in excess of time. Some have argued that his conclusions are best understood as a product of his times, experiences and education. Others, such as Leo Strauss and Harvey Mansfield, have argued strongly that there is a extremely strong and deliberate consistency and distinctness, even arguing that this extends to all of Machiavelli's works including his comedies and letters.

Powers

Commentators such as Leo Strauss have gone so distant as to name Machiavelli as the deliberate originator of modernity itself. Others have argued that Machiavelli is only a particularly motivating instance of trends which were happening approximately him. In any case Machiavelli presented himself at several times as someone reminding Italians of the old virtues of the Romans and Greeks, and other times as someone promoting a totally new approach to politics.

That Machiavelli had a wide range of powers is in itself not controversial. Their relative importance is though a subject of on-going discussion. It is possible to summarize some of the main powers accentuated through dissimilar commentators.

The Mirror of Princes Genre

Gilbert (1938) summarized the similarities flanked by The Prince and the genre it obviously imitates, the so-described "Mirror of Princes" approach. This was a classically influenced genre, with models at least as distant back as Xenophon and Isocrates that was still quite popular throughout Machiavelli's life. While Gilbert emphasizes the similarities though, he agrees with all other commentators that Machiavelli was particularly novel in the method he used this genre, even when compared to his contemporaries such as Baldassare Castiglione and Erasmus. One of the major innovations Gilbert noted was that Machiavelli focused upon the "deliberate purpose of dealing with a new ruler who will require to set up himself in defiance of custom". Normally, these kinds of works were addressed only to hereditary princes.

Classical Republicanism

Commentators such as Quentin Skinner and J.G.A. Pocock, in the so-described "Cambridge School" of interpretation have been able to illustrate that some of the republican themes in Machiavelli's political works, particularly the Discourses on Livy, can be establish in medieval Italian literature which was influenced through classical authors such as Sallust.

Classical Political Philosophy: Xenophon, Plato and Aristotle

The Socratic school of classical political philosophy, especially Aristotle, had become a major power upon European political thinking in the late Middle Ages. It lived both in the catholicized form presented through Thomas Aquinas, and in the more controversial "Averroist" form of authors like Marsilius of Padua. Machiavelli was critical of catholic political thinking and may have been influenced through Averroism. But he cites Plato and Aristotle extremely infrequently and apparently did not approve of them. Leo Strauss argued that the strong power of Xenophon, a student of Socrates more recognized as an historian, rhetorician and soldier, was a major source of Socratic thoughts for Machiavelli, sometimes not in row with Aristotle. While interest in Plato was rising in Florence throughout Machiavelli's lifetime he also does not illustrate scrupulous interest in him, but was indirectly influenced through his readings of authors such as Polybius, Plutarch and Cicero.

The major variation flanked by Machiavelli and the Socratics, just as to Strauss, is Machiavelli's materialism and so his rejection of both a teleological view of nature, and of the view that philosophy is higher than politics. Aimed-for things which the Socratics argued would tend to happen through nature, Machiavelli said would happen through chance.

Classical Materialism

Strauss argued that Machiavelli may have seen himself as influenced through some thoughts from classical materialists such as Democritus, Epicurus and Lucretius. Strauss though sees this also as a sign of major innovation in Machiavelli, because classical materialists did not share the Socratic regard for political life, while Machiavelli clearly did.

Thucydides

Some scholars note the parallel flanked by Machiavellian and the Greek historian Thucydides, since both accentuated power politics. Strauss argued that Machiavelli may indeed have been influenced through pre-Socratic philosophers, but he felt it was a new combination:-

...modern readers are reminded through Machiavelli's teaching of Thucydides; they discover in both authors the similar ―realism, i.e., the similar denial of the power of the gods or of justice and the similar sensitivity to harsh necessity and elusive chance. Yet Thucydides never calls in question the intrinsic superiority of nobility to baseness, a superiority that shines forth particularly when the noble is destroyed through the base. So Thucydides' History arouses in the reader a sadness which is never aroused through Machiavelli's books. In Machiavelli we discover comedies, parodies, and satires but nothing reminding of tragedy. One half of humanity remnants outside of his thought. There is no tragedy in Machiavelli because he has no sense of the sacredness of 'the general'. — Strauss.

BELIEFS

Amongst commentators, there are a few uniformly made proposals concerning what was mainly new in Machiavelli's work.

Empiricism and Realism versus Idealism

Machiavelli is sometimes seen as the prototype of a contemporary empirical scientist, structure generalizations from experience and historical facts, and emphasizing the uselessness of theorizing with the imagination.

He emancipated politics from theology and moral philosophy. He undertook to describe basically what rulers actually did and therefore anticipated what was later described the scientific spirit in which questions of good and bad are ignored, and the observer attempts to discover only what really happens.—Joshua Kaplan, 2005

Machiavelli felt that his early schooling beside the rows of a traditional classical education was essentially useless for the purpose of understanding politics. Nevertheless, he advocated rigorous revise of the past, particularly concerning the founding of a municipality, which he felt was a key to understanding its later development. Moreover, he studied the method people existed and aimed to inform leaders how they should rule and even how they themselves should live. For instance, Machiavelli denies that livelihood virtuously necessarily leads to happiness. And Machiavelli viewed misery as one of the vices that enables a prince to rule. Machiavelli stated that it would be best to be both loved and feared. But since the two rarely come jointly, anyone compelled to choose will discover greater security in being feared than in being loved. In much of Machiavelli's work, it appears that the ruler necessity adopt unsavory policies for the sake of the continuance of his regime.

A related and more controversial proposal often made is that he described how to do things in politics in a method which seemed neutral concerning who used the advice - tyrants or good rulers.

That Machiavelli strove for realism is not doubted, but for four centuries scholars have debated how best to describe his morality. The Prince made the word "Machiavellian" a byword for deceit, despotism, and political manipulation. That Machiavelli himself was not evil and indeed planned good, is on the other hand usually accepted.

Leo Strauss, an American political philosopher, declared himself more inclined toward the traditional view that Machiavelli was self-consciously a "teacher of evil," (even if he was not himself evil) since he counsels the princes to avoid the values of justice, mercy, temperance, wisdom, and love of their people in preference to the use of cruelty, violence, fear, and deception. Italian anti-fascist philosopher Benedetto Croce concludes Machiavelli is basically a "realist" or "pragmatist" who accurately states that moral values in reality do not greatly affect the decisions that political leaders create. German philosopher Ernst Cassirer held that Machiavelli basically adopts the stance of a political scientist—a Galileo of politics—in distinguishing flanked by the "facts" of political life and the "values" of moral judgment.

Fortune

Machiavelli is usually seen as being critical of Christianity as it lived in his time, specifically its effect upon politics, and also everyday life. In his opinion, Christianity, beside with teleological Aristotelianism that the church had come to accept, allowed practical decisions to be guided too much through imaginary ideals and encouraged people to lazily leave events up to providence or, as he would put it, chance, luck or fortune. While Christianity sees modesty as a virtue and pride as sinful, Machiavelli took a more classical location, seeing ambition, spiritedness, and the pursuit of glory as good and natural things, and part of the virtue and prudence that good princes should have. So, while it was traditional to say that leaders should have virtues, especially prudence, Machiavelli's use of the languages virtù and prudenza was unusual for his time, implying a spirited and immodest ambition. Famously, Machiavelli argued that virtue and prudence can help a man manage more of his future, in the lay of allowing fortune to do so.

Najemy has argued that this similar approach can be establish in Machiavelli's approach to love and desire, as seen in his comedies and correspondence. Najemy shows how Machiavelli's friend Vettori argued against Machiavelli and cited a more traditional understanding of fortune.

On the other hand, humanism in Machiavelli's time meant that classical pre-Christian thoughts in relation to the virtue and prudence, including the possibility of trying to manage one's future, were not unique to him. But humanists did not go so distant as to promote the extra glory of deliberately aiming to set up a new state, in defiance of traditions and laws.

While Machiavelli's approach had classical precedents, it has been argued that it did more than presently bring back old thoughts, and that Machiavelli was not a typical humanist. Strauss argues that the method Machiavelli combines classical thoughts is new. While Xenophon and Plato also described realistic politics, and were closer to Machiavelli than Aristotle was, they, like Aristotle, also saw Philosophy as something higher than politics. Machiavelli was apparently a materialist who objected to explanations involving formal and final causation, or teleology.

Machiavelli's promotion of ambition in the middle of leaders while denying any higher standard meant that he encouraged risk taking, and innovation, mainly famously the founding of new manners and orders. His advice to prince was so certainly not limited to discussing how to uphold a state. It has been argued that Machiavelli's promotion of innovation led directly to the argument for progress as an aim of politics and culture. But while a belief that humanity can manage its own future, manage nature, and "progress" has been extensive lasting, Machiavelli's followers, starting with his own friend Guicciardini, have tended to prefer peaceful progress through economic development, and not warlike progress. As Harvey Mansfield wrote: "In attempting other, more regular and scientific manners of overcoming fortune, Machiavelli's successors formalized and emasculated his notion of virtue."

Machiavelli though, beside with some of his classical precursors, saw ambition and spiritedness, and so war, as inevitable and part of human nature.

Strauss concludes his 1958 Thoughts on Machiavelli through proposing that this promotion of progress leads directly to the contemporary arms race. Strauss argued that the unavoidable nature of such arms races, which have lived before contemporary times and led to the collapse of peaceful civilizations, gives us with both an explanation of what is mainly truly dangerous in Machiavelli's innovations, but also the method in which the aims of his apparently immoral innovation can be understood.

Religion

Machiavelli explains repeatedly that religion is man-made, and that the value of religion lies in its contribution to social order and the rules of morality necessity be dispensed if security required it. In The Prince, the Discourses, and in the Life of Castruccio Castracani, he describes "prophets," as he calls them, like Moses, Romulus, Cyrus the Great, and Theseus as the greatest of new princes, the glorious and brutal founders of the mainly novel innovations in politics, and men whom Machiavelli assures us have always used a big amount of armed force and murder against their own people. He estimated that these sects last from 1666 to 3000 years each time, which, as pointed out through Leo Strauss, would mean that Christianity became due to start finishing in relation to the 150 years after Machiavelli. Machiavelli's concern with Christianity as a sect was that it creates men weak and inactive, delivering politics into the hands of cruel and wicked men without a fight.

While fear of God can be replaced through fear of the prince, if there is a strong enough prince, Machiavelli felt that having a religion is in any case especially essential to keeping a republic in order. For Machiavelli, a truly great prince can never be conventionally religious himself, but he should create his people religious if he can. Just as to Strauss he was not the first person to ever explain religion in this method, but his account of religion was novel because of the method he integrated this into his common explanation of princes.

Machiavelli's judgment that democracies require religion for practical political reasons was widespread in the middle of contemporary proponents of republics until almost the time of the French revolution. This so symbolizes a point of disagreement flanked by himself and late modernity.

The Positive Face to Factional and Individual Vice

Despite the classical precedents, which Machiavelli was not the only one to promote in his time, Machiavelli's realism and willingness to argue that good ends justify bad things, is seen as a critical incentive towards some of the mainly significant theories of contemporary politics.

Firstly, particularly in the Discourses on Livy, Machiavelli is unusual in the positive face he sometimes appears to describe in factionalism in republics. For instance quite early in the Discourses, a chapter title announces that the disunion of the plebs and senate in Rome "kept Rome free." That a society has dissimilar components whose interests necessity be balanced in any good regime is an thought with classical precedents, but Machiavelli's particularly extreme presentation is seen as a critical step towards the later political thoughts of both a division of powers or checks and balances, thoughts which lay behind the US constitution.

Likewise, the contemporary economic argument for capitalism, and mainly contemporary shapes of economics, was often stated in the form of "public virtue from private vices." Also in this case, even though there are classical precedents, Machiavelli's insistence on being both realistic and ambitious, not only admitting that vice exists but being willing to risk encouraging it, is a critical step on the path to this insight.

Mansfield though argues that Machiavelli's own aims have not been shared through those influenced through him. Machiavelli argued against seeing mere peace and economic growth as worthy aims on their own, if they would lead to what Mansfield calls the "taming of the prince."

Machiavellian

Machiavelli is mainly well-known for a short political treatise, The Prince, written in 1513 but not published until 1532, five years after his death. Although he privately circulated The Prince in the middle of friends, the only theoretical work to be printed in his lifetime was The Art of War, in relation to the military science. Since the 16th century, generations of politicians remain attracted and repelled through its apparently neutral acceptance, or even positive encouragement, of the immorality of powerful men, described especially in The Prince but also in his other works.

His works are sometimes even said to have contributed to the contemporary negative connotations of the languages politics and politician, and it is sometimes thought that it is because of him that Old Nick became an English term for the Devil and the adjective Machiavellian became a pejorative term describing someone who aims to deceive and manipulate others for personal advantage. Machiavellianism also remnants a popular term used in speeches and journalism; while in psychology, it denotes a personality kind.

While Machiavellianism is notable in the works of Machiavelli, Machiavelli's works are intricate and he is usually agreed to have been more than presently "Machiavellian" himself. For instance, J.G.A. Pocock saw him as a major source of the republicanism that spread throughout England and North America in the 17th and 18th centuries and Leo Strauss, whose view of Machiavelli is quite dissimilar in several methods, agreed in relation to the Machiavelli's power on republicanism and argued that even though Machiavelli was a teacher of evil he had a nobility of spirit that led him to advocate ignoble actions. Whatever his intentions, which are still debated today, he has become associated with any proposal where "the end justifies the means". For instance Leo Strauss wrote:

Machiavelli is the only political thinker whose name has come into general use for designating a type of politics, which exists and will continue to exist independently of his power, a politics guided exclusively through thoughts of expediency, which uses all means, fair or foul, iron or poison, for achieving its ends - its end being the aggrandizement of one's country or fatherland - but also by the fatherland in the service of the self-aggrandizement of the politician or statesman or one's party.

IMPACT

To quote Robert Bireley:

...there were in circulation almost fifteen editions of the Prince and nineteen of the Discourses and French translations of each before they were placed on the Index of Paul IV in 1559, a measure which almost stopped publication in Catholic regions except in France. Three principal writers took the field against Machiavelli flanked by the publication of his works and their condemnation in 1559 and again through the Tridentine Index in 1564. These were the English cardinal Reginald Pole and the Portuguese bishop Jeronymo Osorio, both of whom existed for several years in Italy, and the Italian humanist and later bishop, Ambrogio Caterino Politi.

Machiavelli's thoughts had a profound impact on political leaders throughout the contemporary west, helped through the new technology of the printing press. Throughout the first generations after Machiavelli, his main power was in non-Republican governments. Pole reported that the Prince was spoken of highly through Thomas Cromwell in England and had influenced Henry VIII in his turn towards Protestantism, and in his tactics, for instance throughout the Pilgrimage of Grace. A copy was also possessed through the Catholic king and emperor Charles V. In France, after an initially mixed reaction, Machiavelli came to be associated with Catherine de' Medici and the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre. As Bireley reports, in the 16th century, Catholic writers "associated Machiavelli with the Protestants, whereas Protestant authors saw him as Italian and Catholic". In information, he was apparently influencing both Catholic and Protestant kings.

One of the mainly significant early works dedicated to criticism of Machiavelli, especially The Prince, was that of the Huguenot, Innocent Gentillet, whose work commonly referred to as Discourse against Machiavelli or Anti Machiavel was published in Geneva in 1576. He accused Machiavelli of being an atheist and accused politicians of his time through saying that his works were the "Koran of the courtiers", that "he is of no reputation in the court of France which hath not Machiavel's writings at the fingers ends". Another theme of Gentillet was more in the spirit of Machiavelli himself: he questioned the effectiveness of immoral strategies. This became the theme of much future political discourse in Europe throughout the 17th century. This comprises the Catholic Counter Reformation writers summarised through Bireley: Giovanni Botero, Justus Lipsius, Carlo Scribani, Adam Contzen, Pedro de Ribadeneira, and Diego Saavedra Fajardo. These authors criticized Machiavelli, but also followed him in several methods. They accepted the require for a prince to be concerned with reputation, and even a require for cunning and deceit, but compared to Machiavelli, and like later modernist writers, they accentuated economic progress much more than the riskier ventures of war. These authors tended to cite Tacitus as their source for realist political advice, rather than Machiavelli, and this pretense came to be recognized as "Tacitism". "Black tacitism" was in support of princely rule, but "red tacitism" arguing the case for republics, more in the original spirit of Machiavelli himself, became increasingly significant.

Contemporary materialist philosophy urbanized in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, starting in the generations after Machiavelli. This philosophy tended to be republican, more in the original spirit of Machiavellian, but as with the Catholic authors Machiavelli's realism and encouragement of by innovation to attempt to manage one's own fortune were more accepted than his emphasis upon war and politics. Not only was innovative economics and politics a result, but also contemporary science, leading some commentators to say that the 18th century Enlightenment involved a "humanitarian" moderating of Machiavellianism.

The importance of Machiavelli's power is notable in several significant figures in this endeavor, for instance Bodin, Francis Bacon, Algernon Sidney, Harrington, John Milton, Spinoza, Rousseau, Hume, Edward Gibbon, and Adam Smith. Although he was not always mentioned through name as an inspiration, due to his controversy, he is also thought to have been an power for other major philosophers, such as Montaigne, Descartes, Hobbes, Locke and Montesquieu.

In the seventeenth century it was in England that Machiavelli's thoughts were mainly considerably urbanized and adapted, and that republicanism came once more to life; and out of seventeenth-century English republicanism there were to emerge in the after that century not only a theme of English political and historical reflection - of the writings of the Bolingbroke circle and of Gibbon and of early parliamentary radicals - but a incentive to the Enlightenment in Scotland, on the Continent, and in America.

Scholars have argued that Machiavelli was a major indirect and direct power upon the political thinking of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Benjamin Franklin, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson followed Machiavelli's republicanism when they opposed what they saw as the emerging aristocracy that they feared Alexander Hamilton was creating with the Federalist Party. Hamilton learned from Machiavelli in relation to the importance of foreign policy for domestic policy, but may have broken from him concerning how rapacious a republic needed to be in order to survive. Though, the Founding Father who perhaps mainly studied and valued Machiavelli as a political philosopher was John Adams, who profusely commented on the Italian's thought in his work, A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America.

In his Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States, John Adams praised Machiavelli, with Algernon Sidney and Montesquieu, as a philosophic defender of mixed government. For Adams, Machiavelli restored empirical cause to politics, while his analysis of factions was commendable. Adams likewise agreed with the Florentine that human nature was immutable and driven through passions. He also accepted Machiavelli's belief that all societies were subject to cyclical eras of growth and decay. For Adams, Machiavelli lacked only a clear understanding of the institutions necessary for good government.

20th Century

The 20th century Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci drew great inspiration from Machiavelli's writings on ethics, morals, and how they relate to the State and revolution in his writings on Passive Revolution, and how a society can be manipulated through controlling popular notions of morality. Joseph Stalin read the prince and annotated his own copy.

Revival of Interest in the Comedies

In the 20th century there was also renewed interest in Machiavelli's La Mandragola (1518), which received numerous staging‘s, including many in New York, at the New York Shakespeare Festival in 1976 and the Riverside Shakespeare Company in 1979, as a musical comedy through Peer Raben in Munich's antitrade in 1971, and at London's National Theatre in 1984.