Discuss to what extent you agree or disagree with this statement. What evidence can you bring to support your position?
(Dante Germino, Machiavelli to Marx: Modern Western Political Thought, p. 32)
All states, all powers, that have held and hold rule over men have been and are either republics or principalities. (Machiavelli, "The Prince", Chapter I)
When Machiavelli began his work on The Prince, one can hardly think that he forsaw the results. Such a straightforward work, and yet the topic of numberless papers, essays, and speeches throughout the following centuries, all saying something different about this man and his strange work. For The Prince was strange indeed, being so clear in meaning that it has caused more confusion than had it been vague and shadowy.
Of the many voices that have and are breaching the subject of Nicolo Machiavelli, Professor Dante Germino is yet another one to be added to the sea of opinion and argument. In his work of Machiavelli to Marx: Modern Western Political Thought, he asserts two statements of Machiavelli. First, that Machiavelli's work demonstrates his belief that Christian political theory is useless in the modern world of politics, and that Machiavelli implicitly denies a nihilistic counterethic in his work. While, as is the case with Machiavellian literature, many differing opinions on the validity of Professor Germino's statements exist, it is clearly demonstrated throughout Machiavelli's own work that both of these statements are, indeed, true.
While Machiavelli never comes directly out and says such, he clearly indicates the truthfulness of Professor Germino's first statement throughout the writings of The Prince. He articulates for the reader a vision of the perfectly-ruled princedom, the perfect leader, who can and should lie, murder, steal, and so forth in order to preserve the princedom. Nearly every chapter, the Christian reader meets statements that debunk the Christian political theory as being weak, useless, and even dangerous to a proper leader.
For anyone who wants to act the part of a good man in all circumstances will bring about his own ruin, for those he has to deal with will not all be good. So it is necessary for a ruler, if he wants to hold on to power, to learn how not to be good, and to know when it is and when it is not necessary to use this knowledge. (Machiavelli, "The Prince", Chapter XV)
The "good man" mentioned by Machiavelli above is the religious man, the Christian man, and Machiavelli points his finger at him to tell him that he cannot survive in politics as he is. He remarks in chapter sixteen, that while meanness is generally regarded a vice, it is a necessity for a prince. Chapter seventeen follows up with his discussion on clemency and cruelty, and again he comes to the conclusion that cruelty is better for the nation than clemency, and to be feared is better for a prince than to be loved.
There is not a decent Christian who would nod his head and say to his friend, "Why, yes, I do think that if we were the rulers of this land we should be cruel and ruthless to our people. I do think that we should sacrifice the goodness that the Bible teaches us so that we might stay in power longer."
No, through his speaking on such topics as that, Machiavelli clearly demonstrates himself to be against the idea of Christian politics. Christian political theory, as Machiavelli has seen it, would be completely unresolvable with the necessary measures of modern politics.
The second statement made by Professor Germino, that Machiavelli implicitly denies a nihilistic counterethic, is perhaps a bit harder to prove than his first. Upon first glance, this seems obviously mistaken, as Machiavelli has written a work that seems to place everything in a distinctly black-and-white, no morality attached perspective. It may look as though he does, actually, believe that brute force and power are all that matter in the political world.
This, however, is incorrect.
If Machiavelli did believe that only power and brute force mattered in politics, there would be no reason for a good deal of his writing in The Prince. In fact, he could condense his entire book to an even shorter length than it currently is; he could bring it down to a sentence or two. (Something along the lines of "Have a good army and use force whenever necessary. The End.")
Therefore it is unnecessary for a prince to have all the good qualities I have enumerated, but it is very necessary to appear to have them. (Machiavelli, "The Prince", Chapter XVIII)
If power and brute force is all that matters, why should a prince go through such trouble to appear to have good qualities, even if he does not actually posses them? Why should a prince care about whether he appears to have compassion or generosity when he has power on his side?
Machiavelli may appear to do away with morality in The Prince, but it is only that, an appearance. Machiavelli has not done away with morality at all, he has only changed it to be a different kind of morality than the Christian kind that we might expect. Machiavelli has constructed a morality of politics, of the continuation of the state, and of the necessary tactfulness of the ruler to know when to use cruelty and when to appear to have clemency.
Professor Germino may or may not be right about a good deal of things. It is quite possible that he holds to ridiculous ideas and preposterous philosophies which have not yet been mentioned; one cannot propose to know. Regarding his above statements on Machiavelli, however, he is quite correct. Machiavelli most certainly did believe in the uselessness of Christian political theory in the working of actual politics, and he did indeed reject such a nihilistic counterethic of power and brute force alone. Whether he was right or wrong in doing so, however, is a discussion for another time.
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