The Machiavellism indicates in the language running a design of the policy preaching the conquest and the conservation of the capacity by all the means, including handling.

At the origin and in a noble direction, the Machiavellism refers to the concepts developed by Nicolas Machiavel in his various political works. In this direction, “the Machiavellism is the effort to bore up to date hypocrisies of the social comedy, to release the feelings which truly make drive the men, to seize the authentic conflicts which constitute the texture of becoming historical, to give a stripped vision of any illusion of what is really the company”.

The adjective machiavelic , passed in the current language, is used in reference to black interpretation and manipulator of the work of Machiavel; by contrast, the neologism machiavélien was formed to indicate the concepts resulting from the philosophical policy of Machiavel, without making assessment.

Machiavellism and cynicism

The " machiavélisme" refers to a politicking interpretation of the work of the author Nicolas Machiavel, in particular of its work the Prince. The object of this treaty is to expose art of the conquest and the conservation of the capacity, in particular while being based on the comprehension and the handling of the human and popular feelings. In this direction, it slices singularly with the traditional political treaties, of which the original intention was to inform the Head of State on the use right and virtuous of the capacity. Of its masterpiece could be retained these quotations: “Because the force is just when it is necessary”, “If you can kill your enemy, do it, if not make to -t'en a friend”, or: “On did that rise the question of knowing if it is to better be liked that fears, or being fears that liked? One can answer that the best would be to be one and the other. But, as it is very difficult that the two things exist together, I say that, if one must miss, it is surer to be fears than to be liked. ”

One often retains political philosophy of Machiavel only this aspect of absence of scruples, this idea of " the end justifies the moyens". The Machiavellism is thus often associated with a praise of cynicism and handling in policy. It is particularly true concerning the chapters XV to XXII of the Prince, which state in a cold way the means to implement to preserve the capacity (for example, brutal, cruel and public execution of the opponents, to strike the spirits and to discourage the dispute of the authority of the Prince).

A philosophy on several levels

However, if this aspect is quite real in the work of Machiavel, it would be false to exclusively reduce it to it. Thus, in chapters XXIII to XXVI of the Prince, the author reveals his true intention: these councils must allow to release and unify Italy. To a certain extent, the purpose of all calculations crafty ones suggested by Machiavel are also to preserve the people of risings which could lead it to the famine and armed repression. Like he writes it two months before his death, Machiavel cherished the freedom of his fatherland more than all.

One can add that the Prince was not, at the beginning, a book intended to be published. With its design, it was about one present of Machiavel to its Prince Laurent Splendid the. The goal of the work being to make benefit this last from the knowledge acquired by an long experience from the political vicissitudes from its time, and by an assiduous study of the old stories, in particular those of the Antiquity.

In fact, very as much as that of cynicism, Machiavel can be regarded as the father of the Pragmatisme in policy. The virtue first of the prince is indeed not moral but political: it is the aptitude to preserve the capacity while knowing to proportion fear and the love which it can inspire, in order to maintain the order and the unit of its city.

A discussed philosophy

For Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the Prince is in fact a denunciation in filigree of tyranny: “While pretending to give lessons to the kings, it gave the large ones to the people. the Prince is the book of the republicans”. This interpretation is not however dominant at the exégètes of Machiavel.

More generally, the bad reputation which surrounds Machiavel and its work - and which is subjacent in the Machiavellism term - is, as we saw higher, partly due to a mécompréhension of the true intentions of the author. One finds an example of this misunderstanding in the fact that the the Holy See anathémisa Machiavel, while at the same time it Clément VII is the pope which had ordered, shortly after the death of this one, the publication of its work.

Many authors, like Voltaire, criticized Machiavel. But, as Napoleon underlines it much, which largely commented on the Prince, read Machiavel but little included/understood it.