Nicolas Machiavel (in Italian it Niccolò Machiavelli ) (born the May 3rd 1469 with Florence - died the June 21st 1527) is a thinker Italy N of the Renaissance, theorist of the policy and war.
The proper name Machiavel gave in French birth in several terms: Machiavellism and its derivatives, which make reference to a cynical politicking interpretation of the work of Machiavel and machiavélien which directly refers to the concepts developed by Machiavel in its work.
Biography
Born with Florence, in a family of the nobility, Nicolas Machiavel is the son of Bernard Machiavel, pontifical treasurer with Rome and doctor in right, and of Bartolomea de' Nelli. He becomes secretary of the second chancellery in 1498, and carries out diplomatic missions, in Italy like abroad, forging thus already an opinion on the political practices of his time. He writes on these occasions of the diplomatic dispatches, joined together under the title the diplomatic relations , as well as reports/ratios ( Rapports on the things of Germany , Rapport on the things of France ). One finds there the first steps of his political design, which it will develop later in the Prince .
The Médicis return to the capacity to Florence, following the defeat of Prato in 1512. Machiavel is suspected of having taken part in the conspiracy fomented by Pier Paolo Boscoli, it is imprisoned, tortured, then, banished Florentin territory, is withdrawn in his property of Sant' Andrea in Percussina close to San Casciano in Valley di Pesa. Machiavel begins its Discours there over the first decade of Tite-Live , where, speaking about the Antiquité, it draws up in fact a criticism of the Italian political situation of its time.
The following year, it stops the drafting of the Discours… to write, in 1513, its most famous work, the Prince (in Italian: It Principle ), which, not to be badly interpreted, must be read in parallel with its Discours over the first decade of Tite-Live , work exploring in the light of the example of Rome the means necessary to the construction in Italy of a true republic and, project expensive with Machiavel, the rebuilding of plain Italy (internal wars and the papal policy being according to him two larger wounds of Italy, persons in charge of miseries of the people and the weakness of the country).
It does not remain about it less than the Prince , dedicated with Laurent de Médicis, is for Machiavel an attempt to find a place in the political life of Florence. In this famous book, he “dares, like he writes it in his dedication, to give codes of conduct to those which control”:
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“One should not that one charges me to presumption, to me a basic man condition, to dare to give codes of conduct to those which control. But as those which have to consider mountains place in the plain, and on high spot when they want to consider a plain, in the same way, I think that it is necessary to be a prince for knowing well the nature and the character of the people, and being of the people for knowing the princes well. ” (Nicolas Machiavel, Dedication of the Prince with Laurent de Médicis).
Machiavel is a politician above all, which far from the businesses of its country feels completely useless. Thus interested work, the Prince contains nevertheless, between the lines of this call to the reunification of Italy made in Médicis, all its theories republican that it dissimulated there with trick. Machiavel, theorist of the trick, did not miss itself of it: the Prince , of simple reading seemingly, is a work of a great density in which strong and new theories are registered.
Income with Florence in 1514, Machiavel writes a comedy, the Mandrake , in 1518. At the request of the cardinal Jules de Médicis, it begins the history of Florence in 1520, and in 1526 completes it (this masterpiece of political and economic analysis was regarded later as the first work announcing the historical materialism of Marx). It is a new disgrace for him with the advent of the republic, in 1527, where one reproaches him his compromising with Médicis. He dies this same year with Florence.
Machiavel is still presented today like a cynical man deprived of ideal, any moral direction and honesty, which defines the adjective machiavelic . However, its writings show politician before very concerned public property, which to Italy the political clout which it sought to give missed at one period when, paradoxically, it dominated the world of arts and the economy. However it did not nourish any illusion on the virtues of the men.
Of its masterpiece could be retained these quotations: “Because the force is just when it is necessary”, and “If you can kill your enemy, do it, if not makes a friend”. Thus the political philosophy of Machiavel is defined and which is not without pointing out that of Lénine for which the end often justified the means. However, keep we to consider the Machiavellism with a simple second degree, the will of Machiavel, from calculations crafty ones, demagogic and often perfidious, is to preserve the people of risings which could lead it to the famine and armed repression. Jean-Jacques Rousseau will write: " While pretending to give lessons to the kings, it gave the large ones to the people. The Prince is the book of the republicans ".
In 1578, Innocent Gentillet published a test after the Massacre of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre to refute the work of Machiavel. The work obtained a considerable diffusion through all the Europe and contributed to establish the durable misunderstandings on the work of Machiavel and its interpretations. And until the twentieth century when a political philosopher as Léo Strauss will continue to present Machiavel as the cynical theorist of the capacity which one burned the books in public place of many times. As if the public revelation within the competences of the capacity made Machiavel responsible for its corruption and the means at all times employed to preserve it. By revealing these mechanisms, possibly by recommending their use when the situation requires it and that the weakness of character could have still worse consequences, Machiavel tried to show a way to leave (all it while never not evacuating a its reasoning its mistrust constant with respect to the human nature, it is the birth from a single point of view of a man of ground, of a genious theorist, a writer whose Nietzsche will speak stylistic in praise, and of a practical and intellectual honesty complete. Althusser will say of him that it was for all these reasons a thinker of impossible).
In spite of this reputation sullied by the ignorance and the church, Machiavel holds a great place in the political thought. He is particularly appreciated in his native land in particular with Florence, or one finds a monument with his glory, set up by the large-duke Pierre-Léopold Joseph, beside the tombs of great geniuses like Galileo, Michel-Angel. It is registered there:
- Nicolaus Machiavelli
The fortuna is a nonhuman, chance, good or bad force, which intervenes in the human businesses. The virtù , principal quality of the prince, returns at a human disposal of reaction, or nonreaction, vis-a-vis the event. Being exerted in and through the fortuna, the virtù is in the middle of the art of the prince. The topics of the fortuna and the virtù are developed in the Prince of Nicolas Machiavel (written in 1513, published in 1532).
Philosophy
For Machiavel, the policy is characterized by the movement, the conflict and of the violent ruptures. In order to take, to preserve then to stabilize his capacity in a State, the Prince must show virtù, to adapt as well as possible to the risks of the fortuna. Indeed, the policy is art to manage the city well but also that to learn how to be maintained with the capacity in a situation open to all the reversals. This state is translated in the concepts machiavéliennes of fortuna and virtù.
Fortuna and Virtù, two concepts independent in the beginning of the political action?
Fortuna is an external need for which it is generally necessary to answer in the urgency. That illustrates the share of unforeseeable with which the political actors must compose. Also the political action could not be reduced only to the imposition of the will, even given; the intentions are not enough and the success of the political action thus supposes something moreover than the will. The fortuna dictates its law with those which abdicate in front of it and nothing opposes to him: “ Where the virtù of the men weakens, the fortuna carries its most effective blows ”. “ I judge that it can be true that the fortuna is the referee of half of our actions, but also that other half, or about, it lets it to us control ”. In its work Capitoli , Machiavel uses long prosopopée to define the fortuna: " I am the occasion, I bring back in front of me all my floating hair and I reveal under them my throat and my face so that the men do not recognize me. Behind my head, not a hair does not float, and that in front of which I would not have passed would tire in vain to catch up with me ".
The virtù defined by the fortuna
The virtù is the different one pouring thought of the political action of Machiavel. It must above all be included/understood like the capacity to impose its will on the fortuna. Also, the virtù of the political actors does not return directly to their virtuous character but rather to their valiancy, with the quality with which it approaches the fortuna and tries to control it. It is the flexibility more than the rigidity which Machiavel intends to defend; the virtù implies that the political actors know before very adapting to the circumstances. Thus Machiavel recommends a pragmatic control of the political action; a control which can adapt the political action to the contingency of the circumstances. The analogy of the unchained river and the dams explains why the fortuna “watch especially its capacity where no resistance was prepared”. The fortuna without virtù is with the image of not controlled nature (cf Discours over the first decade of Tite-Live, III, 12). The role of the virtu is thus to envisage the catastrophes, to prevent them.
The fortuna/virtù report/ratio
In chapter VI, Machiavel shows well that the virtu is the capacity to impose its law on fortune. Indeed, it shows there well that “what the large founders of State last with fortune, it was the occasion which provides them a matter to which they could give the form that they considered suitable”. It is thus the occasion to show its political talents; without it, the occasion had been able to disappear. Fortune flies to the help of which can not be deceived and be skilful. Where the virtu is with its maximum, the fortuna has only one auxiliary role. Faced thanks to clearness, the fortuna seems the pivot of the need: what means that it shows the need for acting, and for analyzing the involved power struggles. The virtu is thus effort of clearness in particular circumstances, intellectual effort with work in the concrete one of the history. The concept of “need” thus indicates the place of the circumstances impossible to circumvent, but never completely clear, except for an advised political thought.
Concepts of Fortuna and Virtù in the literature and philosophy
J.G.A. Pocock, in its work The Machiavellian Moment (1970), has the complexity and the richness of the opposition between the virtu and the fortuna in the Prince. This opposition is according to him in the middle of the “moment machiavélien” and the republican idea. It gains besides in thickness in the republican writings of Machiavel.
According to Plessner (contemporary of Heidegger) the policy is defined, in manner very “machiavelienne”, like “the art of the favorable moment, of the favorable occasion”, which the Greeks called the kairos and this why Machiavel associated the fortuna with the virtù necessary to the politician.
For Aristote, the virtue consists in acting and suffering " when it is necessary, whenever and with regard to which one needs, for the end that it is necessary and in the manner that " is needed; (Ethics with Nicomaque, II, 5,1106b 21-23).
Among Greeks, the `kaïros' defines the favorable occasion, convenient time, the coincidence of the human action and time, coincidence which qualifies not only one action as being good, and time as being favourable. “The kaïros, it is the moment when the course of time, insufficiently directed, seems like hesitating and wavering, for the good as for the evil of the man” for Aubenque in his work prudence at Aristote .
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