Sunday, 3 October 2010

Machiavelli (1469-1527)

My recent study of the history and context of Journalism around the Renaissance time has thrown up many interesting personalities and pioneers. Those that particularly interested me included the philosopher Descartes and the scientific genius of Newton and Galileo.
One character that especially stood out to me though was Niccolo Machiavelli. Machiavelli was born in Florence Italy, the city that was synonymous with the Italian Renaissance. After serving in various minor posts in the local government Machiavelli was arrested and sent to retirement in the Florence countryside by the newly restored Medici family upon their return to power. The Medici's were enormously rich and power having made their fortune by giving loans out but demanding their repayment in differing currencies in order to be able to charge interest on top - as doing so was forbidden by the Catholic Church.
Machiavelli's banishment, however, led to his most famous, and greatest work. He became an author simply because he had nothing else to do, and wrote 'The Prince' in 1513. He dedicated the book to the Medici family in order to win their favour however this was in vain. The Prince was a pragmatic guide of how to win and keep power. Machiavelli approaches the subject of gaining power as something of a science. He gives little or no comment on God, or takes morality into account in any of his lessons. He acknowledges the requirement for physical brutality particularly in the acquisition of power  and states that 'it is better to be feared than loved' but makes the observation that popular governments do tend to be less cruel and unscrupulous than tyrants. He also places a certain degree of emphasis on the need for the people to have a certain degree of power in order to maintain stability in a regime, as opposed to the constant upheaval created by continuous revolutions.
Machiavelli's realistic approach to politics was very representative of the period as a whole. The art of this time was also very humanistic with religious paintings now depicting much more human characters, displaying very real emotions, as opposed to the bland, generic subject of Dark Age works. This approach appears to highly justify Machiavelli's reputation as the founder of Political Science and I believe that the fact that he was able to produce a work that appeared to disregard his own desire for a unified Italy or any other beliefs he may have harboured certainly suggest a very precise and measured technician at work.
Machiavelli's influence is still very much clear in the more modern day. Pragmatic leaders that spring to my mind such as Hitler and Lenin appear to show some reference to the 'Machiavellian' mindset particularly in their acquisition of power. Although we still use the term Machiavellian today to describe a politician of ambition and cunning, having looked deeper into Machiavelli, I cant help but feel that this phrase is somewhat incorrectly used. Machiavelli's ability to separate his own views or morals particularly in 'The Prince' from the required 'art' of politics perhaps suggest that the term 'Princian' would be more accurate. That his great work was only published 5 years after his death may well suggest that Machiavelli was not influential in the Renaissance time he lived, but his clear influence in politics since then, be it in the meticulous planning that now goes into democratic election campaigns or the ruthless way in which dictators maintain power, in addition to the way his works reflect the humanistic age of the Renaissance means that Machiavelli should certainly be considered one of the key players of the Southern Renaissance.

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