Appearance, Reality, and Power in Machiavelli's The Prince

Machiavelli's Background and Political Context

Many of Niccolò Machiavelli's notions on appearance, reality, and power are understandably rooted in his background and the time and place in which he lived. Born in 1469 in Florence, Italy, Machiavelli received a humanistic education and eventually rose to the political position of Second Chancellor of the Republic of Florence (Nederman, 2005). He held this position for approximately fourteen years, traveling to many cities in Italy and abroad on diplomatic and political assignments. In 1512, the Medici family and allied forces defeated and dissolved the Republic of Florence, causing Machiavelli to lose his position that same year (Unger, 2012, p. 1) and eventually leading to his imprisonment and torture in 1513 (Unger, 2012, p. 2).

It was during this period that Italy was divided into numerous nation-states and city-states, each with its own rulers and constantly shifting political alliances (Unger, 2012, p. 26). After his release from prison in 1513, Machiavelli lived in political exile on the outskirts of Florence and wrote his most famous work, The Prince (Nederman, 2005). Though the work was first published posthumously in 1532 (Unger, 2012, p. 339), it circulated unofficially during Machiavelli's lifetime and eventually became the most famous of his several works (Unger, 2012, p. 8). Out of favor with the Medici family at the time he wrote The Prince, Machiavelli eventually regained at least some of their favor and received several assignments from key members of the family (Nederman, 2005). However, by the time of his death in 1527, he had not yet recovered his prior political standing (Nederman, 2005). The ideas of appearance, reality, and power emerged from this career politician and writer living in politically unstable times.

Writing from within the context of his experience and political exile, Machiavelli composed The Prince (De Grazia, 1994, p. 23). For this career politician who had both used and been used by shifting 16th-century Italian politics, a Prince should possess and develop virtu — the ability and willingness to do what is necessary to obtain and retain power. Within this framework, reality was quite different from the ethical ideals espoused by Aristotle and familiar to 16th-century Italy (Unger, 2012, p. 239). In deliberately simple, straightforward language (De Grazia, 1994, p. 30), Machiavelli's book pragmatically dealt with "what is" rather than "what should be." For Machiavelli, a Prince's reality was fundamentally about obtaining personal power.

Reality, Power, and the Rejection of Morality

This was no easy feat. Machiavelli believed that in reality, "this is to be asserted in general of men, that they are ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly, covetous…" (Machiavelli, The Prince, 2009, p. 61), and that men tended to retain those ignoble qualities (Machiavelli, Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius, 2007, p. 437). In addition to this jaundiced view of men, Machiavelli wrote frequently about Fortuna — the active, illogical, and perverse force of circumstance — which he described in many ways: a sadistic goddess who grants a favor and then snatches it away; a river prone to flooding; a changeable woman; an eagle that soars beautifully but is cruel. Through these analogies, Machiavelli conveyed his belief that fortune, too, is fickle and cruel.

In the face of ignoble men and often cruel and fickle fortune, a Prince must somehow seize and keep power. In Machiavelli's worldview, to be "merciful, faithful, humane, religious, upright" and to rely on those qualities exclusively when dealing with ignoble men and fickle fortune was "injurious" (Machiavelli, The Prince, 2009, p. 64; Machiavelli, Discourses, 2007, p. 33). One of the most striking characteristics of The Prince is therefore its determination to divorce political reality from ethics and morality in order to explain how principalities could be acquired, maintained, and lost. In this context, a Prince who wished to obtain and keep power might "overcome either by force or by fraud" (Machiavelli, The Prince, 2009, p. 27) and should, in fact, "know how to do wrong" and employ it when necessary (Machiavelli, The Prince, 2009, p. 55). This counsel to know and use "wrong" when necessary created no ethical dilemma in Machiavelli's political thinking, for he sharply distinguished between how a Prince ought to live and how a Prince actually lives — without apology:

"how one lives is so far distant from how one ought to live, that he who neglects what is done for what ought to be done, sooner effects his ruin than his preservation; for a man who wishes to act entirely up to his professions of virtue soon meets with what destroys him among so much that is evil" (Machiavelli, The Prince, 2009, p. 55).

Conclusion

Niccolò Machiavelli's ideas on appearance, reality, and power stem from his background and his place within the political shifts of 16th-century Italy. A career politician who both used and was used by the politics of the time, Machiavelli developed certain unvarnished truths about gaining and retaining power. It was during his political exile that he wrote The Prince, his most famous work — a book still widely read five hundred years after its composition. For Machiavelli, reality was quite different from the morally driven politics espoused by Aristotle. In Machiavelli's world, reality was about obtaining and retaining personal power, necessarily divorced from ethics and morality because men are "ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly, covetous…" and fortune is fickle and cruel. Rather than acting on what "ought to be," the Prince ideally acted on "what is," resorting to force, fraud, and generally knowing "how to do what is wrong" when circumstances warranted it.