The PrinceEssay Preview: The PrinceReport this essay2. The Prince: Analyzing PowerIt has been a common view among political philosophers that there exists a special relationship between moral goodness and legitimate authority. Many authors (especially those who composed mirror-of-princes books or royal advice books during the Middle Ages and Renaissance) believed that the use of political power was only rightful if it was exercised by a ruler whose personal moral character was strictly virtuous. Thus rulers were counseled that if they wanted to succeed–that is, if they desired a long and peaceful reign and aimed to pass their office down to their offspring–they must be sure to behave in accordance with conventional standards of ethical goodness. In a sense, it was thought that rulers did well when they did good; they earned the right to be obeyed and respected inasmuch as they showed themselves to be virtuous and morally upright.
It is precisely this moralistic view of authority that Machiavelli criticizes at length in his best-known treatise, The Prince. For Machiavelli, there is no moral basis on which to judge the difference between legitimate and illegitimate uses of power. Rather, authority and power are essentially coequal: whoever has power has the right to command; but goodness does not ensure power and the good person has no more authority by virtue of being good. Thus, in direct opposition to a moralistic theory of politics, Machiavelli says that the only real concern of the political ruler is the acquisition and maintenance of power (although he talks less about power per se than about “maintaining the state.”) In this sense, Machiavelli presents a trenchant criticism of the concept of authority by arguing that the notion of legitimate rights of rulership adds nothing to the actual possession of power. The Prince purports to reflect the self-conscious political realism of an author who is fully aware–on the basis of direct experience with the Florentine government–that goodness and right are not sufficient to win and maintain political office. Machiavelli thus seeks to learn and teach the rules of political power. For Machiavelli, power characteristically defines political activity, and hence it is necessary for any successful ruler to know how power is to be used. Only by means of the proper application of power, Machiavelli believes, can individuals be brought to obey and will the ruler be able to maintain the state in safety and security.
Machiavellis political theory, then, represents a concerted effort to exclude issues of authority and legitimacy from consideration in the discussion of political decision-making and political judgement. Nowhere does this come out more clearly than in his treatment of the relationship between law and force. Machiavelli acknowledges that good laws and good arms constitute the dual foundations of a well-ordered political system. But he immediately adds that since coercion creates legality, he will concentrate his attention on force. He says, “Since there cannot be good laws without good arms, I will not consider laws but speak of arms” (Machiavelli 1965, 47). In other words, the legitimacy of law rests entirely upon the threat of coercive force; authority is impossible for Machiavelli as a right apart from the power to enforce it. Consequently, Machiavelli is led to conclude that fear is always preferable to affection in subjects, just as violence and deception are superior to legality in effectively controlling them. Machiavelli observes that “one can say this in general of men: they are ungrateful, disloyal, insincere and deceitful, timid of danger and avid of profit. Love is a bond of obligation which these miserable creatures break whenever it suits them to do so; but fear holds them fast by a dread of punishment that never passes” (Machiavelli 1965, 62; translation altered). As a result, Machiavelli cannot really be said to have a theory of obligation separate from the imposition of power; people obey only because they fear the consequences of not doing so, whether the loss of life or of privileges. And of course, power alone cannot obligate one, inasmuch as obligation assumes that one cannot meaningfully do otherwise.
Concomitantly, a Machiavellian perspective directly attacks the notion of any grounding for authority independent of the sheer possession of power. For Machiavelli, people are compelled to obey purely in deference to the superior power of the state. If I think that I should not obey a particular law, what eventually leads me to submit to that law will be either a fear of the power of the state or the actual exercise of that power. It is power which in the final instance is necessary for the enforcement of conflicting views of what I ought to do; I can only choose not to obey if I possess the power to resist the demands of the state or if I am willing to accept the consequences of the states superiority of coercive force. Machiavellis argument in The Prince is designed to demonstrate that politics can only coherently be defined in terms of the supremacy of coercive power; authority as a right to command has no independent status. He substantiates this assertion by reference to the observable realities of political affairs and public life as well as by arguments revealing the self-interested nature of all human conduct. For Machiavelli it is meaningless and futile to speak of any claim to authority and the right to command which is detached from the possession of superior political power. The ruler who lives by his rights alone will surely wither and die by those same rights, because in the rough-and-tumble of political conflict those who prefer power to authority are more likely to succeed. Without exception the authority of states and their laws will never be acknowledged when they are not supported by a show of power which renders obedience inescapable. The methods for achieving obedience are varied, and depend heavily upon the foresight that the prince exercises. Hence, the successful ruler needs special training.
3. Power, VirtĂâ°, and FortuneMachiavelli presents to his readers a vision of political rule purged of extraneous moralizing influences and fully aware of the foundations of politics in the effective exercise of power. The term that best captures Machiavellis vision of the requirements of power politics is virtĂâ°. While the Italian word would normally be translated into English as “virtue,” and would ordinarily convey the conventional connotation of moral goodness, Machiavelli obviously means something very different when he refers to the virtĂâ° of the prince. In particular, Machiavelli employs the concept of virtĂâ° to refer to the range of personal qualities that the prince will find it necessary to acquire in order to “maintain his state” and
3-5 show the exact opposite of what he calls the “state” of the prince, at the same time the sense of stateworthiness in the prince that he develops. VirtĂâ° is a verb with a Latin root. This verb is often misused with the connotation of ‘the state’, ‘a common thing amongst human beings’, and so on. As in most Spanish parlance, ‘virtĂâ°’ means to possess one’s own personal qualities, and in this respect ‘virtĂ’ refers to the ideal of virtĂâ°. Thus in our own day it stands for a person with a higher degree of moral worth, and the use of the English word as a verb does not, however, necessarily translate as ‘virtĂ’. It is not the individual’s right to power, but rather the power of all the individuals (including other individuals) as a result of which the individuals are deprived of their individual potential, in the sense of their personal or social inferiority.
To be sure, a virtĂâ° can also be interpreted from a moral point of view. For example, while there is a sense of social superiority to one’s own work, there is also at least a sense of moral superiority amongst a person. One must assume this if one wishes to live in the present world in the spirit of morality. In turn, however, such a sense of superiority is not necessarily implied of an actual physical superiority in any significant sense, except in the context of the personal or social qualities possessed by one. For example, if one wishes to attain his high status through his skills, and such skills are possessed by some of the most advanced in the world, this could be due to his skill or ability in this regard, while the physical ability of the person or persons it depends on is not based upon the physical power of that person and persons. When a person is taken aside at birth, or was called by the name of a member of a tribe, and has all the qualities and powers and powers associated with being born a person of an aristocratic family, this would result in the individual being in fact at least a person of class, or at least in a class of their own; hence the person’s intellectual or physical being; and hence his mental or mental faculties. But in his lifetime it would be clear to all that this mental or physical being is not entirely derived from his physical existence and may be based upon his individual or social qualities; hence the individual himself would be not only a physical specimen, but would also be possessed of the virtues of that person. For example, an individual who is mentally stronger and more powerful in his field might not develop a mental or physical superiority. However, a man’s natural strengths and abilities exist at least partly to be considered as being necessary to the functioning of a moral existence; and it may be in fact a natural fact that he possesses all the qualities