Machiavelli: The Art of Power

Six dialogues on power, virtù, and the republic

A course on the thought of Niccolò Machiavelli.

What you will learn

  • Understand that Machiavelli's teaching is the distilled experience of a working diplomat and soldier, not the speculation of a scholar — 'things seen' against 'things imagined.'
  • Grasp the formative example of Cesare Borgia: the new prince Machiavelli watched build a state by force, fraud, and ruthless decision.
  • See the existential ground of the work: the fall of the republic, his dismissal and torture, and the exile at Sant'Andrea where The Prince was written to win back a place in the world.
  • Define *virtù* in Machiavelli's sense: not moral virtue but the force, skill, daring, and adaptability by which a man seizes occasions and holds a state.
  • Define *fortuna* and grasp the claim that she is the arbiter of about half of what we do — leaving the other half to our own virtù.
  • Understand the images of mastering fortune: the river to be dammed in advance, and fortune as a woman to be met with audacity rather than caution.
  • Grasp the decisive break: against the humanist 'mirror for princes,' Machiavelli argues a prince must be able 'not to be good' and use that ability according to necessity.
  • Understand the hard maxims as reasoned conclusions, not cynicism: cruelty well-used vs badly-used, why it is safer to be feared than loved, and the lion and the fox.

Course outline

  1. The Diplomat and the Fall — Where the doctrine comes from: fourteen years serving the Florentine republic, Cesare Borgia seen at close range, the fall of 1512, and the exile in which — dressing each night in the robes of the…
  2. Virtù and Fortuna — The beating heart of The Prince: the contest between virtù — the force and skill to impose form on events — and fortuna, the power of chance. Why fortune governs half our actions, and how the…
  3. How Not to Be Good — The scandalous core: Machiavelli's decisive break with the 'mirror for princes' tradition. A prince must learn how NOT to be good, and use it according to necessity — cruelty and mercy, feared versus…
  4. The Theorist of Liberty — The other half of Machiavelli, which the scandal of The Prince hides: in the Discourses on Livy he is a republican, and liberty is his highest good. Why a free people with good laws and good arms…
  5. Conflict, the People, and Religion — Machiavelli's most radical republican claims: that the class CONFLICT between people and nobles kept Rome free, that the people are the better guardians of liberty, that religion is a civic…
  6. The Historian and the Legacy — Machiavelli the historian of his own city, and what he became: the Florentine Histories on faction and the decay of liberty, the cyclical reading of history, and the man behind the myth — a patriot…

Works read in this course

  • The Prince — Machiavelli's 1513 handbook (Il Principe) for a new prince: how power is won, held, and lost — virtù and fortuna, cruelty and mercy, the lion and the fox, and the break with the moralists' 'mirror for princes.'
  • Discourses on Livy — Machiavelli's longer republican masterwork (Discorsi, c.1517), a commentary on Livy's history of Rome: liberty, civic virtù, the productive role of class conflict, religion, corruption, and why a free people surpasses any prince.
  • Florentine Histories — Machiavelli's 1525 history of Florence, commissioned by the Medici: the cycles of government and the faction that, unlike Rome's productive tumults, tore the city's liberty apart.
  • The Art of War — Machiavelli's 1521 dialogue on military affairs — the case for a citizen militia over mercenaries, and the ancient Roman model of arms as the foundation of a free state.
  • Mandragola — Machiavelli's biting comedy (c.1518) of seduction and hypocrisy in Florence — the same cold eye for how people really behave, turned on private life and the Church.
  • Life of Castruccio Castracani — A short, half-invented 1520 biography of a Lucchese condottiere — Machiavelli's portrait of virtù in a single ambitious man, part history, part fable of the ideal new prince.
  • Familiar Letters — Machiavelli's private correspondence — including the famous December 1513 letter to Francesco Vettori describing his evenings 'entering the courts of the ancients,' where he announces he has written The Prince.

Terms introduced

virtù, fortuna, lo stato, verità effettuale, necessità

Part of the Simposeum course library.