For You, Machiavelli lovers…Machiavelli’s efforts in “The Prince” (“Il principe”) and “Discourses” (“Discorsi”) to employ more realistic and rational approach in reasoning are smashed by his big bang of irrationality when he tries to explain why the rulers fail. This is where his scientific comprehension fades away entirely as to worship the myths of virtù and la Fortuna. For the part that exposes his most obvious contradictions and inconsistencies, refer to chapter XXV of “The Prince”. It’s the part where Machiavelli stumbled over, being unable to rationally stitch together his ideas. It’s also the part where the author suddenly falls short of asserting practical usefulness of his analyses. Any expectations to see how this work develops into a cooking book for power usurpers are killed by Machiavelli’s rather fatalistic/pessimistic disclaimer in Chapter XXV.
I made a few dozens of pages of critical remarks on him long ago but I cannot access them now, so I briefly mention what might be found on the net. First, this conclusion:
„Although Machiavelli seeks to deny fatalism, he also seems to argue himself into it. Many critics have found in Chapter 25 of The Prince the lowest depths of Machiavelli’s cynicism, because the logical conclusion of his argument is that nothing the prince does particularly matters, because he is a mere political time server.“
(
http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/Lit ... um-85.html)
The worst was however Machiavelli’s set of values where the power was put above everything else, including ethics. It was a drastic breach of the earlier definition of politics that saw it as continuation of ethics. While St. Augustine pointed that without justice states are “the great bands of robbers“, Machiavelli did not bother about this as well as many other central questions of society.
I have found on the internet a short description of how things were looked upon before and after Machiavelli. Here comes the conclusion: “The historic responsibility of Machiavelli consists in having accepted, recognized, indorsed as normal the fact of political immorality, and in having stated that good politics, politics conformable to its true nature and to its genuine aims, is by essence non-moral politics.“ (
http://maritain.nd.edu/jmc/etext/range11.htm)
Machiavelli focused just on the way to secure the ruler success (in a narrow sense), but the story of the big bandit Borgia whom he admired could not be counted as a success story. His own life was not so, either. Mussolini who praised Machiavelli and tried to put Machiavellism into his practice turned to be a big loser. The same is true about Hitler. Machiavellism may certainly be a philosophy of ambitious losers and lunatic criminals.
Look how the essence of Machiavellism was epitomised in a single joke: “Complete the following statements: ... I believe other people ... (a) should do what I want them to do; (b) should fall down and kiss my feet; (c) should lie down in my path, so I can walk on them; (d) There are other people?
The correct answer, of course, for the true Machiavellian, is (d).” From What would Machiavelli Do? The ends justify the meanness“ by Stanley Bing (
http://brneurosci.org/reviews/machiavelli.html - book review)
There have been fairly good critical thoughts and analyses on Machiavelli made in the previous centuries, and it is still surprising how often they seem to be neglected or forgotten now. Maybe, the only marginal elites read books in the XXI century? But many writings can be found of the internet as well. I found an interesting text of John Morley (XIX century!):
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Machiavelli J.Morley: “Machiavelli has been supposed to put aside the question of right and wrong, just as the political economist or the analytical jurist used to do. Truly has it been said that the practical value of all sciences founded on abstractions, depends on the relative importance of the elements rejected and the elements retained in the process of abstraction. The view that he rejected moral elements of government for a scientific purpose and as a hypothetical postulate, seems highly doubtful. Is he not more intelligible, if we take him as following up the divorce of politics from theology, by a divorce from ethics also? He was laying down certain maxims of government as an art; the end of that art is the security and permanence of the ruling power; and the fundamental principle from which he silently started, without shadow of doubt or misgiving as to its soundness, was that the application of moral standards to this business, is as little to the point as it would be in the navigation of a ship.
The effect was fatal even for his own purpose, for what he put aside, whether for the sake of argument or because he thought them in substance irrelevant, were nothing less than the living forces by which societies subsist and governments are strong.“
Maybe, the problem of Machiavelli was that he saw tyrannies as the prevailing form of government in the world; maybe he could not simply accept the injustice and immorality of the world he saw, so he tried to escape from it through a kind of paradox we sometimes witness in the nature when a victim does not even try to escape, instead falling into hypnotic state for painless death.
If I saw no other texts in the world except those that I can find on this forum, my conclusion would be that the world speaks Airport English
(self-criticism).
Whatever Machiavelli (who was even nicknamed “Old Nick”, that is, the devil, Satan) thought of the politics, he died as a Christian. The fact is worth for consideration.
Christianity had deep roots in Russian culture. If the word ‘spasibo’ - ‘спасибо’ (thank you, thanks) which is a shortened form of “спаси Бог”, meaning “may God save you”, still may not show what god was meant by this wish, then a Russian word for ‘Sunday’ – ‘Voskresenye’ ‘Воскресенье’ indicates it clearly as it means ‘Resurrection’. So I see Machiavellism as the traditionally anti-Russian way of thinking, and I’d advice Russian chauvinists to mediate on the known old meanings of the first letters of Russian alphabet: “Aз Буки Веди Глаголь Добро… Добро Есть Живете…” „Kако Люди Мыслете… Мыслете Наш Он Покой“
