Machiavellism - Small-scale Societies And Kingdoms, Ancient China, Ancient India, Europe, Machiavellian Rule
ruler practice ideal expedient
Machiavellism, a word that goes back to the late sixteenth century, is a name for the theory and practice of amoral politics. In its ideal, simply abstract sense, it is not meant to coincide exactly with the views or practices of any historical individual, even Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) himself. When Machiavelli praises the citizens of the ancient republic of Rome as noble and public-spirited, he is no Machiavellian. Consistent Machiavellism is unconstrained by custom, ideal, or conscience and aims only at the expedient means, lawful or not, to gain desired political ends. War is thought not only often expedient but necessary to maintain a people's vigor. The absence of moral restraint is reinforced by the fixed opinion that human beings are by nature weak, inconstant, selfish, and inclined to evil. Expositions of Machiavellism often take the form of advice for a ruler, who is regarded as indispensable to the state, and the welfare of ruler and state are considered to be identical. Aimed at practice rather than theory, the literature of Machiavellism is filled with amoral strategies to gain the ruler's ends.
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"Stateless" societies have no formal structure of government or any formal authorities. Anthropologists have made it clear that there are very few stateless societies in which violence is rare. Machiavellian deception makes its appearance wherever vengeance is taken and wars are fought. The best-known account of a violent, often deceptive people is Napoleon Chagnon's often con…
A country that is strong, Shang said, can remain so only by continuing to wage war, while a country administered, as Confucians preferred, with the help of history, music, filial piety, and brotherly love, sinks into poverty or falls to its enemies.
Above all, he said, a government must promote order by means of rare but consistent rewards and frequent, consistent, severe punishments. Governed by…
Violence and treachery make a frequent appearance in the great Indian epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, in which the ideal is that of a righteous king with obedient people. In the most usual Indian view, the king is related to the gods and should be revered as such. A wise man in the Mahabharata asks what a state without the protection of a king would be like and imagines robbers at work, w…
The most famous European Machiavellian was, of course, Niccolò Machiavelli, and his most famous, most Machiavellian book was Il principe (1513; The prince). Like his other works, it was nourished by his personal experience, especially as a diplomat, and by the literature of ancient Greece and Rome. Machiavelli must have been familiar with Thucydides's ability to report on history in an…
The assessments of Machiavelli himself are still mixed. The more favorable ones may be exemplified by that of the twentieth-century philosopher Ernst Cassirer, who wrote that Machiavelli's accomplishment lay in not allowing his personal feelings and ideals to affect his political judgment, which was "that of a scientist and a technician of political life." But whatever the ver…
Bodde, Dirk. China's First Unifier: A Study of the Ch'in Dynasty as Seen in the Life of Li Ssu. Leiden: Brill, 1938. Chagnon, Napoleon A. Yanomamö. 5th ed. Fort Worth, Tex.: Harcourt Brace, 1997. Ghoshal, U. N. A History of Indian Political Ideas. London: Oxford University Press, 1959. Gilbert, Felix. Machiavelli and Guicciardini. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 196…
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