Machiavelli Niccolò (1469–1527), the Italian political theorist commonly considered the most influential political thinker of the Renaissance. Born in Florence, he was educated in the civic humanist tradition. From 1498 to 1512, he was secretary to the second chancery of the republic of Florence, with responsibilities for foreign affairs and the revival of the domestic civic militia. His duties involved numerous diplomatic missions both in and outside Italy. With the fall of the republic in 1512, he was dismissed by the returning Medici regime. From 1513 to 1527 he lived in enforced retirement, relieved by writing and occasional appointment to minor posts.
Machaivelli’s writings fall into two genetically connected categories: chancery writings (reports, memoranda, diplomatic writings) and formal books, the chief among them The Prince (1513), the Discourses (1517), the Art of War (1520), Florentine Histories (1525), and the comic drama Mandragola (1518). With Machiavelli a new vision emerges of politics as autonomous activity leading to the creation of free and powerful states. This vision derives its norms from what humans do rather than from what they ought to do. As a result, the problem of evil arises as a central issue: the political actor reserves the right ‘to enter into evil when necessitated.’ The requirement of classical, medieval, and civic humanist political philosophies that politics must be practiced within the bounds of virtue is met by redefining the meaning of virtue itself. Machiavellian virtù is the ability to achieve ‘effective truth’ regardless of moral, philosophical, and theological restraints. He recognizes two limits on virtù: (1) fortuna, understood as either chance or as a goddess symbolizing the alleged causal powers of the heavenly bodies; and (2) the agent’s own temperament, bodily humors, and the quality of the times. Thus, a premodern astrological cosmology and the anthropology and cyclical theory of history derived from it underlie his political philosophy. History is seen as the conjoint product of human activity and the alleged activity of the heavens, understood as the ‘general cause’ of all human motions in the sublunar world. There is no room here for the sovereignty of the Good, nor the ruling Mind, nor Providence. Kingdoms, republics, and religions follow a naturalistic pattern of birth, growth, and decline. But, depending on the outcome of the struggle between virtù and fortuna, there is the possibility of political renewal; and Machiavelli saw himself as the philosopher of political renewal. Historically, Machiavelli’s philosophy came to be identified with Machiavellianism (also spelled Machiavellism), the doctrine that the reason of state recognizes no moral superior and that, in its pursuit, everything is permitted. Although Machiavelli himself does not use the phrase ‘reason of state’, his principles have been and continue to be invoked in its defense. See also POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY , SOCIAL PHILOSOPH. A.J.P.