Machiavelli simply didn’t believe that politicians should be bothered
about their dirty hands. He didn’t believe they deserve praise for
moral scruple or the pangs of conscience. He would have agreed with The Sopranos: sometimes you do what you have to do. But The Prince
would hardly have survived this long if it was nothing more than an
apologia for gangsters. With gangsters, gratuitous cruelty is often
efficient, while in politics, Machiavelli clearly understood, it is
worse than a crime. It is a mistake. Ragion di stato ought to
discipline each politician’s descent into morally questionable realms. A
leader guided by public necessity is less likely to be cruel and
vicious than one guided by religious moralizing. Machiavelli’s ethics,
it should be said, were scathingly indifferent to Christian principle,
and for good reason. After all, someone who believes he has God on his
side is capable of anything.
Machiavelli also understood that a politician, unlike a gangster, could not play fast and loose with the law. The law mattered because in republics, the opinion of citizens mattered, and if a prince put himself above the law too often, the people would drive him from office. Machiavelli was no democrat, but he understood that popular anger in the lanes and alleys of his city could bring a prince’s rule to a bloody end. If Machiavelli advised politicians to dissimulate, to pretend to virtues they did not practice in private life, it was because he believed that the people in the lanes and alleys cared more about whether the prince delivered peace and security than whether he was an authentic or even an honest person.
What he refuses to praise is people who value their conscience and their soul more than the interests of the state. What he will not pardon is public displays of indecision. We should not choose leaders who agonize, worrying about the moral hazards of the power they exercise in the people’s name. We should choose leaders who sleep soundly after taking ultimate risks with their own virtue. They are doing what must be done.
- Michael Ignatieff distills wisdom of Machiavelli from the following four new books
Machiavelli also understood that a politician, unlike a gangster, could not play fast and loose with the law. The law mattered because in republics, the opinion of citizens mattered, and if a prince put himself above the law too often, the people would drive him from office. Machiavelli was no democrat, but he understood that popular anger in the lanes and alleys of his city could bring a prince’s rule to a bloody end. If Machiavelli advised politicians to dissimulate, to pretend to virtues they did not practice in private life, it was because he believed that the people in the lanes and alleys cared more about whether the prince delivered peace and security than whether he was an authentic or even an honest person.
What he refuses to praise is people who value their conscience and their soul more than the interests of the state. What he will not pardon is public displays of indecision. We should not choose leaders who agonize, worrying about the moral hazards of the power they exercise in the people’s name. We should choose leaders who sleep soundly after taking ultimate risks with their own virtue. They are doing what must be done.
- Michael Ignatieff distills wisdom of Machiavelli from the following four new books
- On Machiavelli: The Search for Glory by Alan Ryan
- The Garments of Court and Palace: Machiavelli and the World That He Made by Philip Bobbitt
- Redeeming “The Prince”: The Meaning of Machiavelli’s Masterpiece by Maurizio Viroli
- Niccolò Machiavelli: An Intellectual Biography by Corrado Vivanti (Translated by Simon MacMichael)
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