More Lessons from Machiavelli

A few months back, I had written about the positive side of Machiavelli’ism. More recently, I read this article by Michael Ignatieff, who pointed out that when it comes to Machiavelli’s book, The Prince:
“The outrage has not dimmed with time.”
This is one of those hidden in plain sight questions: why is the book still considered so relevant today? Doesn’t every politician pretend they are un-Machiavellian? And isn’t it true that every citizen “knows that politics is one of those realms of life where you put your soul at risk”?

Michael Walzer, a Princeton philosopher, once said:
“We want our politicians to be…lying awake at night, wrestling with the conflict between private morality and the public good.”
Modern thinkers call this the “problem of dirty hands”. Machiavelli’s take on that? Don’t think about it!
“He believed not only that politicians must do evil in the name of the public good, but also that they shouldn’t worry about it.”
Because:
“In politics, the polestar must be the health of the republic alone.”
Besides hasn’t (religious) morality not become a dirty word anyway?
“Someone who believes he has God on his side is capable of anything.”
On the other hand:
“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.”

In any case, Machiavelli realized 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.”
And that is why I fully agree with Ignatieff when he says:
“All of this looks like cynicism only if we fail to see its deep realism.”

And if you can’t deny all these arguments entirely, then you can’t dismiss Ignatieff ‘s (half) tongue-in-cheek question to ask about anyone in governance:
“Is he Machiavellian enough?”

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