The Positive Side of Machiavelli’ism


I used to think of Machiavelli as a manipulator, a man without scruples, a guy who did whatever it took to get ahead. I certainly never thought of him as the man who took apart “one of the foundations of the central Western philosophical tradition”!

I got that only after reading this very interesting analysis of Machiavelli by Isaiah Berlin. Berlin says Machiavelli called the bluff on “the belief in the ultimate compatibility of all genuine values”. Machiavelli realized “that entire systems of value may come into collision without possibility of rational arbitration”. (Take 2 such ideals: always speak the truth; and defend the wrongly oppressed. Now imagine the mob of 1984 hunting down Sikhs to kill. You see this terror stricken Sikh run down a lane. The mob asks if you saw where the Sikh ran? Do you tell them where he is (speak the truth) and sign his death sentence? Or do you lie?).

If that was all there was to it, you could just shrug and dismiss the scenario as a rarity, an exception that doesn’t shake your beliefs. But, this is where Machiavelli goes further: he decided that “One chooses as one chooses because one knows what one wants, and is ready to pay the price”. Further, he has no messianic zeal: he doesn’t care to argue or “convert” others to his point of view. But, and this is interesting, Machiavelli feels people who don’t share his worldview should not be “allowed to meddle with politics or education or any of the cardinal factors in human life; their outlook unfits them for such tasks”. That, of course, sounds like advocating “wicked courses as obviously the most sensible, something that only fools or visionaries will reject”! No wonder Machiavelli has such a bad name.

And in case you didn’t realize it, this hits at the very heart of every monistic system: the idea that there is one (and only one) “solution of the question of how men should live”. How’s that? Because Machiavelli said ideals are often contradictory, so how can there be a (single) right way of living that could avoid the contradictions?! It’s a logical impossibility; and any pursuit of such a goal is doomed to fail even before the search is started.

Sound very negative so far? Most people stop at this point, which is why Machiavelli has (only) a bad name. But extend what he says and what do you get? That you should not pursue one ideal at any and all costs simply because no one ideal is always the right option. Now doesn’t that pull the (moral righteousness) rug from under every crusader and every jihadist’s feet? And if there isn’t one (and only one) right answer, it opens the door for “empiricism, pluralism, toleration, compromise”!

Note Machiavelli never went about claiming to intend the positive consequences of his philosophy…it’s just a logical consequence of his way of thinking, even though he never meant that!

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