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 ...