Machiavelli was born on this day in 1469. What motivated him—a former politician and prisoner—to write “The Prince,” his infamous how-to guide for statecraft and sovereigns?
“The Prince,” Machiavelli’s how-to guide for sovereigns, turned out to be “a scandal that Western political thought and practice has been gazing at in horror and in fascination since its first publication,” to quote from Albert Russell Ascoli’s introduction to Peter Constantine’s new translation .
There is a context, however, that, if not ameliorating, is richly complicating and easily overlooked in the light of Machiavelli’s aphoristic skill. One doesn’t wish to fall back on the excuse that this is the way that rulers often behave, although it is true that Machiavelli no more invented political evil by describing it than Kinsey invented sex.
So is he in fact a moralist? Or, heaven forbid, a saint? Machiavelli was a very precise writer, continually reworking his manuscripts to achieve a style that is as clear as daylight. Writing in his native Tuscan-inflected Italian , he relied on simple words and expressions, proud of his freedom from the “unnecessary artifice with which so many writers gild their work.” One of the conundrums that Machiavelli poses for his readers is that this verbal clarity lends itself to such uncertain meaning.
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