The Birth of Realism In Politics

Niccolò Machiavelli was born in a fractured Italy, divided among the Kingdom of Naples in the South, Milan in the Southwest, the Republic of Venice in the Northwest, Florence, and the Papal States in the centre. At that time, the powerful Medici family that once ruled Florence had been overthrown by Girolamo Savonarola, replaced by a republican government. Machiavelli officially entered politics as a diplomat, advising on foreign and military affairs. But in 1512, when the Medici returned to power, Machiavelli - who had served the republic, was accused of conspiracy, tortured, and exiled.

Niccolò Machiavelli (source: Engelsberg Ideas)

For 14 years, he had been in close contact with renowned statesmen and witnessed countless bloody purges. From this, he came to understand the sinister intrigues and pragmatic calculations that defined Florentine politics. Returning to his hometown, he dedicated his work to the head of the Medici family, setting aside his personal grievances. What he longed for was that Florence’s ruler might unify a fragmented and war-torn Italy.

Machiavelli was not the first to write advice for monarchs - earlier works such as Liber Exhortationis, De Regimine Principum, or Livre de la Paix had circulated widely. Yet unlike those texts, he did not seek to describe an ideal government, nor did he dwell on moral principles. The Prince is a political treatise that concentrates on one question alone: how to seize power, and how to keep it. Its unsentimental realism, along with its infamous philosophy of “the ends justify the means,” defined the very essence of The Prince.

Within a decade of its publication, the book had acquired a notorious reputation. Moralists across Europe, particularly in England and France, condemned it as a handbook for tyrants. During the reign of Elizabeth I, no fewer than 400 polemics were written in opposition to it. By the end of the century, Shakespeare had used “Machiavell” to denote an unscrupulous opportunist - treacherous, deceitful, cunning, which directly popularised the term “Machiavellian” across Europe.

The world in which Machiavelli lived was one of ruthless struggle, where kingdoms faced only two options: to invade or to be invaded. Justice belonged to the strong. Ideas of human rights, equality, or national sovereignty had yet to exist. To the philosopher Isaiah Berlin, Machiavelli was not amoral so much as a revival of ancient Greek political thought, which exalted national glory and political power above Christian ethics and salvation. Yet precisely for this reason, he was despised in his own time.

The Prince encouraged rulers to be parsimonious, cruel, duplicitous, and manipulative. A ruler, Machiavelli wrote, must know there are two ways of fighting: by law and by force. Since the law is often ineffective, one must resort to force. Outwardly, the Prince should appear faithful, humane, devout, and upright - but always be ready to abandon these virtues when expedient. Most famously, Machiavelli insists: “For a ruler, it is much safer to be feared than loved.” The treatise even ends with a direct appeal to Lorenzo de’ Medici, urging him to unite Italy’s small city-states under one dominion.

Machiavelli was the first to expose the harsh reality of politics: that the supreme goal of political stability is worth any monstrous scheme to achieve it. Yet he was blunt in admitting: “By these methods, the Prince may gain power, but never glory. Power is not glory, nor is it synonymous with righteousness. One must distinguish sharply between princes who merely wield power and those who deserve admiration.”

In this way, Machiavelli revolutionised political philosophy, laying the foundation for Hobbes and later thinkers to ground their studies of human morality in observable reality rather than religious ideals. Brutal yet truthful, Machiavelli shattered comforting illusions about power, showing that men must “learn to enter hell, in order to escape it.” The Prince was not written by an official defending his government, but by an exile offering a searing portrait of how it actually functioned. Though it serves as a manual for despots, it also reveals their playbook to the governed.