Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli, 1469-1527.

Florentine diplomat and political philosopher. 

Niccolò Machiavelli served as a state officer of the Republic of Florence in the chaotic interlude between the fall of Savonarola and the restoration of the Medici.  A close advisor to the gonfalonier Pier Soderini, he was exiled by the Medici in 1513. 

It was during this banishment that Machiavelli authored his most famous tract, The Prince, intended as a brief handbook of governance for a Renaissance Signore.  Unlike his predecessors, who tended to refer to princely education and the ideals of good governance, Machiavelli acknowledged the real-world ambitions of statesmen - maintaining personal power for power's sake - and directed his instructions to that end.

In the Discourses, Machiavelli answers a larger question: when is it appropriate to have republican rather than seigneural government? This normative question is answered by roaming through an examination of the successes and failures of the Roman Republic and the lessons to be drawn from it.  Although the republican sentiments of the Discourses are often contrasted with the tyranny of the Prince, the treatises are not really at odds with each other and both exhibit the Machiavelli's positivistic realist stamp. 

Although Machiavelli had privately circulated both the Prince and the Discourses during his period of exile, they were not published until after his death.  They had some effect, if not the as fully as desired, and Machiavelli was allowed to return to the political life of Florence in his last few years.

It is unfortunate that unlike some of other Italian writers of the time, such as Carafa, Botero and Davanzati, Machiavelli did not pay much attention to economic matters, and his brief discussions of state finances never go beyond the rudimentary.  His 1502 speech on money, written for Soderini, attempts merely to articulate the necessity of public expenditure for the maintenance of the state. In that respect, Machiavelli has little to add of any value to the history of economic thought, except in his general influence upon the development of "realist" approaches to political philosophy, which others would take further and marry to economic policy. 

Top

Top

Top

All rights reserved, Gonçalo L. Fonseca