Machiavelli

Machiavellian comes from Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527), the Florentine diplomat and political philosopher who wrote Il Principe (The Prince) in 1513. The book was a practical guide to acquiring and maintaining political power, written in clear, unsentimental prose that shocked readers by separating politics from morality. Machiavelli did not say that rulers should be cruel. He said that they sometimes must be, and that pretending otherwise was more dangerous than admitting it.

Machiavelli wrote The Prince after being expelled from government service, tortured (by strappado — hanging by dislocated arms), and exiled to his farm outside Florence. He wrote the book to regain the favor of the Medici family, who had overthrown the republic he had served. The book did not achieve its purpose. Machiavelli never returned to power. He died in 1527. The Prince was published posthumously in 1532.

The word 'Machiavellian' entered English by the late sixteenth century, always as a negative. The Elizabethans made Machiavelli a stage villain — a scheming Italian who manipulated and murdered. The nuance of his actual argument — that political effectiveness sometimes requires morally questionable means — was lost to the stereotype. 'Machiavellian' became a synonym for evil cunning, not for strategic realism.

Modern political science has rehabilitated Machiavelli as the founder of realist political thought. His analysis of power, his separation of ethics from strategy, and his insistence on looking at how things are rather than how they should be influenced thinkers from Hobbes to Kissinger. The word 'Machiavellian' remains negative in common usage. In political science departments, it is merely descriptive.