Machiavelli's The Prince

The Prince opens with a reductive definition of the state which seeks to subsume all forms of dominion over man. Machiavelli begins with a singular starting point then proceeds to unravel its many contradictions. His rhetoric is precise but misleading and the “truths” he tells initially, are quickly made circumspect by his linguistic diversions. The state and dominion, it seems, are one in the same and it begs our questioning whether the politics of the state is not bound and separate from the kind of all encompassing dominion he describes. The word dominion has most often belonged to God, if language is to be so ascribed, and politics was made prostrate before Him. Machiavelli’s opening statement suggests that politics, the state and the

From his dedication letter to the title of the first chapter, we are asked to believe that Machiavelli is concerned with how to rule and whether ethics has any place in such affairs. The bulk of The Prince, however, is focused on the acquisition of territory and finding ways to keep what has been acquired. Machiavelli, it seems, is less interested in classifying states or with the practice of government, which are all treated as prompts to the larger concern: the expansion of the Italian state and maintenance of their stronghold once it is established. Machiavelli looks to history and to his contemporaries for guidance; hoping that somewhere among wealth, fortune and talent there exists some strategy worth

Like Borgia, can you do everything right and fail anyway? Can you be a man of talent, daring, wealth and esteem and still fall prey to circumstance? Machiavelli says as much. Power it seems, then, is a most volatile thing. The only ones who seem capable of manipulating it sufficiently are the kings of ecclesiastical principalities; everyone else seems doomed to be destroyed by it. Machiavelli, himself, having lost and regained power several times over is all too aware of the volatility of power; that as power consumes, it attracts and that in the hands of unpredictable men ruling over unpredictable subjects, power has no permanence no matter carefully laid plans. For every successful story he tells, there exists failures which defy history and Machiavelli is all too aware to assert otherwise. It begs the question then: why write to Medici? What is Machiavelli’s true aim? Are his words meant to rouse and inspire or signal Machiavelli’s utility to those in power? Should we expect this man, this writer, this rhetorician to have no agenda in order to prove himself worthy of our esteem? Do such men, men without self-interest, even exist? Alexander VI, God’s right hand, failed in such