Comment “Machiavelli’s political philosophy was narrowly local and narrowly dated.” (Sabine) (2003)
George H. Sabine made this judgement in A History of Political Theory (1937) while explaining Niccolò Machiavelli‘s attitude to religion. Had Machiavelli written outside Italy, or after the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, he could not have treated religion as he did. Sabine reads the whole theory as a generalisation from one peninsula at one desperate moment. The charge fits the illustrations and remedies; it does not fit the questions Machiavelli put to politics.
Why Sabine Called It Local
- A peninsula in pieces. Italy was divided among Milan, Venice, Florence, the Papal States and Naples. After Charles VIII of France invaded in 1494 it became a battlefield for French, Spanish and imperial armies.
- Remedies cut to that crisis. The contempt for mercenaries (The Prince, Chapter XII), the admiration for Cesare Borgia and the closing call for a redeemer of Italy (Chapter XXVI) answer Italian emergencies.
- The Church as culprit. In the Discourses on Livy (I.12) the papacy is too weak to unify Italy and strong enough to stop anyone else. This complaint belonged to the Italy of the Renaissance popes.
Why Sabine Called It Dated
- Before the religious wars. The Prince was written in 1513, four years before Martin Luther’s theses. Once Europe split over religion, no theorist could treat faith merely as civil religion. Jean Bodin and Thomas Hobbes had to build sovereignty around sectarian conflict.
- Pessimism as symptom. Men described as ungrateful, fickle, false reflect, for Sabine, an exceptionally corrupt society rather than human nature.
- Method. Sabine also complains that Machiavelli used history to illustrate conclusions reached beforehand, and never developed a theory of law, sovereignty or obligation.
Why the Charge Fails
- The questions are permanent. Whether a ruler may do wrong to preserve the community is Michael Walzer‘s problem of dirty hands (1973). It returns in every debate on emergency powers, surveillance and covert war.
- The concepts travelled. James Harrington‘s Oceana (1656) called him the only politician of later ages. Quentin Skinner traces a neo-Roman liberty from the Discourses, freedom as non-dependence on another’s will, into English republican thought.
- The moral problem is universal. Isaiah Berlin credits him with showing that pagan civic virtue and Christian virtue cannot both be fully lived. That value pluralism is no Florentine peculiarity.
- India faced the same dilemmas. Kautilya wrote of matsyanyaya, the big fish devouring the small, and of danda as its cure in a wholly different world. India’s Emergency (1975–77) revived the claim of necessity. The 44th Amendment (1978) answered it by replacing “internal disturbance” with “armed rebellion” and requiring the Cabinet’s written advice.
- Context is not confinement. Every thinker is a child of the times; Hobbes wrote amid civil war, yet no one calls Leviathan merely English.
Conclusion
Sabine is right that Machiavelli’s examples, urgency and religious posture were Italian and pre-Reformation. He is wrong about the substance. The autonomy of politics, the economy of force and the conflict of moralities are why Machiavelli is still read as a contemporary. His evidence is dated; his diagnosis is not.