Comment: Power is an end in itself and he (Machiavelli) inquires into the means that are best suited to acquire, retain and expand power, thus separates power from morality, ethics, religion and metaphysics. (Ebenstein on Machiavelli) (2000)
The judgement comes from William Ebenstein‘s introduction to Niccolò Machiavelli in Great Political Thinkers: Plato to the Present (1951), where Machiavelli emerges as treating the state as a value in its own right. It is the classic statement of the power reading: Machiavelli as founder of the autonomy of politics. The reading describes The Prince (1513) exactly but mistakes a method for his whole philosophy.
What the Statement Claims
- Power without a telos. For Aristotle the state exists for the good life; for Thomas Aquinas the ruler serves natural law and salvation. Machiavelli asks only how a state is acquired, kept and enlarged.
- A science of means. His counsel is hypothetical: if you hold a new principality, then destroy the old ruling family, reside there, plant colonies.
- Four separations. From morality: the prince must learn how not to be good (Chapter XV). From ethics: the classical virtues of Marcus Tullius Cicero‘s De Officiis are dropped for results; one judges by the result (Chapter XVIII). From religion: faith is needed only in appearance. From metaphysics: no divine order or natural law, only virtù contending with fortuna.
The Case for Ebenstein
- Textual support. Cesare Borgia‘s use and public killing of Remirro de Orco (Chapter VII) is praised as policy, not condemned as crime.
- Benedetto Croce called this the discovery of a politics beyond moral good and evil, with laws that cannot be exorcised by holy water.
- Legacy. Reason of state (Friedrich Meinecke, 1924), Thomas Hobbes‘s sovereign, and Hans J. Morgenthau‘s interest defined in terms of power (Politics Among Nations) all descend from this separation.
Where the Reading Overreaches
- Power is not the last end. In the Discourses on Livy power serves vivere libero, civic glory and the common good; Chapter XXVI of The Prince makes it serve Italy’s liberation.
- Limits within the doctrine. Avoid hatred, spare subjects’ property and women, use cruelty well (swiftly, then stop). Pure power-maximisation would need none of these.
- Two moralities, not none. Isaiah Berlin (“The Originality of Machiavelli”, 1972) argues that he set pagan civic virtue against Christian ethics: one can save one’s soul or serve a great state, but not always both at once.
- Religion subordinated, not separated. The Discourses praise Roman civil religion as the cement of obedience and arms.
- The price if true. A theory with no end beyond power cannot condemn tyranny, which is why Leo Strauss (Thoughts on Machiavelli, 1958) called him a teacher of evil.
The Indian Perspective
Kautilya was as unsentimental about danda, yet kept power within rajadharma and the king’s duty to his subjects’ welfare. Mohandas K. Gandhi rejected the separation outright: means and ends are seed and tree. Indian constitutional history tested it: ADM Jabalpur (1976) accepted reason of state during the Emergency, and K. S. Puttaswamy (2017) expressly overruled it.
Conclusion
Ebenstein correctly identifies Machiavelli’s methodological revolution: politics studied as the management of power on its own terms. As a verdict on his values, it is too narrow. Power was the means to a free and secure republic, and the separation from morality was really a clash between two moralities.