Discuss the importance of Machiavelli in the history of political thought. Is it correct to say that Machiavelli’s theory is ‘narrowly local and narrowly dated’? (2007)
Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) marks the break between medieval and modern political thought. The Prince (written 1513, published 1532) and the Discourses on Livy (published 1531) moved the question from how a ruler should live to how power actually works. George H. Sabine (A History of Political Theory, 1937) nevertheless called his philosophy narrowly local and narrowly dated. His importance is foundational, and Sabine’s charge holds only for the surface of the theory.
Importance in the History of Political Thought
- Secularisation. Politics was released from theology and natural law. Religion became an instrument of state (civil religion) rather than its master, closing the medieval synthesis of Thomas Aquinas.
- Method. By preferring the effectual truth to imagined republics (Chapter XV) and reasoning from history on the premise of a constant human nature, he pioneered an empirical, inductive study of politics. This is why he is often called the father of modern political science.
- The modern state. His usage helped give lo stato its modern sense: an organised power over a territory, pursuing its own interest. Jean Bodin later turned this into sovereignty and Thomas Hobbes into obligation.
- Realism. E. H. Carr (The Twenty Years’ Crisis, 1939) called him the first important political realist. The is/ought break, human egoism and reason of state run through Hans J. Morgenthau to modern international relations.
- Republicanism. The Discourses praise the mixed constitution, a citizen militia and the tumults between nobles and plebs (I.4) as the source of Roman liberty. J. G. A. Pocock‘s The Machiavellian Moment (1975) traces this language to the American founding.
- Nationalism and revolution. Chapter XXVI’s call to free Italy made him a prophet of the Risorgimento. Antonio Gramsci recast The Prince as the Modern Prince, the party that forges a collective will.
Is the Charge Correct?
What holds. The remedies answer one crisis: the fall of the Florentine republic and the Medici return in 1512, the hope that a Medici redeemer would unify Italy, and the treatment of religion before the Reformation. His bleak view of human nature, as Sabine notes, mirrors a corrupt society.
What does not.
- Durable questions. Conflict between public necessity and private conscience, the tendency of states to expand and the corruption of republics over time recur wherever politics exists.
- Institutions. The Discourses (I.58) judge a people governed by law to be more prudent, more stable than a prince. B. R. Ambedkar made a kindred point to the Constituent Assembly on 25 November 1949: bhakti or hero-worship in politics is a sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship. A theory that speaks to a post-colonial democracy is hardly local.
- Continuous use. From Hobbes and James Harrington to Carr and Gramsci, readers in other centuries found in him the grammar of their own politics.
Conclusion
Sabine is correct about the materials: Machiavelli’s cases, urgency and religious posture belong to Renaissance Italy. He is incorrect about the significance. By separating the study of power from theology and asking how liberty survives in time, Machiavelli set the agenda of modern political thought.