Niccolò Machiavelli’s posthumously published Discourses on Livy offers a more complete and sincere representation of his philosophy. Machiavelli is often unfairly judged by his Prince, which is probably responsible for the unfortunate adjective formed from his namesake: “Machiavellian” – a term used to describe unscrupulous, manipulative, narcissistic realpolitik. Once one follows up The Prince with his Discourses, one realizes that Machiavelli’s end is not merely to create a brutal statesman, but to create a civic society with strong institutions. A leader may need to break a few eggs to make the proverbial omelette, but the goal for Machiavelli is to create law-abiding, law-interpreting citizens who are capable of forging their own path. In this sense, the brutality of the prince serves as the birth pangs of a new republic built on what he sees as classical Roman values.
Hence, Machiavelli’s Discourses is a commentary on the first ten books of Titus Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita (“From the Founding of the City”), which narrates early Roman history. It is not an exegesis of Livy, but a work of political theory using the raw material of Roman history as a case study. Machiavelli utilizes Livy’s stories to explore the rise and fall of republics. The Discourses counterbalances The Prince’s focus on the ruler’s authority by giving attention to the needs of the citizenry. Machiavelli affirms that a people, collectively, are “more prudent, more stable, and of better judgment than a prince.”[1] He further states that a republic cannot retain stability when “great inequality prevails”.[2] He says “it appears that in governing a multitude, it is better to be humane rather than proud, merciful rather than cruel.”[3]
Machiavelli and Religion
However, Machiavelli writes from an almost post-Christian perspective, as God and Christian piety are not factors for him in the rise and fall of nations. The Renaissance was a time when the ancients were being rediscovered, and therein, thinkers like Machiavelli attempted to find the antidote to Europe’s stagnation and division. In his preface, Machiavelli notes the political “weakness” and “idleness” that Christian education has produced.[4] Later, he argues that the Church was too weak to keep Italy united, but too strong for Italy to come under the auspices of another power.[5] This latter problem may have been more pronounced in Italy at that point in time. But Machiavelli’s view on Christian moralism is encapsulated in his concept of virtù. He was not interested in “virtue” – good and evil – as much as he was interested in virtù, which refers to “any quality of character that enabled you to take political power or to hold on to it; in short, a winning trait.”[6] After all, for Machiavelli, Christianity glorifies humility, contemplation, abjectness, patience, and Paradise, while the classics valued strength, glory, and activity.[7]
Already, in this framing, there is the assumption that Europe’s ills were due to moralist politics, that the way out of it was through a more pragmatic politics, and that the ancients had a better counterpoise. While Christianity at its core is meek, medieval Christendom produced the crusades, the Templars, the Normans, and Teutonic Knights. Christendom still waged wars, punished criminals, maintained hierarchies, and practiced shrewd politics. These were not soft societies; and one does not need to resort to critiques of Christian education to properly diagnose the problems of sixteenth century Italy. Foreign interference in Italy, on the part of France and Spain for example, had nothing to do with Christian piety. Christianity does not explain why Florence falls while Spain rises.
Machiavelli, of course, is not averse to religion – quite the contrary, he lauds the idea of a state religion and acknowledges Numa’s formalization of the Roman religion. It is reported that, when Romulus, the founder of Rome, died, the senators governed in rotation. This was unpopular with the people, and so the Senate decided to choose a new king. Numa, a Sabine, was selected by the Senate and ratified by the people. Before assuming power, though, Numa insisted on waiting for divine approval. He went through the ritual of taking the auspices, and a priest (augur) interpreted signs in the sky as an approval of Numa’s authority. In doing this, Numa sought religious legitimacy and not just earthly validation. Numa even claimed (“pretended”) to be “intimate with a nymph who counseled him on what he had to counsel the people.”[8] But religion was not just ceremonial for Numa – it was a tool to civilize a violent people. Machiavelli writes, “As [Numa] found a very ferocious people and wished to reduce it to civil obedience with the arts of peace, he turned to religion as a thing altogether necessary if he wished to maintain a civilization”.[9] On the same page, Machiavelli notes that Roman citizens became Godfearing, and they were more averse to breaking religious oaths than laws. Numa’s contribution was so vital that, according to Machiavelli, it supersedes Romulus’, “for where there is religion, arms can easily be introduced, and where there are arms and not religion, the latter can be introduced only with difficulty.”[10]
Of course, Machiavelli did not believe that the Roman religion was theologically true. He valued it insofar as it was a tool of political order. If religion could civilize a savage people, unite them in rites and ceremonies, and make them law-abiding, then it fulfills a vital political function – so long that the religion does not make them weak, disunited, and abject. In this area (and many others) Machiavelli is quite utilitarian. Machiavelli is still after “the good life”, which for him would be the safety, security, and prosperity of the republic.
Machiavelli, Political Science, and Political Art
Machiavelli is called the founder of modern political science because he set himself to study politics as it actually operates, and not necessarily as it ought to operate. Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas and others treated politics as a branch of ethics, and their concern was achieving a politics that cultivates virtue. Machiavelli is interested in how rulers gain power, how they keep it, why states collapse, and what patterns repeat throughout history. He tries to introduce a value-neutral analysis. This is a shift from a moral philosophy to an empirical analysis of power. Modernity is marked by its emphasis on the empirical, and its skepticism toward traditional forms of rationality and morality. Modern thinkers use Machiavelli as a starting point for his proto-Hobbesian, proto-realist views. While political philosopher Leo Strauss considered Machiavelli to be “immoral and irreligious” and even a “teacher of evil”,[11] he may be more accurately described as amoral on a micro level, and seeking “the greater good” of the republic on a macro level. Amorality, however, on any level, is, ultimately, immoral.
While Machiavelli undoubtedly veered in the empiricist direction, scholars have noted that Machiavelli was not necessarily offering a neutral, detached, scientific analysis of politics. Quentin Skinner, one of the founders of the Cambridge School of the history of political thought, argues that Machiavelli was operating as a rhetorical strategist inside a rhetorical culture. [12] Skinner argues that Machiavelli writes in the context of Renaissance humanist debates that were shaped by the crises of his time. J. G. A. Pocock, one of the most respected Machiavelli scholars, argues that Machiavelli’s writings in this period were part of a greater discourse on the “implications and contradictions inherent in civic humanism.”[13] Pocock says that Machiavelli was writing in a moment when the republic was “seen as confronting its own temporal finitude, as attempting to remain morally and politically stable in a stream of irrational events”.[14] Thus, Machiavelli writes in an almost polemical context, and not in a purely scientific one.
Human Nature and Institutions
Machiavelli operates under the assumption that men are naturally selfish, envious, and hostile. He writes, “men are more prone to evil than to good”, [15] and “men never work any good unless through necessity.”[16] Perhaps this view was due to his Christian background, perhaps he learned this from the classics (Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War is characterized by power dynamics, fear, honour, and personal interest overcoming morals), or perhaps this was his lived experience in a divided Italy. This view was not necessarily the consensus of the classics, as Aristotle, Cicero, and the Stoics had more optimistic views on human nature. What Machiavelli does, however, is repurpose those vices for the good of the republic.
Where Aristotle speaks of kingdoms, aristocracies, and polities having the potential to degrade from their ideal states into tyrannies, oligarchies, and democracies, Machiavelli sees that a state can oscillate from one to the other at any time.[17] For Machiavelli, because of human evil, we cannot count on these regimes to never collapse into their vicious forms. His solution – which he takes from Livy – is mixed government – republicanism – because a republic is like all three regimes in one: consuls are like kings, the senate is like the few, and the tribunes are like the many.[18] These institutions work both together and against each other (counting on human selfishness and envy to function as a check on each other). This way, no one office can tyrannize over another. This is a kind of harmony through conflict, where the health of the state depends on an equilibrium between competing “humours”. Machiavelli writes, “I say that to me it appears that those who damn the tumults between the nobles and the plebs blame those things that were the first cause of keeping Rome free … in every republic are two diverse humours, that of the people and that of the great, and that all the laws that are made in favour of freedom arise from their disunion, as can easily be seen to have occurred in Rome.”[19]
This emphasis on institutions provides a stability to a nation that can outlast the mortality and the flaws of the individual. Julius Caesar, a man who a neophyte may assume was “Machiavellian”, was in fact considered “detestable” or “blameworthy” in the Discourses for spoiling Rome entirely [20] by shifting power away from the Senate. When institutions are ruined, and power becomes concentrated in an individual and a hereditary dictatorship, the state goes back into the risky hands of Fortuna.
Armed Prophets
For Machiavelli, there are four timeless heroes for statesmen to look up to: Romulus, Theseus, Cyrus, and Moses.[21] Romulus and his brother Remus were said to be outcasts raised by wolves. As infants reared by a predator, they learned to be half man and half beast, and they set out to unite the warring tribes of Rome. Romulus then kills Remus, because he believed that a budding community could not succeed in building its foundation with two leaders. “When the deed accuses him, the effect excuses him”, writes Machiavelli.[22] Since a republic is founded by an unfettered statesmen, the problem for Machiavelli is that the ambitious and genius prince can always be no more than a barbaric madman, and he offers no way to distinguish one from the other.
Machiavelli only mentions Muhammad ﷺ briefly in The Florentine History (1.9, 1.19), but some modern scholars connected his “armed prophet” from The Prince to Muhammad ﷺ. Norman O. Brown, who was mentored by Isaiah Berlin, writes that “Muhammad is the supreme example of the Prophet Armed.”[23] While he literally was an armed prophet, Muhammad ﷺ does not totally fit into Machiavellian philosophy: he was a moralist and not a shrewd utilitarian, he moved away from pagan ideals and not toward them, he did not gain a reputation for brutality, he believed human nature was good in disposition, and there is no evidence that he did not sincerely believe in the religion he was teaching. Even modern secular historians like William Montgomery Watt dismissed that Muhammad ﷺ was a conscious, deliberate deceiver. In some respects, it can be said that Muhammad ﷺ balances what Machiavelli sees as Christian humility versus Roman vitality, as well as the optimism of Aristotle and the pessimism of Thucydides. It can also be said that Muhammad ﷺ must have understood realpolitik if he was able to form a state and become the preeminent power in Arabia by the end of his life.
Muslims would welcome a parallel between Moses and Muhammad ﷺ; after all, Muhammad ﷺ is often identified as “the prophet like unto Moses” in Deuteronomy 18:18. Both men were raised in nobility yet away from their parents, both men were commissioned by God on a mountain at the age of forty, both men were lawgivers, both men underwent an exodus, both men were accepted by their respective peoples, and both men triumphed over their powerful enemies. Moses would never reach the Promised Land, but Muhammad ﷺ conquered Mecca.
Machiavelli acknowledges that Moses acted under divine guidance, but he said that his situation was nevertheless similar to the other three heroes.[24] Moses found an enslaved and oppressed people who needed a leader; and he could not “have got people to respect their new laws for long if [he] hadn’t possessed armed force.”[25] Muhammad ﷺ, likewise, came to a disunited, impoverished, and ignorant people, and in the latter part of his mission, he was what Machiavelli would call an “armed prophet” – for “all unarmed prophets have been destroyed”.[26]
Islamic Institutions of Power
For Machiavelli’s purposes, we can consider the institutions that Moses and Muhammad ﷺ left behind. Both essentially made slaves into citizens. Moses established a legal tradition (Torah was the Law), a tiered judiciary (Exodus 18:21), a hereditary priesthood (kohanim), a ceremonial institution (the Tabernacle, sacrifices, calendar events), and a political identity as a covenantal nation. Muhammad ﷺ likewise established a legal and judicial tradition (shari’a, qadis), caliphal succession, a loosely defined system of consultation (shura), a ritual order (the Kaaba, salat, fasting, Hajj, holidays), and a collective socio-political and religious identity (the Umma).
The exact nature of the caliphate is a matter of disagreement among Muslims. Shia Muslims believe in a system of designatory succession (nass) in the form of an Imamate. The Imam in this model is both the political and spiritual leader of the Umma. He is the ultimate authority in the interpretation of the Quran, the prophetic sayings, and the shari’a. However, we see in the example of Ali, the shield, and the Christian man that Ali ultimately submitted to the ruling of the judge – showing that the Imam, despite his status, is not a totalitarian ruler that overrides the decisions of courts. We also see in the example of Hasan that the Imam can abdicate his political rule (in practical terms) if the situation calls for it (though he remains the rightful Imam). Even in this Imami model, though, there were just twelve successive Imams, the last of whom went into seclusion in 874 AD. Therefore, Shia Muslims still find themselves in the precarious position as Sunni Muslims – who ought to be the ruler, how is the ruler chosen, and what is his exact remit of authority? In Sunni Islam, Abu Bakr was said to have been chosen by the community (with some prominent objections), but his successor ‘Umar was chosen by him, and ‘Umar’s successor ‘Uthman was chosen by way of a shura appointed by ‘Umar, and ‘Ali was urged by the Medinans to assume political leadership after the assassination of ‘Uthman (again, with some prominent objections).
There were other political models proposed immediately after the passing of Muhammad ﷺ. Since Muhammad ﷺ was a prophet, there was a ready-made model of prophetic leadership that was taken advantage of by prophet-claimants like Musaylama b. Habib, Saja bt. al-Harith, and Tulayha b. Khuwaylid. The Ansar, on the other hand, met at the courtyard (saqifa) of Banu Sa’ida with the intention of choosing a leader for the Ansar specifically. Abbas b. ‘Abd al-Mutallib may have wanted some sort of familial or tribal succession. The Sunni caliphal model won out, but not without conflict throughout the Arabian Peninsula, and probably not without extensive theological debate.
The shura is another vague entity. The Quran endorses consultation in general (42:38, 3:159), and the Prophet consulted his companions in matters like warfare (prior to Badr and Uhud, for example). Besides this, we do not see a formal, fixed institution outside of a flexible political practice. Saqifa was not quite shura, because it was primarily between a small group of Ansar, and it resembled an emergency meeting rather than a controlled political process. ‘Umar’s use of shura was more structured, as he appointed six companions to choose a caliphal successor; though this was another emergency circumstance, as the shura was convened upon ‘Umar’s assassination. Amidst civil wars and imperial dynasties, political reality overrode consultative idealism, and real shura largely disappeared as a governing mechanism.
Since the twentieth century, some post-colonial Muslim thinkers have adapted the concept of shura to notions of representative government. For them, the shura becomes an institution like a parliament or senate – elected or appointed – that acts as a check on the leader. This is in line with Machiavelli’s mixed government; but it is unclear if this is just a Western institution imported and given a Muslim name.
The ambiguity of caliphate (or amirate) and shura as institutions of power in the Prophet’s absence is a serious challenge. Historically, the vacuum created by this ambiguity has been filled by autocratic dynasties. One possibility is that the Prophet left clear institutions behind, but his instructions were left unheeded and forgotten. Another possibility is that he left the details of these institutions to his followers. If the latter, then perhaps the ambiguity was intentional – perhaps he wanted to leave behind principles rather than structures, which could risk being too rigid. Lastly, perhaps the Prophet established institutions that were not scalable to imperial governance.
While institutions can weather the storm of personal whims, even the most robust institutions are prone to decay and sabotage. Bureaucracies often become a playground for elites and technocrats, and in some cases, they can be co-opted by outside powers. Even a hegemon like the United States has had its bureaucracies lobbied, paid off, and infiltrated, sometimes by foreign, less powerful governments. Institutions are often disconnected from the populace, especially in representative democracies. As a dear friend Anwit Shahi told me, “The institutions of governance are like machines, and no matter how well-designed and efficient, in the hands of someone unfit to run them, they will operate ineffectively. It is the ethos of the men working those machines, and not merely the ethics of those institution-machines, which matters. This is somewhere only Muhammadan morality, and not Machiavellian amorality, can help.”
Conclusions
Machiavelli tries to repurpose human greed and selfishness into a checks-and-balances mechanism between institutions. However, greed and selfishness can also cause intra-institutional division, and different institutions can collude in each other’s misdeeds. Common goals and identities can blur or transcend the artificial divisions between institutions. It also goes without saying that greed and selfishness can cause great damage to society, and so they must be mitigated.
Machiavelli’s political thought, when read through the Discourses rather than The Prince alone, reveals a theorist deeply concerned with the long-term health of civic life and institutional stability rather than merely the effectiveness of rulers. His realism about human nature, power, and conflict leads him not to cynicism for its own sake, but to an attempt to design political structures capable of channeling vice into order and preserving liberty through institutional balance. Yet this institutional optimism is tempered by the recognition that no structure can fully overcome the moral character of those who operate it.
[1] Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, Book 1, Chapter 58, pp. 117 https://identityhunters.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/niccolo-machiavelli-discourses-of-livy.pdf
[2] Ibid, Book 1, Chapter 55, pp. 113. https://identityhunters.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/niccolo-machiavelli-discourses-of-livy.pdf
[3] Ibid, Book 3, Chapter 19, pp. 260. https://identityhunters.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/niccolo-machiavelli-discourses-of-livy.pdf
[4] Ibid, Book 1, Preface, pp. 6. https://identityhunters.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/niccolo-machiavelli-discourses-of-livy.pdf
[5] Ibid, Book 1, Chapter 12, pp. 37-38.
[6] Machiavelli, The Prince, Translator’s Note, pp. xli. https://apeiron.iulm.it/retrieve/handle/10808/4129/46589/Machiavelli%2C%20The%20Prince.pdf
[7] Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, Book 2, Chapter 2, pp. 131-132. https://identityhunters.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/niccolo-machiavelli-discourses-of-livy.pdf
[8] Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, Book 1, Chapter 11, pp. 35. https://identityhunters.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/niccolo-machiavelli-discourses-of-livy.pdf
[9] Ibid, Book 1, Chapter 11, pp. 34. https://identityhunters.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/niccolo-machiavelli-discourses-of-livy.pdf
[10] Ibid, Book 1, Chapter 11, pp. 35. https://identityhunters.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/niccolo-machiavelli-discourses-of-livy.pdf
[11] Leo Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli, pp. 9, 12.
[12] Marco Guena, “Skinner, pre-humanist rhetorical culture and Machiavelli”, Rethinking the Foundations of Modern Political Thought, pp. 54-55.
[13] J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment, pp. 86.
[14] Ibid, pp. viii
[15] Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, Book 1, Chapter 9, pp. 29 https://identityhunters.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/niccolo-machiavelli-discourses-of-livy.pdf
[16] Ibid, Book 1, Chapter 3, pp. 15, https://identityhunters.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/niccolo-machiavelli-discourses-of-livy.pdf
[17] Ibid, Book 1, Chapter 2, pp. 11-14 https://identityhunters.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/niccolo-machiavelli-discourses-of-livy.pdf
[18] Ibid, Book 1, Chapter 2, pp. 14 https://identityhunters.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/niccolo-machiavelli-discourses-of-livy.pdf
[19] Ibid, Book 1, Chapter 4, pp. 16 https://identityhunters.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/niccolo-machiavelli-discourses-of-livy.pdf
[20] Ibid, Book 1, Chapter 10, pp. 32-33 https://identityhunters.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/niccolo-machiavelli-discourses-of-livy.pdf
[21] Machiavelli, The Prince, Chapter 6, pp. 22 https://apeiron.iulm.it/retrieve/handle/10808/4129/46589/Machiavelli%2C%20The%20Prince.pdf
[22] Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, Book 1, Chapter 9, pp. 29 https://identityhunters.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/niccolo-machiavelli-discourses-of-livy.pdf
[23] Norman O. Brown, “Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Intent”, Explorations, pp. 92. https://democracyjournalarchive.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/brown_universal-history-with-a-cosmopolitan-intent-democracy-1-1_-jan-1981.pdf
[24] Machiavelli, The Prince, Chapter 6, pp. 22 https://apeiron.iulm.it/retrieve/handle/10808/4129/46589/Machiavelli%2C%20The%20Prince.pdf
[25] Ibid, Chapter 6, pp. 22-23. https://apeiron.iulm.it/retrieve/handle/10808/4129/46589/Machiavelli%2C%20The%20Prince.pdf
[26] Machiavelli, The Prince, Translated by James B. Atkinson, pp. 273.
