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WorkNiccolò Machiavelli

The Prince

A disgraced Florentine official's handbook on taking and keeping power — written to win back a job, printed only after his death, and enough to make his name a curse.

by Niccolò Machiavelli331 passages held

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First published
(published posthumously)
Original language
Italian

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Overview

An unemployed man wrote The Prince. For fourteen years he had run the correspondence and diplomacy of the Florentine republic; when the Medici returned in 1512 he lost the post, and early in 1513 he was jailed and tortured on suspicion of a plot he had no part in. Released and banished to a small farm south of the city, he turned in a few months to a short book on how power is actually seized and held, and dedicated it to Lorenzo de' Medici — the family that had ruined him — in the open hope of employment. The book cuts the question of how to rule away from the question of how to be good. A prince who means to survive, Machiavelli writes, must be willing to set goodness aside when necessity demands, be feared rather than loved if he cannot be both, keep faith only while it serves him, and grasp that fortune favours the man bold enough to seize her. None of this appeared in his lifetime. The Prince circulated in manuscript and reached print only in 1532, five years after his death; in 1559 the Church placed it on the Index of Forbidden Books. Out of it came an adjective and a stage villain — the grinning Machiavel of the Elizabethan theatre, and the devil folklore nicknamed Old Nick.

Key concepts

What does Machiavelli mean by virtù?

Not moral virtue but the force, skill, boldness and adaptability that let a ruler shape events and hold power. A prince with virtù reads necessity, acts decisively and imposes his own form on circumstance rather than drifting with it. It stands in tension with fortune: virtù is the part of outcomes a man can command, and Machiavelli measures rulers by how much of chance their ability manages to master.

What is fortuna and how much does it govern?

Fortuna is the power of chance and circumstance over human affairs. Machiavelli famously estimates that fortune governs about half of what we do and leaves the other half to our own agency, and he pictures her as a river that floods when unprepared for but can be channelled by dikes built in advance. She favours the bold, which is why he urges the prince to seize opportunity rather than wait on events.

Is it better for a prince to be feared or loved?

Feared, if he cannot be both — because love depends on a bond of obligation that self-interested men break when it suits them, while fear rests on a dread of punishment that holds. But Machiavelli adds a crucial limit: the prince must avoid being hated, which he risks by seizing his subjects' property or women. Fear secures rule; hatred destroys it.

What is the 'effectual truth' Machiavelli claims to seek?

It is his method: to describe how men and rulers actually behave rather than imagined republics and ideal princes that have never existed. By taking his stand on the real rather than the ought, he cuts the question of holding power away from the question of being good. This realism is what makes The Prince read as a science of power stripped of the moral counsel that filled earlier advice books.

How does The Prince relate to the Discourses on Livy?

They are companion works with opposite reputations. The Prince advises a single ruler on seizing and holding a state, while the Discourses defend self-governing republics and popular liberty. Written at nearly the same time, the pair opens the enduring puzzle of Machiavelli's real politics — Rousseau even read The Prince as a trap laid for princes by a secret republican. Reading one against the other complicates any simple verdict of tyrant's handbook.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Ruling cut loose from being good

What should a ruler do when the thing that keeps him in power is exactly the thing a good man may not do? Machiavelli answers by prying politics apart from morality and refusing to sew them back.

Machiavelli takes his stand on how men actually live rather than on how they ought to, and concludes that a prince who means to survive must learn to be able not to be good, using cruelty and faith-breaking when necessity demands. He is not praising evil; he is denying that private virtue and successful rule are the same skill, and insisting the ruler who follows the moralists into ruin serves no one. It is the move that earned him an adjective and a place on the Index — and the reason his book still reads as a scandal five centuries on.

  • governance
  • statecraft
  • political realism
  • political ethics
  • human nature
  • authority
  • political legitimacy
  • sovereignty
  • power

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Virtue against fortune

How much of a ruler's fate is his own doing and how much is luck he cannot govern? Machiavelli splits the difference, and tells the prince which half he can seize.

Fortune, Machiavelli writes, governs perhaps half of what we do and leaves the other half to us — and she favours the man bold enough to seize her rather than wait. Virtù is not moral goodness but the force, skill and readiness to act that lets a prince impose form on circumstance and stand when luck turns. The prudent ruler builds defences in calm weather against the floods that will come. Against any view that leaves outcomes to providence or destiny, Machiavelli hands agency back to the actor, while conceding that even the ablest can be undone by a fortune he did not make.

  • fortune
  • virtue
  • prudence
  • agency
  • contingency
  • political strategy
  • political agency
  • leadership
  • military power

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Feared rather than loved

If a ruler cannot be both loved and feared, which should he choose — and how much of his power lives in what people merely believe about him? Machiavelli's answers are cold and exact.

Love is held by a bond of obligation that men, being self-interested, break whenever it suits them; fear is held by a dread of punishment that never lets go, so a prince who cannot have both is safer feared — provided he avoids being hated. Machiavelli treats reputation as a working instrument: the prince need not have every virtue but must seem to, keeping faith while it serves and setting it aside without appearing to. Rule, on this account, is partly the management of appearances, and the ruler who understands his subjects' nature keeps his throne.

  • leadership
  • reputation
  • political psychology
  • loyalty
  • deception
  • political survival
  • human nature
  • political power

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Within this work

passages held
331
distinct concepts
525
by passages held, corpus-wide
#229

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “military power” and “political legitimacy”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 25 pairings. 85 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
military powerpolitical legitimacy10
deceptionpolitical violence7
fortunemilitary power7
military powerpolitical violence7
conquestpolitical legitimacy6
fortuneleadership6
conquestmilitary power5
conquestpolitical power5
leadershippolitical legitimacy5
leadershippolitical power5
fortunepolitical power4
leadershipmilitary power4
deceptionleadership3
deceptionmilitary power3
political legitimacypolitical power3
deceptionpolitical legitimacy2
fortunepolitical legitimacy2
leadershippolitical violence2
military powerpolitical power2
conquestfortune1
conquestpolitical violence1
deceptionpolitical power1
fortunepolitical violence1
political legitimacypolitical violence1
political powerpolitical violence1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

  1. 1503 Minor Political Writings (Scritti politici minori)

    Written on the job rather than for readers: the reports and memoranda of a working diplomat, most of them from before his fall in 1512.

     EN
  2. 1521 The Art of War (Dell'arte della guerra)

    A companion, in dialogue form, to the Discourses on Livy. Machiavelli had dedicated that book to Cosimo Rucellai and Zanobi Buondelmonti, and both reappear here as listeners while a soldier turns ancient military practice into a programme for a modern state.

     EN
  3. 1531 Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius

    Longer, later and far less read than The Prince, this republican commentary on Livy is the work that makes Machiavelli's real politics a genuine question. Published, like The Prince, only after he died.

     EN
  4. 1532 History of Florence (Istorie fiorentine)

    His last large work turns the questions of the Discourses on Livy on the past of his own city. Like The Prince and the Discourses, it reached print only after his death.

     EN
  5. 1532 The Prince you are here DEEN
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