Remembering the modern Western world's first political scientist
Born 557 years ago, Niccolò Machiavelli continues to influence Western political thought, and his political theories continue to be a source of fascination and an object of scorn in equal measures. You can find many works by him and about him in the Penn Libraries collections.
But since my intent is to write something useful to whoever understands it, it has appeared to me more fitting to go directly to the effectual truth of the thing than to the imagination of it.
—The Prince by Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli
May 3, 2026, marked the 557th anniversary of the birth of Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli (1469-1527), the Florentine diplomat, politician, philosopher, and playwright of the Italian Renaissance. Along with ancient Greek historian Thucydides and 17th century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, most political scholars acknowledge Machiavelli as one of the most historically significant political theorists of the Western realist tradition. Often referred to as the father of modern political science, Machiavelli continues to influence Western political thought well into the 21st century, and his political theories continue to be a source of fascination and an object of scorn in equal measures.
Machiavelli's life and times
During Machiavelli's experiences as a diplomat during the Italian Wars (1494-1559), the Italian peninsula was marked by crises of repeated foreign invasions and civil unrest. He saw the foreign domination of Italy by a succession of European princes who ushered in a brutal historical period of invasions, occupations, pillages of Italian towns, and the mass rape and murder of thousands of Italian civilians. Brought about initially by the French in their struggle with Spain for control over Italy, the situation was worsened by the shifting alliances of successive Popes, such as Pope Alexander VI, and numerous Italian princes, including Alexander VI's son, Cesare Borgia.
As Secretary to the Second Chancery and the Ten of War of the Florentine Republic (1498-1512), Machiavelli's diplomatic missions to the courts of Renaissance Europe shaped his political view that only a strong political leader could save the Florentine Republic. His stated motivation was to lay down new foundations of political thought modeled on the ancient Roman Republic and develop new modes and orders to support his vision of a unified Italy free from foreign domination.
The Prince and other writings
Machiavelli is well-known for writing some of the most discussed and debated works of political history, including Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius, The Art of War, and Florentine Histories. However, he is primarily remembered as the author of a singular major work, The Prince, which provides a vivid and sharply focused picture of the nature of real politics as it is actually practiced. Informally circulated among his literary and diplomatic friends before its official posthumous publication, The Prince is universally regarded as a political classic, turning Machiavelli into one of history's most notable and notorious political figures. The infamy largely results from his advice to political rulers to disregard Christian values and idealized humanist ethics grounded in the Aristotelian political theory that moral virtue should be the basis for political action. This anti-religious call for ruthless politics elicited powerful reactions from readers of The Prince.
Most readers of The Prince are likely familiar with Machiavelli's generalized description of men as "ungrateful, fickle, pretenders and dissemblers, evaders of danger, eager for gain." Men (and a few women such as Caterina Sforza) were driven primarily by self-interest, ego, avarice, and most importantly, ambition. Machiavelli's pragmatic, realistic political beliefs were based on the notion that political success and survival lay in the ability of a ruler to recognize the wickedness inherent in human nature and know how to "not be good" according to necessity in the service of the state.
Machiavelli was also a poet, and his most vivid description of man's character is expressed in his poem "Tercets on Ambition," written in a letter addressed to his colleague, the Gonfalonier (chief magistrate) of Florence, Luigi Guicciardini. Machiavelli describes the vices of man after the fall of Adam:
Oh, human spirit insatiable, arrogant, crafty, and shifting, and above all else malignant, iniquitous, violent, and savage, because through your longing so ambitious, the first violent death was seen in the world, and the first grass red with blood! Since this evil seed is now mature, since evil's cause is multiplied, there is no reason for men to repent of doing evil.
Uniquely for his time, Machiavelli purposefully chose to communicate his thoughts with straightforward, concise, and provocative Italian (not Latin) prose meant to convey a message that politics should be understood and evaluated from a perspective of blunt reality. As he describes in the Dedicatory Letter of The Prince:
I have not ornamented this work, nor filled it with fulsome phrases nor with pompous and magnificent words, nor with any blandishment or superfluous ornament whatever, with which it is customary for many to describe and adorn their things.
A 'teacher of evil' or a 'father of revolution'?
In the diverse scholarly reviews of his work, Machiavelli has been described as an author of tyranny (Innocent Gentillet), a teacher of evil (Leo Strauss), the first modern political scientist (Harvey Mansfield), the first philosopher of the modern state (Philip Bobbitt), the spiritual father of revolution (Hannah Arendt), a Florentine patriot and prophet of emancipation (Maurizio Viroli), and an author of political satire and subterfuge (Jean-Jacques Rousseau).
Each of these viewpoints represents only a fraction of the varied academic perspectives on Machiavelli's political thought. In fact, the Penn Libraries house over 700 works alone about Machiavelli and his theories of government and political leadership. These works provide a wide range of scholarly analyses and critiques of his ideas, both in support of his theories as well as from an anti-Machiavellian perspective. Nonetheless, scholars continue to dispute both the purpose and significance of his contribution to Western political theory.
While the practical aspect of Machiavelli's theories undoubtedly qualifies him as a political thinker of the highest order, his anecdotal stories and generalized descriptions are not sufficient to establish evidence of the legitimacy of his political claims. Scholars also criticize his assumptions about human nature, his oversimplification of political events, and his misinterpretations of the historical record. Some of these criticisms are appropriate. However, like many of history's most significant political thinkers, the advent of new knowledge, over time, reveals errors in the assumptions, reasonings, and conclusions of all political theories.
Machiavelli and the Founding Fathers
Several of the founding fathers of the U.S. are believed to have read and been heavily influenced by the works of Machiavelli. This includes Penn's founder, Benjamin Franklin, who makes a direct reference to The Prince in his brochure The Interest of Great Britain Considered, With Regard to her Colonies, And the Acquisitions of Canada and Guadaloupe. Discussing his views on Great Britain's military conquest of New France during the French and Indian War, Franklin remarks:
To this I shall only add the observation of Machiavel, in his Prince, that a government seldom long preserves its dominion over those who are foreigners to it; who on the other hand fall with great ease, and continue inseparably annex'd to the government of their own nation, which he proves by the fate of the English conquests in France.
Antonio Pace, author of Benjamin Franklin in Italy, also noted that Franklin's political satire, Rules by Which a Great Empire May Be Reduced to a Small One, published in the Public Advertiser on September 11, 1773, was a parody of The Prince in concept, tone, and detail.
A man of contradictions
As a visionary who "departs from the orders of others," Machiavelli's writings reveal a host of paradoxes, inconsistencies, and ambiguities. These contradictions have been debated in hundreds of books and academic articles too numerous to cite. What we do know is that Machiavelli recognized his own contradictory nature and famously wrote to his friend Francesco Guicciardini:
For a long time, I have not said what I believed, nor do I ever believe what I say, and if indeed I happen to tell the truth, I hide it among so many lies that it is hard to find.
One could say that interpreting Machiavelli's intent with his writings rests primarily on accepting his contradictions. His theories were innovative yet drawn from antiquity, polemical yet persuasive, amoral yet rational, philosophical yet intelligible to most readers. However, an epistemic paradox that a virtuous political leader with good intentions must "learn how not to be good" remains the most controversial feature of his political thinking.
Works by Machiavelli
- "Machiavelli to Guicciardini, May 17, 1521." In Machiavelli: The Chief Works and Others: Volume 3. Edited and translated by Allan H. Gilbert. Vol. 3. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press Books, 1965.
- Machiavelli, Niccolò. Art of War, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.
- Machiavelli, Niccolò. "Letter No. 102 Niccolò Machiavelli to Francesco Vittori, April 9, 1513." In The Letters of Machiavelli. Edited by Allan H. Gilbert. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1961.
- Machiavelli, Niccolò The Prince. Translated by Harvey Mansfield. 2nd ed. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1998.
- Machiavelli, Niccolò, and Peter Constantine. The Essential Writings of Machiavelli. New York: Modern Library, 2007.
- Machiavelli, Niccolo, and Allan Gilbert. "The History of Florence." In Machiavelli: The Chief Works and Others. Vol. 3. vol. 3. Durham, United States: Duke University Press, 1989.
- Machiavelli, Niccolò, Harvey Claflin Mansfield, and Nathan Tarcov. Discourses on Livy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.
Selected works about Machiavelli
- Bobbitt, Philip. The Garments of Court and Palace: Machiavelli and the World That He Made. New York: Grove Press, 2013.
- Berlin, Isaiah. Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas. New York: Viking Press, 1980.
- Black, Robert. "Machiavelli, Servant of the Florentine Republic." In Machiavelli and Republicanism. Edited by Gisela Bock, Maurizio Viroli, and Quentin Skinner. Ideas in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
- Gentillet, Innocent. Anti-Machiavel: A Discourse Upon the Means of Well Governing. Translated by Ryan Murtha and Simon Patrick. Eugene, Oregon: Resource Publications, 2018.
- Strauss, Leo. Thoughts on Machiavelli. Free Press, 1958.
- Viroli, Maurizio. Redeeming "The Prince": The Meaning of Machiavelli's Masterpiece. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014.
Date
May 6, 2026