The Concept of Virtue in Machiavelli’s The Prince

Most of the contemporary readers when hearing about Niccolo Machiavelli they think of a deceitful person who had spent most of his time on producing malicious contents which are harmful to normal people. In summary, Machiavelli was an Italian philosopher — according to Stanford Machiavelli never considered himself as a philosopher, but because of his qualities he can completely fit in philosophy (2005, Stanford) — and politician who born in 1469 in Florence, Italy who had authored one of the most influential books related to the modern politics: The Prince. The entire book is about principles of being a powerful prince. Basically, Machiavelli in The Prince explores various aspects of being a leader such as virtue. He used the Italian word virtue multiple times in his book. However, the definition of the Virtu in his book is a bit different from the cognate word virtue in English. Nevertheless, it is somehow related to the Virtue we all are already familiar with. According to Machiavelli’s political context, the word virtue comes to the scene not only for describing the traditional ethical sense but to signify the required skills, manners and morals for playing the role of a successful leader. In order to figure out what Machiavelli means by the word virtue, we have to take a deeper look at The Prince to notice when he used the term of virtue to illustrate persona and their actions. As Terence Ball mentioned: “There are, in Machiavelli’s view, at least two different concepts of virtue: one for private citizens, another for princes.” (1994, pp. 521). Machiavelli’s opinion of virtue for princes is completely steady with the merciless instructions determined in the Prince (Ball, 1994). My aim in this text is to clarify why the term of virtue is one of the main subjects in Machiavelli’s book, the Prince.

As the word Virtue is the main subject of our text we have to clarify the original meaning of it clearly. Overall, Virtu is amongst the most dialectical moral concepts that have no exact equivalent in the English language which is already clear for every researcher in the context of Machiavelli’s book (Ball, 1994). However, it seems the word has derived from Latin word Virtus which has almost the same meaning with the word that Machiavelli used in the Prince. However, it is not totally similar to the Latin word but at least same in one aspect. The word Virtus acquires from vir (man) but it should not be misunderstood as a similar to the ‘Human Being’. (Ball, 1994). Originally, Virtus assigns multiple personal qualities to a person such as honesty and justice. Basically, Machiavelli used the word virtue multiple times in his book to refer the total required qualities for being a powerful leader. However, other concepts of virtue exist as well. For instance, the Christian virtue is composed of a variety of qualifications like modesty and alms which almost every religion have encouraged people to have them. According to them, these are attitudes which every person despite any indicator could have. As Terence Ball mentioned: “The Christian concept of virtue, in other words, has no necessary with public or political life; is concerned primarily with private life and only tangentially, if at all, with the public realm.” (1994, pp. 525). Ultimately, Machiavelli’s virtue is some way separate from other concepts virtue. If we look deeper, the word virtue is the translation of the Greek word Aretè. To understand it better, the easier translation would be “role-related specific excellence”. (Ball, 1994). Aretè means the main feature of anyone or anything. For instance, the Aretè of a teacher would be a high level of skill in teaching or the Aretè of a dog could be loyalty. Machiavelli’s personal concept of virtue is different from other forms of virtue, although it can be observed that the word Aretè has the closest meaning to his concept of virtue. In other words, virtue in the Prince is the political edition of Aretè for Machiavelli. Now that the definition of Virtue is nearly explained, the question is who are some of the virtues leaders in Machiavelli’s belief? Machiavelli tried to add examples of rulers who were virtuous in the Prince. He has written fifty-three names of individuals to describe virtuous kings exactly. (Neal Wood, 1967). Some of them who specifically referred to as virtuous are Aemilius Paullus, Aeneus, and Agesilaus. When we look through the names and the way he talks about them, it is quite obvious that his heroes are mostly from ancient world before the great Roman empire. On the other hand, Neal Wood has done an analysis on the Prince to figure out what type of leaders lack virtue during their period of time. He mentioned that: “No man is absolutely virtuous, or without virtue, and somewhere between the two extremes is a range of varying degrees of virtue. That A is more virtuous than B but less so than C, does not necessarily signify that B, anymore than A, is without virtue.” (1967, pp. 163). As this text is quite short, I am not able to talk offside too much. Overall, Machiavelli has used the word virtue to explain qualities of a proper leader perfectly. But the question is, what are those qualities?

Machiavelli is known for his belief that the private life should not affect political behavior. Related to this, Sydney Angelo mentioned in his book Machiavelli: A Dissection that “Machiavelli has come to be particularly identified with the divorce political from private morality, with the doctrine of expediency in political action, and with the mode of justifying all political means on ground of reason of state, as do less to his uniqueness than to the dynamic way in which he expressed these ideas.” (1969, pp 191). He believes that a ruler should choose his priority based on the rights of the state. Depending on the situation a prince might make even a cruel decision as the necessity has no law. It is an old argumentative subject amongst politicians and philosophers that the leaders should close their eyes on their own interest oftentimes because of political survival. Machiavelli argues pessimistically about nature of being a ruler and needed virtues for saving the realm. Machiavelli describes men as unstable, egocentric, unfavorable, and weak about appearances. Also, because they only do good under restriction, it is better to be feared than to be loved. (Angelo, 1969). Naturally, he believes that people tend to be evil rather than being good. According to his belief, in different situations, the prince must be prepared to do anything in order to save his position such as lying, cheating somebody, making cruel decisions, murdering a court member or breaking treaties. But what is the reason that a prince should always be like this? Perhaps Machiavelli considers that being a leader, king or prince is a massive title. During the history, only a few people have become leaders. In other words, it’s a great fortune. Consequently, in order to save this title and the whole state, leaders should maintain it. However, things get clearer when we notice than offenses that a leader does are not the “natural and ordinary necessity” in the beginning of chapter three. (Major, 2017). Machiavelli has written in the mentioned chapter that the second necessity in political position “requires that one must always offend those over whom he becomes a new prince” (Prince, 3.8). Reading more accurately, it can be observed that this is a rhetorical passage that let the reader decide about it. Rafael Major, related to this passage writes: “This passage is kind of rhetorical sleight of hand-leading the reader to believe that a consequence of the necessity is itself the necessity”. (2017, pp. 176). Machiavelli then explained that the second natural and ordinary necessity should be something like self-defense. A leader most always is aware of enemies. He must always be one step forward if he wants to protect his position. It is somehow reasonable to behave similarly to the Machiavelli’s the Prince as a leader when the history has shown us that in the most of the court’s political corruption has happened.

To conclude, I assume that with the passage of time, the true meaning of Machiavelli in the Prince becomes obvious. As I mentioned before, the meaning of virtue is getting clearer as we look deeply into it. The total qualifications that a leader needs in different contexts mean virtue to Niccolo Machiavelli. In his belief, those features, virtues, sometimes make leaders do actions for state necessity. Whether it is a cruel action or kind. However, most of the time Machiavelli says that it’s better to be feared than to be loved when leaders cannot be both. From my point of view, subjects that Machiavelli has mentioned in the Prince are currently happening in several countries around the globe. Sometimes commonplace people do not want to believe the reality of something which is normally based on their emotions. But Machiavelli has written his book very realistic as the politics are in the group of most dangerous and hardest things in comparison with other positions.

References

Anglo, S. (1970). Machiavelli: a dissection. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.

Ball, T. (1984). III. The Picaresque Prince. Political Theory, 12(4), pp.521–536.

Machiavelli, N. (2000). Prince, The. South Bend: Infomotions, Inc. Major, R. (2007). A New Argument for Morality: Machiavelli and the Ancients. Political Research Quarterly, 60(2), pp.171–179.

Wood, N. (1967) Machiavelli’s Concept of Virtù Reconsidered, Political Studies, XV,, Issue 2, pp.159–172.

Nederman, C. (2017). Niccolò Machiavelli. [online] Plato.stanford.edu. Available at: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/machiavelli/ [Accessed 21 Aug. 2017].