Machiavelli, Nicollò - M. D. Petre (essay date 1917)
M. D. Petre (essay date 1917)
SOURCE: "Machiavelli and Modern Statecraft," in The Edinburgh Review, Vol. 226, No. 461, July, 1917, pp. 93–112.
[Below, Petre presents an overview of the main characteristics of Machiavelli's thoughts on dipolmacy and government as exhibited in The Prince.]
The work by which Nicholas Machiavelli is best known is Il Principe: a treatise popularly regarded as the standard manual of unscrupulous diplomacy. The word Machiavellism, like its counterpart Jesuitism, is a current term with a definite meaning: the former may be employed by an admirer of Machiavelli, as the latter by a lover of the Jesuits. It signifies a philosophy of pure expediency; the subordination of every moral and human consideration to the political needs of the hour.
The Prince is a work as characteristic of its author as any of the others; though we may add that it will be best understood by those to whom it is not the...
[The entire page is 8244 words long]
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