Niccolò Machiavelli's work, The Prince, appears on the surface to follow the common genre of the "mirror for princes", a type of medieval and Renaissance genre of non-fiction that set out the virtues of the ideal ruler, giving instruction to the great and powerful on how to conduct themselves. The two most important models for the genre were classical, namely Isocrates' To Nicocles and Cicero's De officiis. The normal purpose of such treatises was...
Niccolò Machiavelli's work, The Prince, appears on the surface to follow the common genre of the "mirror for princes", a type of medieval and Renaissance genre of non-fiction that set out the virtues of the ideal ruler, giving instruction to the great and powerful on how to conduct themselves. The two most important models for the genre were classical, namely Isocrates' To Nicocles and Cicero's De officiis. The normal purpose of such treatises was twofold, first as a way to give moral advice and exhort the powerful to emulate the virtues of the ideal prince and second to flatter the rich and powerful in hopes of attracting patronage to the writer. Machiavelli had been a powerful figure in the Florentine Reupblic, but after the conquest by the Medici family was ousted from power and retired to his estate and concentrated on his writing. This treatise may have been intended to regain some of his lost political power and influence, as suggested by its dedication to Lorenzo di Medici.
Machiavelli's work is atypical of the genre of the mirror for princes, in that it treats virtue as something to be used only instrumentally as a way to seek power. He separates people into groups and evaluates their psychology primarily in terms of how likely or unlikely they are to be a threat to the power of the prince. His work is notable in that it sees people as motivated mainly by a desire for wealth and power rather than attracted to virtue for its own sake. Even religion, in the form of the Roman Catholic Church, is seen primarily as another form of political entity vying for dominion, in a way that blends what we now would call hard and soft power.
Machiavelli is, to a great degree, concerned with the wealthy and powerful who are potential rivals to the prince. He divides them into the weak, who are not significant threats, and the strong who are useful allies but also potentially serious rivals. He assumes that the weak can be controlled by fear, which acts on them more strongly than their desire for riches or power, but that the strong need to be watched more closely and bound by ties of strong self interest, weakened, or even murdered. Like Hobbes, with whom he is often compared, he has a generally low opinion of most people, describing human nature as “ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly, and covetous.”
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