MACHIAVELLISM. – The term “m.”, now long established in common usage and included in political lexicons, has prompted curious investigations—though not yet concluded—into its first origin and dissemination. While Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire confirmed the attribution to Pierre Bayle (1647–1706) of the “creation of this word,” Tommasini was quick to note that the term already appeared in a pamphlet by G. Giorgio Bettingen from 1638. Still, he believed its first spread should be sought in France, “within the turmoil of the Reformation and the League,” while others claim the Jesuits coined the word “m.”; and still others, like Benoist, trace it back to the early 1600s, particularly in France, to uncover—if not the term itself—verbs and nouns related to II. Yet it may be reasonably held that the term was already in circulation between the late 1500s and the very beginning of the 1600s. If the Protestant Gentillet already referred to “Machiavellists” in those early polemical tracts (1576) that helped set in motion the official condemnation of the Florentine secretary, Campanella and other writers at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries were already familiar with the expressions “to machiavellize,” “Machiavellists,” and “m.”
In any case, the term is conventionally used in political discourse to denote a principle of governance that, aiming essentially at the rigid interest of the State, does not hesitate to sacrifice every moral claim before the demands of mere practical utilitarianism, compounded by the use of cunning instrumental devices—those very expedients that certain chapters of *The Prince* (chs. 15–18) elucidate with a scientific detachment that could not but appear, in the doctrinal environment inspired by Erasmian, reformist, and Counter-Reformation culture, at least a brutal disengagement from higher ethical categories.
“M.” was thus, by definition and by long-standing linguistic convention, synonymous with intrigue, fraud, simulation, petty contingent gain—in short, the pursuit of “success” at the expense of the good. In truth, the gradual critical refinements aimed at redeeming Machiavelli from a hasty and merciless characterization of vulgar cynicism tend to separate the thought of the Florentine secretary from his misfortune and to strip of infamatory force adjectives and nouns relating to Machiavelli. Yet the now invincible currency of such terms in common parlance has recently led some to prefer the use of “machiavellian” rather than “machiavellic” when one intends to refer to an authentic statement by the writer, without any preconceived incriminating burden.
The fact remains that “m.” has endured, and will likely continue to endure, in ordinary speech as a synonym for cunning politics, a normative technique grounded in hidden and selfish interests. Under this aspect, one may well speak of a “m.” *ante litteram*, and investigations in this direction are justified: while Saint-Hilaire pointed to anticipations of m. in Aristotle (*Pol.*, VIII, 9) and even in Plato (*Rep.*, *Gorgias*), recent examinations of political thought prior to that of the Florentine secretary have uncovered no small number of precedents for what in Machiavelli became a precise and conscious formulation. Likewise, from the 17th century onward, it was recognized that the concept of *ragion di Stato* was known in antiquity and indeed already widespread before the official fortune of the phrase and the related theories. Precisely, to *ragion di Stato*, as to “device,” “tyranny,” and the like, the concept of “m.” is customarily linked.
Against the merely utilitarian interpretation of politics, against the doctrinal legitimization of the State’s overriding interest, against that “m.” on which, as Voltaire said, practically nothing is founded, there has persisted—“with or without religion”—the revolt of human feeling. To this conception of politics, there has been a perennial reaction toward a greater anchoring of civil life to universally valid principles and to a legal order in harmony with moral order. For example, to the well-known dictum in *The Prince* regarding the lawfulness of violating sworn pacts, there stands the established principle *pacta sunt servanda*; to the divorce between utility and justice, Cicero’s firm stance that the useful and the honest coincide; to the dissociation of ethics and politics, the ideal of their identification.
It follows that, if a history of anti-Machiavellism has been written and will continue to be written, it must be interpreted as the history of the reaction (whether estimable or not) against what seemed the most striking and offensive hallmark of a political science cynical in its utilitarianism, officially (if not effectively) endorsed by the Florentine secretary.
The expressions “m.” and “anti-Machiavellism” are nonetheless destined to endure, precisely as objectifications of mental attitudes now even independent of Machiavelli’s own genuine teaching.