Machiavel, Nicolas (1469-1527)

Italian writer and political theorist. Called upon to fulfil several diplomatic missions in the service of the Republic of Florence, notably at the court of the Pope at which Cesar Borgia was carrying out his intriguing, he progressively forged through these occasions a political thought which he outlined in his masterwork The Prince. In it he restricts himself to describing the mechanisms of seizing and maintaining power, in which subterfuge and violence play a role, without for all that making judgement values concerning these practices inherent to all governance. It is thus wrongly that his patronymic has served, through terms such as ‘Machiavellism’ and ‘Machiavellian,’ to designate a cynical behaviour stripped of any scruple which he is thought to have recommended, whilst simple observation – of a scientific character all in all – motivated his initiative.