How To Use Machiavelli’s Principles of Power (And Still Be A Good Person)
Is there any reason, then, that a good person ought to follow Machiavelli’s advice? Is there some profit to be had in reading his books beyond learning how evil men think?
I believe there is, if you take one point seriously, namely Machiavelli’s statement that “a man who wants to make a profession of good in all regards must come to ruin among so many who are not good” — (The Prince, 61).
To explain, I should note that interpreting Machiavelli proves as diabolically difficult as the contents of his teaching. The reason is that he appears to contradict many of the evil statements in The Prince in his other political work, the Discourses. The former is devoted to the advice needed to govern principalities, the latter to republics, though not exclusively so.
I do not think there is enough textual evidence to decide for one view over the other or to coordinate their apparently contradictory views into a larger coherent framework. But I am a person who is interested in what we can learn from philosophers about how to live.
If we take up this perspective — the view from philosophy as a way of life — then I think we can find a fruitful way beyond the interpretive impasse.
My wager is that you can profitably read Machiavelli if you understand him to distinguish between “high trust and low trust environments”. When a good person is surrounded by evil ones, they have entered a low trust environment, and they will come to ruin if they act as if those surrounding were well-intentioned chaps.
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Let me give you a story to illustrate the point. My maternal uncle, Luis, dropped out of school early in Mexico, at the age of 12, to earn money as a harpist in a mariachi band so the family could get by.
One night he and his father were playing a well-paying gig for an extended family that turned out to be involved in the illicit drug trade. At some point during the fiesta, there was commotion because the police were coming to break up the group and bust the narcotics traffickers for their drugs. Learning this, the narcos put their weapons and drugs into my uncle’s harp — through the hole on the bottom.
The band continued to play for the celebration as the police entered and because the narcos neither had arms nor visible drugs, they eventually left the scene.
A self-righteous and foolish man in my uncle’s position might have piped up to claim that the narcos had put their drugs and guns in his harp. The law and the police are good after all, why not send the bad guys to jail?
This is what Machiavelli means when he writes that a good man will come to ruin among evil men. You must change your tactics to survive. The situation is one that philosophers might call, if not a tragic, then a morally burdened situation. It is one where there is no right answer, so that good intentions mean almost nothing.
Most of us, all but the most privileged, will run into a situation like this in our lives. I write that it is a “low trust” environment because it exhibits three features:
- Each agent is out to maximize their rational advantage, to get the most stuff.
- No agent enjoys a dominant advantage. Among nation-states, for example, such an advantage is conferred by possessing nuclear arms.
- No agent is able, given the circumstances, to enter into a contract of mutual advantage. My uncle, for example, was in no position to negotiate an exchange among the narcos and the (likely corrupt) police.
Machiavelli does not discuss these conditions. The above is my own articulation, but I think it expresses the heart of Machiavelli’s concern in The Prince.
Most of us intuitively recognize this type of situation too. It explains, for example, why we understand and empathize with gangster figures, from those depicted in The Godfather to those in Breaking Bad. These circumstances arise especially in cases where the institutional organization at work extends beyond politically sanctioned legal practice.
It is the situation, in short, of outlaws. But it is not only their situation. You will find it also:
- among people where legal institutions are corrupt,
- among resistance fighters fighting such corruption,
- among members subject to abusive or manipulative situations,
- among semi-structured social relationships in emerging areas, such as the “wild west.”
This was the situation of Hernán Cortés as he conducted a campaign of conquest in a “new land” with hardly any legal oversight. The entire illicit drug market falls under these rules. The cryptocurrency market, through the 2017 bubble, was equally a low-trust environment with many, many unethical schemes in play.
Even if you are a good person, you will need to learn about these principles, not so much to live well, but to survive such circumstances. Because Machiavelli’s The Prince is devoted exclusively to this sort of environment, I want to organize its principle teachings under four main headings.
Let’s begin with its most decisive break from the wisdom of classical Greek antiquity, that prudence consists in the cultivation of virtuous action.
1. How to Be Prudent
“Prudence consists in knowing how to recognize the qualities of inconveniences, and in picking the less bad as good” — (The Prince, 91).
The heart of classical Greek philosophy, whether one looks to Plato, Aristotle, or the Stoics, holds that prudence is the quality of your character that enables you to figure out what is right.
Is it, for example, courage to ask out your crush or foolhardiness? Is your angry outburst righteous indignation or a tantrum? The answer to these questions is that a prudent person would know the difference if you could explain the circumstances in more detail.
Machiavelli’s context, however, is different. In a low-trust environment, prudence can’t tell us how to live well. Instead, it tells us how to avoid situations that would leave us worse off.
Although still young, my uncle Luis knew that speaking up about the drugs and guns would neither facilitate the ends of justice nor leave him and his father better off. Speaking up, even if the police were not corrupt, would have resulted in the arrest of narcos. This in turn would have made their organization angry, and drug traffickers have few qualms about finding people who have crossed them.
A silent gamble proved the better response, then, even if it was not free from drawbacks.
How To Apply This
Machiavelli tells us how to apply this insight as follows:
“And I know that everyone will confess that it would be a very praiseworthy thing to find in a prince all of the above-mentioned qualities that are held good. But because he cannot have them, nor wholly observe them, since human conditions do not permit it, it is necessary for him to be so prudent as to know how to avoid the infamy of those vices that would take his state from him” — (The Prince, 62).
Because a person, in these circumstances, must do things that are taken to be vicious, the primary thing you need to learn is which vices to avoid. I can give you a memorable analogy.
When I was a child, my mother put me in self-defense classes because she worried that I would be bullied. I went, then, to train under a retired Navy Seal. Later, I trained with a SWAT team leader. You could characterize my tutelage in the martial arts as unorthodox.
I did not learn much of knife fighting, but our basic drills largely consisted in one counter-intuitive point: you must learn how to take your cuts.
Using rubber knives, one person would slash and their partner would practice taking cuts in the right places on their body. We drilled this way because in real life, and unlike in Hollywood movies, knife fights end quickly. One well-placed cut is enough. As a result, it is often more important to know how to survive a cut than to be good at cutting.
Machiavelli is making a similar point here. The prudent person will have to act in a way that sparks negative responses. You have to know which of those responses you can endure and which you must avoid at all costs. You have to learn where to take your cuts.
Let’s turn, then, to the two biggest “cuts” that you must avoid.
2. Why You Must Avoid Hatred and Contempt
“[T]he prince, as was said above in part, should think how to avoid those things that make him feel hateful and contemptible. When he avoids them, he will have done his part and will find no danger in other infamies” — (The Prince, 72).
The psychologist John Gottman has argued that four relationship traits signal that a marriage is nearing its end: criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling. In a similar way, Machiavelli here notes that there are two general emotions that you must avoid, especially but not exclusively in low trust environments: hatred and contempt.
His reasoning is this. When people hate you, they are willing to take irrational and unpredictable steps towards your demise. Almost anyone can be murdered if the would-be murderer is willing to sacrifice their own life in the process. This is why Machiavelli counsels the prince to murder an entire royal family rather than the king alone. For unless this is done, the remaining members will be irrationally motivated to seek revenge through hatred.
Similarly, when a person becomes contemptible, they no longer command respect. People will not follow you if they have contempt for you. And of course, they will not be bothered if you fall. Apparently, they also don’t want to be married to you.
How To Apply This
To apply this lesson, you have to know the causes of hatred and contempt. To avoid both, just avoid the causes.
Machiavelli outlines three ways that you can cause not just anger but hatred in another:
- you take away another person’s property, their honor, or their women,
- you force them to endure a setback in lifestyle, or
- you force them to become better people when they do not wish to be (The Prince, 76–77).
A couple of notes seem in order. First, Machiavelli places women in the category of things to be taken away, so he’s sexist in addition to just regular evil. Also, given the patriarchal structure of his (and our) society, he might just be right (and still evil).
Second, you could summarize all of these points by stating it this way: never make people feel as though they have lost something, even if that something is an addiction. They will hate you all the same, whether you make them worse off or better.
Contempt has two causes: irresoluteness and weak appearance (78).
If you go back and forth publicly on a position, act irresolutely, people will develop contempt for you. Just think of politicians who change their minds.
South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, for example, went on record publicly denouncing Donald Trump. Then, without reasons given, changed to become one of Trump’s closest allies. Before doing this, Graham had been a congenial guest on the left-leaning TheDailyShow, hosted by Trevor Noah. Now he disgusts all but Trump loyalists.
People feel similarly about Texas senator Ted Cruz, but for Machiavelli’s second reason, weakness. At one point in their presidential campaigns, Donald Trump insulted Cruz and called his wife ugly. While Cruz did tell Trump to leave his wife out of the discussion, he also went on to become one of Trump’s closest supporters without ever asking for an apology or receiving it. A man who cannot stand up for his partner is weak, and that weakness is felt as disgust, which causes contempt.
If hatred and contempt are to be avoided, at least by those who would be your followers, then you must also avoid certain activities that often turn into these.
3. Why You Must Beware of Gracious Actions
Machiavelli’s approach to actions that we might consider gracious is to counsel caution. There are quite a few of these activities, but you’ll get the idea most clearly if we focus on what he called “liberality” but which I’ll translate into more modern English as “generosity.”
In Machiavelli’s words:
“[I]t would be good to be held generous; nonetheless, generosity, when used so that you may be held generous, hurts you” — (The Prince, 62–63).
The reason for this, Machiavelli explains, is that if you are properly generous, then your actions won’t be noticed. You’ll be like one of those anonymous donors who give millions to children’s hospitals without ever accepting credit — as Keanu Reeves did for years.
The problem is that to be noticed for it, and you need to be noticed to gain a reputation for generosity, you will have to give lavishly. And that will probably bankrupt you in the long run. And if it doesn’t bankrupt you, then you will probably have to take on unnecessary activities to sustain your lifestyle. That will put you in harm’s way unnecessarily.
On the flip side, Machiavelli argues that the prince “should not, if he is prudent, care about a name for stinginess” (The Prince, 63). The reason is that people immediately notice when you stop being generous if you have a reputation for generosity. Then they will call you stingy.
While if you have a reputation for being stingy, people will take notice of the few times you are generous. Then they will be grateful.
How To Apply This
Machiavelli’s general rule is that people notice the absence of something to which they are accustomed, not its presence.
You don’t have to be a cynic to agree with him. At base, our minds are naturally attuned to changes in our environment, not stasis. If it weren’t that way, then you would be deadly focused on the floorboards under your feet.
As a result, humans are naturally ingrates.
But this point also explains Machiavelli’s penchant for relying on emotions such as fear over love (The Prince, 65). Love, in the broader sense of deep fondness, is an emotion of convenience. Fear is not. As a result, people take love for granted, not fear. To be both loved and feared is best, but fear proves more reliable (in low trust environments).
If you are not in a situation where you can expect higher levels of trust, then you need to ask yourself something simple: will people notice the absence of this action more than its initial presence? Is it like generosity?
If your answer is yes, then you should aim to be labeled for the corresponding “vice.” Those are cuts you can survive.
4. Why You Must Always Act to Promote Esteem
The third principle should not lead you to believe that Machiavelli sees no place for positive emotions. He simply has a special place for them. In his words:
Nothing makes a prince so much esteemed as to carry on great enterprises and to give rare examples of himself — (The Prince, 87).
Positive emotions do have a role to play, but they should work to promote esteem and respect. You can do this by carrying out wowing enterprises and you should also not be too accessible to people.
The reason Machiavelli does not counsel accessibility is that it closes the gap of mystery that opens between a fan and their idol, or a prince and his followers. If you get too close to people, they will feel licensed to correct and criticize you. You will kill the fantasy that attracted their loyalty in the first place.
As an example of wowing enterprises, Machiavelli identifies Ferdinand of Aragon, the king of Spain in the years just after Columbus stumbled into the Americas. The “discovery” wowed the European world.
These actions serve to differentiate a person from their followers. The wowing quality imparts the sense that a person is larger than life, untouchable. And this rebuffs even thoughts about challenges to power.
Both emotions, then, should be cultivated.
How to Apply This
Wowing experiences seem to have a structure where something good is presented, then it is followed up with something out of the realm of expectation.
Elon Musk has made a career out of wowing enterprises. He didn’t only introduce electric vehicles in the market, he made sure that they were beautiful and fast. The new Tesla roadster, for example, goes from zero to sixty miles per hour in 1.9 seconds. The engineers had to get the car under the two-second mark to create that “wow” effect.
As far as relatability goes, several celebrities have come to make a name for themselves as relatable. This might make you think that Machiavelli is wrong. But it’s important to note that they never go so far as to tell stories that would diminish your respect for them.
Keanu Reeves enjoys the relatable quality and this is why his bad movies or his role in poorly launched video games does almost nothing to dent his likability. He was, for a time, the subject of the Sad Keanu meme, but his personal losses never eroded his respectability.
So don’t be afraid to be relatable, but don’t do anything that would erode what people admire about you. Frailty is fine, blameworthiness is not. Ask: would this make me look blameworthy?
Let’s wrap up with a concluding thought.
Emperors and Drug Dealers Don’t, As A Rule, Die Of Old Age
One reason that G.R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones captured our cultural imagination (final season of the HBO’s series notwithstanding) is that it focused unrelentingly on what life is like in low trust environments.
Tyrian Lannister, one of the underdog stars from the series, is at one point asked how he would like to die. He is being threatened by an enemy and facing his own impending murder. Typical of his character, he replies with a joke to the effect — I cannot quote it for obscenities — that he would wish to die while an old man in an act of sexual coitus.
The joke underscores a capital point about a life led in low trust environments: they are often cut short, almost invariably with violence. Most of the emperors of the Roman empire did not die of old age. The same is true of most drug dealers today.
It is in high trust environments that our best relations thrive. It is there that the better angels of our nature may spread their wings and that the pursuit of happiness finds an environment conducive to its aim.
Machiavelli’s principles are something that any adult should know, but you also need to remember that they only make sense in morally burdened circumstances. If you act this way in high trust environments, then you will erode the conditions that make happy and productive human lives possible at all.
Since I began this essay with one of my uncle’s stories, it seems right to end it with another. My uncle Luis has a younger brother Hugo.
While Luis played in bands, Hugo used the opportunity to study, eventually becoming a medical doctor. Luis worked so that bread might be put on the table, and books on his brother’s shelves. Now that they are much older, Hugo works to pay for his brother’s medical exams and late-life needs.
The moral is simple: the arc of history does bend towards justice, but only because we trust each other enough to love and collaborate.
Even Machiavelli recognized this, in his own way. To show you what I mean, I’ll leave you with a final Machiavellian quotation from an episode where charity trumped violence.
Camillus, a Roman general, was aiming to take a city through force. While still outside the city walls, a schoolmaster for noble children led the children outside and brought them to Camillus, hoping to earn the general’s favor. He suggested that the children might be used as ransom to gain the city.
The offering proved so dishonorable that Camillus had the schoolmaster’s hands bound behind his back and walked into the city. The children followed hitting him with sticks as punishment. Machiavelli concludes:
“When that [episode] was learned of by the citizens, the humanity and integrity of Camillus pleased them so much that, without wishing to defend themselves more, they decided to give [the Romans] the town. Here it is to be considered with this true example how much more a humane act full of charity is sometimes able to do in the spirits of men than a ferocious and violent act” — (Discourses, 261).
Sebastian Purcell’s research specializes in world comparative philosophy, especially as these ancient traditions teach us how to lead happier, richer lives. He lives with his wife, a fellow philosopher, and their three cats in upstate New York.
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