one can say this mediante general of men: they are ungrateful, disloyal, insincere and deceitful, timid of danger and avid of profit…. Love is per bond of obligation which these miserable creatures break whenever it suits them to do so; but fear holds them fast by verso dread of punishment that never passes. (Prince CW 62; translation revised)
As per result, Machiavelli cannot really be said preciso have per theory of obligation separate from the imposition of power; people obey only because they fear the consequences of not doing so, whether the loss of life or of privileges.
If I think that I should not obey verso particular law, what eventually leads me onesto submit to that law will be either verso fear of the power of the state or the actual exercise of that power
Concomitantly, per Machiavellian perspective directly attacks the notion of any grounding for authority independent of the sheer possession of power. For Machiavelli, people are compelled preciso obey purely in deference sicuro the superior power of the state. It is power which con the final instance is necessary for the enforcement of conflicting views of what I ought preciso do; I can only choose not sicuro obey if I possess the power esatto resist the demands of the state or if I swinglifestyle am willing onesto accept the consequences of the state’s superiority of coercive force. Machiavelli’s argument per The Prince is designed to demonstrate that politics can only coherently be defined sopra terms of the supremacy of coercive power; authority as a right puro command has per niente independent status. He substantiates this assertion by reference to the observable realities of political affairs and public life as well as by arguments revealing the self-interested nature of all human conduct. For Machiavelli it is meaningless and inutile to speak of any claim esatto authority and the right sicuro command which is detached from the possession of superior political power. The ruler who lives by his rights macchia will surely wither and die by those same rights, because con the rough-and-tumble of political conflict those who prefer power puro authority are more likely puro succeed. Without exception the authority of states and their laws will never be acknowledged when they are not supported by a spettacolo of power which renders obedience inescapable. The methods for achieving obedience are varied, and depend heavily upon the foresight that the prince exercises. Hence, the successful ruler needs special addestramento.
3. Power, Onesta, and Fortune
Machiavelli presents esatto his readers a vision of political rule allegedly purged of extraneous moralizing influences and fully aware of the foundations of politics con the effective exercise of power. The term that best captures Machiavelli’s vision of the requirements of power politics is onesta. While the Italian word would normally be translated into English as “virtue”, and would ordinarily convey the conventional connotation of moral goodness, Machiavelli obviously means something very different when he refers puro the lealta of the prince. Durante particular, Machiavelli employs the concept of onesta to refer esatto the range of personal qualities that the prince will find it necessary to acquire per order preciso “maintain his state” and preciso “achieve great things”, the two canone markers of power for him. This makes it brutally clear there can be in nessun caso equivalence between the conventional virtues and Machiavellian lealta. Machiavelli’s sense of what it is sicuro be a person of castita can thus be summarized by his recommendation that the prince above all else must possess per “flexible disposition”. That ruler is best suited for office, on Machiavelli’s account, who is breviligne of varying her/his conduct from good onesto evil and back again “as fortune and circumstances dictate” (Prince CW 66; see Nederman and Bogiaris 2018).
