Is The Prince moral, immoral or amoral?
Most people who have heard of Niccolò Machiavelli would associate the Florentine with unscrupulousness and deceitfulness, which they feel, is epitomised in his 1513 pamphlet, The Prince. However, Machiavelli’s writings revolved primarily around practicality and pragmatism and it can be seen in The Prince that he was a great student of human nature finding examples to back up his points in both contemporary and classical society.
As a result of his obsession with politics, Machiavelli wrote The Prince, a handbook containing practical advice for someone seeking success in sixteenth century Italian politics. There has been much debate among historians as to how The Prince ought to be interpreted, with some claiming that it is a satire and others adhering to the view that it was written for the purpose of regaining political favour. Currently, however, the most widely accepted view is that Machiavelli intended this work to be an illustration and a warning to the merchant class of what they might expect if they were ruled by a prince. Machiavelli’s prince must possess the attributes necessary to maintain his hold on power such as calculation, prudence, decisiveness and strength. Without the ability to act as "a fox and a lion", the prince will lose power. This advice would obviously be inappropriate in a modern context not because of its lack of Christian morality but because most modern politicians are further constrained by laws and the accountability of democracy.
Many people throughout the centuries since The Prince was written have attacked it for being immoral. However, these antagonists have ignored much of what is said in the text and have failed to notice that Machiavelli never advocates immorality but rather states that a prince must do what is necessary to maintain power rather than adhere to Christian virtues. The Prince is ostensibly a handbook on how a ruler should hold onto power and we should not expect it to adhere to a strict moral code just as we would not expect a modern book discussing politics to.
Instead of adhering to any moral code, Machiavelli arrives at many conclusions about human nature from his observations, and these explain some of the more drastic measures he recommends at times. If Machiavelli’s prince seems at times harsh and cruel, deceitful or hypocritical, it is because this is how he must be in order to govern men as they are. In his Discourses, Machiavelli outlines what we might call a socialist utopia and like many modern socialists, he believed in the necessity of strong leadership to create a republic in which people worked for the common good. The Prince, although written about an authoritarian state, merely contains advice on how to keep the position of the strong leader.
Machiavelli’s enthusiasm for freedom and self-rule show through in The Prince, especially in the section in which he urges princes to utilise armies comprised of their own citizens since their patriotic ardour will make them fight harder and they will never turn on their ruler.
On the other hand, Machiavelli, himself religiously apathetic, never argues in favour of Christian morals in The Prince, unless these coincide with what a prince must do to consolidate his grasp on power. The arguments and suggestions contained in The Prince provide guidance that is effective in a political context and allow the reader to apply their own moral code. Many of the suggestions that it presents, such as lying and murder, are unacceptable under almost all moral codes and so it is difficult if not impossible to view The Prince as a moral text.
Experience taught Machiavelli that often the most successful outcomes are a result of actions which may seem unscrupulous, at the beginning of Chapter XVIII on “The way princes should keep their word” he says, “How praiseworthy it is for a prince to keep his word and live with integrity rather than by craftiness, everyone understands; yet we see from recent experience that those princes have accomplished most who paid little heed to keeping their promises, but who knew how to manipulate the minds of men craftily. In the end, they won out over those who tried to act honestly.” Such behaviour would be the antithesis of Christian teaching and accepted morality.
Machiavelli often writes of the amoral utility of an action as opposed to its morality, and his focus is on whether an action is useful rather than good in itself. If we look at Machiavelli’s choice of words, quite often the concept of goodness is linked to or even replaced by words such as effectiveness, usefulness, or necessity, whereas a bad or inappropriate action is often described as useless or harmful. This terminology underlines the fact that in The Prince Machiavelli was not thinking in terms of morality, although he undoubtedly had his own moral code, because morality, and especially the absolute moral notions of good and evil, does not impinge upon the subject matter of the book. Machiavelli recognises that in practical politics, good and evil cannot exist as absolutes but must vary according to the situation and an estimation of likely success and failure.
In the end, The Prince makes recommendations that are based not on any code of morality but merely on Machiavelli’s pragmatic and occasionally utilitarian system of logic designed to maximise an individual’s political lifetime. The book can only be viewed as amoral since its political theme is one independent of morality but based merely on a scientific observation of what has proven effective and necessary for a prince to gain and maintain political power.