Machiavelli's Conception of Virtu and Fortuna

Machiavelli's conception of virtu and fortuna

Niccolo Machiavelli is considered the father of modern political science. Living in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth-century's, Machiavelli was a citizen of the city-state of Florence where he served as a secretary to the city council and as a diplomatic envoy for 14 years. The Prince was published five years after his death and is regarded as his most famous work. The Prince is an articulate and precise explanation of the way to use the lesson of history in politics as an example to learn and build ideas from. The Prince can be broken up into four parts. Firstly, Machiavelli explains how a prince gets a state. Secondly, he explains how a prince holds on to a state. Thirdly, he explains how a prince deals with friends and foes. Lastly, Machiavelli applies all of his points to Italy. The two main themes of The Prince are virtue and fortune. Machiavelli uses these two themes throughout the book to explain his four main points stated earlier. Machiavelli believes that virtue and fortune are the two most influential forces in politics and he shows how, throughout history, they have affected different people in powerful positions. Using the lessons learned by previous people of great political power, Machiavelli points out virtues and fortunes present in the particular cases and then he explains his beliefs and solutions to the examples from the past. By looking at Machiavelli's The Prince, the two common themes which can be extracted are virtue and fortune and Machiavelli's conception of those two themes are presented and integrated with all of his main arguments in The Prince.

"Virtue", in Machiavelli's conception, can be defined as courage, efficacy, talent, strength, ability and, what might be most important, intelligence. Therefore, the opposite of virtue would be uncertainty and hesitation. Machiavelli examines the successes of Moses, Romulus, Cyrus and Theseus and states that, "These opportunities, therefore, made these men successful, and their outstanding ingenuity made that opportunity known to them, whereby their nations were ennobled and became prosperous." In other words, Machiavelli is saying that virtue is the ability to take advantage of the opportunities which are presented by fortune. So, though it is sometimes capable of suppressing fortune; virtue is the fundamental quality required of a prince if he is to be successful. Virtue also not only exploits favourable conditions but also discovers and sometimes creates them. Virtue acts upon fortune. Machiavelli's interpretation of virtue is important because it is one of the main themes in The Prince and he applies his understanding of virtue to almost every example he takes from political history.

Machiavelli describes his definition of "Fortune" in The Prince as he states, "I judge it to be true that fortune is the arbiter of one half of our action, but that she still leaves the control of the other half, or almost that, to us." What is important to note is that Machiavelli refers to "fortune" as female and he also adds to his concept of fortune as female as he states,

Ð'...fortune is a woman, and it is necessary, in order to keep her down, to beat her and to struggle with her. And it is seen that she more often allows herself to be taken over by men who are impetuous than by those who make cold advances; and then, being a woman, she is always the friend of young men, for they are less cautious, more aggressive, and they command her with more audacity.

What is important about this is that it shows directly of how Machiavelli viewed fortune and how he thought of solutions to deal with it. By comparing fortune to a woman Machiavelli believes that it can be dealt with the same way he believes a woman can be dealt with. Machiavelli also explains that fortune can be taken over, like a woman, but only if one is aggressive with her and knows what they are doing. Furthermore, Machiavelli also compares fortune to a ruinous river that is very destructive and cannot be opposed and her force is directed where no resistance is established to hold her. What Machiavelli means is that is one does not plan and prepare them self to steer or overcome fortune; then, like a destructive flooding river, she will produce uncontrollable changes in ones life circumstances. Machiavelli also raises the point that fortune is something that is constantly changing as he states, "And therefore the cautious man, when it is time to act impetuously, does not know how to do so, and he is ruined; but if he had changed his conduct with the times, fortune would not have changed." Essentially what Machiavelli is saying is that princes are fortunate when times are circumstances are in accord with their procedures, but they are ruined when the circumstances change. However, it the prince is able to change his nature with the times and circumstances his fortunes will never change. So, fortune is basically the occasion of a historical situation that a person must act as a reaction to it. Machiavelli goes into much detail and makes a lot of comparisons to what he understands fortune to be and how it has affected the people he refers to in his historical examples.

Machiavelli's thoughts on what he considers "virtue" and "fortune" to be are established and now it is time to look at how he applies these thoughts to political theory in The Prince. Virtue and fortune are the two main themes in The Prince and through many historical examples; Machiavelli alternates between the two themes and shows how important both are to a prince.

Machiavelli uses Cesare Borgia and explains that the virtue of the duke is a combination of all the qualities desired by Machiavelli in a prince. Machiavelli summarizes these qualities which are severity and graciousness; magnanimity and generosity; determination and diplomacy; and the capability of protecting himself from enemies, of winning friends, of conquering either by force or by fraud, and of being loved and feared at the same time. Machiavelli believes that those qualities are a recipe for success, however in Cesare Borgia's case, Machiavelli explains that, fortune had turned on him with the death of his father at a time when Cesare Borgia was still securing his position of power and Cesare Borgia's own serious illness. These two misfortunes, Machiavelli explains, were the result of an extraordinary and extreme instance which was by no fault of his own. This shows that fortune can sometimes overwhelm a situations and no mater how skilled a person is on dealing with the situations fortune has brought them, some things, in Cesare Borgia's case, cannot be stopped.

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