By Lawson kasshanna

Preserving nations and wealth is not achieved through words alone.

I have dubbed this figure—the companion to the statesman—“The Great Secretary.” I have read The Prince and other works with a critical and attentive eye; yet, constraints of both time and will prevented me from perusing the entirety of what has been written about Machiavelli, whether in Italy or across the globe. It was my deliberate intent to minimize the number of intermediaries—be they ancient or modern, Italian or foreign—standing between him and myself, so as to preserve the integrity of a direct dialogue: one between his doctrine and the life I have lived; between his observations of humanity and the world, and my own; and between his practice of statecraft and my own engagement with it.

If politics is the art of governing human beings—or, in other words, of cultivating their passions, self-interests, and desires with a view to the ends of a public order that almost invariably transcends the scope of individual life, inasmuch as those ends extend into the future—then, if such indeed constitutes politics, there can be no doubt that the human being is the essential element of this art; and it is from this premise that one must proceed.

What is the nature of human beings in Machiavelli’s political philosophy? What is his view of human beings? Is he an optimist or a pessimist?

Even a cursory reading of The Prince reveals Machiavelli’s intense pessimism regarding human nature. He holds humanity in contempt—much like those who have had the opportunity to interact extensively and intimately with their peers—and he presents them to us in their most negative aspects: as negative in the extreme, and as base as baseness itself.

According to Machiavelli, human beings—being inherently cunning—cling to material interests even more tenaciously than they do to their own lives; moreover, they are ever ready to shift their whims and affections. Machiavelli articulates this concept in Chapter XVII of The Prince as follows: “It may be said of men in general that they are ungrateful, fickle, hypocritical, prone to avoiding danger, and insatiably greedy. They stand by your side—offering you their very blood, their lives, their children, and all their possessions, as I have previously noted—only so long as the need for such sacrifice remains distant and remote; yet, the moment that need draws near, they turn against you. Consequently, the fate of any Prince who places his reliance upon their promises—without having taken any other precautionary measures—is nothing but ruin and destruction.”