Machiavelli Now and Here: An Essay for the First World.
hundreds of years after The Prince made its first public, posthumous debut, Niccolo Machiavelli was considered a man who deliberately advocated evil and unscrupulous methods in order to deal with political realities that could readily be handled by more enlightened and humane techniques. In painting this picture of the man and his teachings, it was of course advantageous to consider as little as possible the situation in which Machiavelli actually wrote, the princely family to whom he addressed his major book, and the other writings he composed. Commentators like Innocent Gentillet, who held Machiavelli directly responsible for the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew, and Frederick the Great, who saw in Machiavelli a diabolic tutor of regicides and usurpers, established a tradition which still has its representatives in Professors Butterfield, Prezzolini, and Leo Strauss. Professor Strauss, who in this company is no extremist, declares in particular that Machiavelli, when he taught the deliberate enacting of evil, represented an entire wicked, authoritarian way of thinking, against which the basic premises of American democracy stand not only as a protest but as a shining exception. Neither in word nor deed are Americans Machiavellian, and this is a very good thing precisely because Machiavelli was such a very bad man. Though we should indeed study Machiavelli, according to Professor Strauss, it will be only to take measure of the various enormities from which we have