Politics is a dirty world. Lies and machinations belong to the arsenal of every ambitious statesman who should stop at nothing to gain power. Politicians come and go, but this brutal vision of state affairs painted by Niccolo Machiavelli has remained constant.
For Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), politics was his whole life. Born to a noble Florentine family, Machiavelli began his public service as a diplomat in 1498 only to become a defense minister eight years later. Soon his name opened many doors to Europe's royal courts; among his acquaintances were kings, emperors, and popes. Machiavelli's brilliant career ended abruptly in 1512, when Florence turned from a republic into an authoritarian state. He withdrew to his country estate where he devoted his time to writing treatises that completely changed the way people perceived politics.
His most famous work, The Prince, was published in 1532. In it, Machiavelli advised future statesmen to abandon any moral scruples as they could only block their ascension to power. Instead, a good politician should be ready to employ every strategy – no matter how wicked and vicious – to achieve his goals. No one judges the winners, said Machiavelli. Although to admit to reading Machiavelli is a serious faux pas in the contemporary world of politics, his works continuously remain bestsellers.
The coinage of the adjective “Machiavellian” is dated to the year 1568. The Online Etymology Dictionary states that the word appeared even before The Prince and other major works were translated into English. The explanation is simple: Machiavelli became famous when France and the Catholic Church publicly chastised his philosophy and indexed his books. Defined as “cunning, deceitful, unscrupulous,” the eponym made a career of its own in the English world where there was no better encouragement than France's disapproval.
Just like in the 16th century, also now the eponym has negative connotations. Writing on George H.W. Bush's tenure as a US envoy to China, Michael Abramowitz of the Washington Post reported on the future president's uneasiness about then National Security Adviser Henry “Kissinger's secretive and Machiavellian ways.” The same tones strike novelist James Hawes who in his My Little Armalite complains about “Machiavellian Presidents who called themselves socialists but had collaborated with the Nazis.”
But “Machiavellian” is by no means restricted to politicians. Recent examples show that writers often use it to denounce people who play dirty or like secrecy. The latter appears to be the reason why a New York Times journalist wrote this line about Cardinal Spellman: “His polar personalities shifted from guileless to Machiavellian.” This rather gloomy picture is supported by John Cooney, the cardinal's biographer, who says: “Spellman held his tongue in Rome, where it would be unwise to be indiscreet about the new pope [John XXIII]. But when he returned home, the Cardinal announced his disdain.”
In the words of columnist Irving Kristol, Niccolo Machiavelli was “one of the most wicked men who ever lived.” But whatever his faults, Machiavelli only publicized what everyone knew: that politics is a game with no rules.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Leviathan
People are bad by nature, wrote Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679). If they had their way, they would kill one another until the only living things on the planet were animals and plants. To prevent “a war of all against all,” argued the English philosopher, people must be ruled by a strong sovereign – Leviathan.
Leviathan was a Biblical sea creature of gargantuan size that could only be defeated by God himself. For Hobbes, however, the monster symbolized an absolute ruler who stood at the apex of a commonwealth, established by people to save them from anarchy. Published in 1651, Leviathan revolutionized western philosophy, laying foundations for the development of modern states. The book influenced such figures as Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and Adam Smith, among others.
The noun “leviathan” had been present in the English Language long before the publication of Thomas Hobbes's famous book. The word made its debut in the late fourteenth century and its original sense, derived from the Bible, was used to describe any large sea creature. “Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook?” asked Job in the Old Testament.
Within the years, “leviathan” became a synonym of a large ship and boat. The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English gives this example: “He said oil slicks from the stricken leviathan still sometimes marred the bay.” In the same fashion, Yachting&Boating World, a London-based magazine, reported in 2007 that “another big carbon leviathan is being built for next year's races.”
If we are to believe British newspapers, the present usage of “leviathan” is even more liberal. Commenting on affluent European basketball clubs fighting for new talents, the Guardian concluded: “Europe's leviathans are flexing their financial muscle, and it will be the performers who benefit most.” The same daily also criticized the state bureaucracy for “jeopardizing all the government's grandiose schemes from ID cards to the leviathan health service computer.”
The popularity of Hobbes's masterpiece extended the meaning of “leviathan.” According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, capitalized “Leviathan” can be applied to “the political state” or “a totalitarian state having a vast bureaucracy.” Ryan Sager of Time cited one political writer as complaining that “the Republican Party has abandoned all pretense of being the party of small government and has instead embraced the Leviathan state – leaving the Democrats, the usual champions of the Leviathan state, in something of a bind.”
In all its meanings, the word “leviathan” describes large forms, either physical or imaginative. It was grandiosity of this eponym that made the US Navy rename the captured German cruiser and the world's largest ship, SS Vaterland, into SS Leviathan in 1917. It bordered on a paradox that Leviathan – Hobbes's ideal ruler – played a significant role in a “war of all against all,” also known as World War I.
Leviathan was a Biblical sea creature of gargantuan size that could only be defeated by God himself. For Hobbes, however, the monster symbolized an absolute ruler who stood at the apex of a commonwealth, established by people to save them from anarchy. Published in 1651, Leviathan revolutionized western philosophy, laying foundations for the development of modern states. The book influenced such figures as Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and Adam Smith, among others.
The noun “leviathan” had been present in the English Language long before the publication of Thomas Hobbes's famous book. The word made its debut in the late fourteenth century and its original sense, derived from the Bible, was used to describe any large sea creature. “Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook?” asked Job in the Old Testament.
Within the years, “leviathan” became a synonym of a large ship and boat. The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English gives this example: “He said oil slicks from the stricken leviathan still sometimes marred the bay.” In the same fashion, Yachting&Boating World, a London-based magazine, reported in 2007 that “another big carbon leviathan is being built for next year's races.”
If we are to believe British newspapers, the present usage of “leviathan” is even more liberal. Commenting on affluent European basketball clubs fighting for new talents, the Guardian concluded: “Europe's leviathans are flexing their financial muscle, and it will be the performers who benefit most.” The same daily also criticized the state bureaucracy for “jeopardizing all the government's grandiose schemes from ID cards to the leviathan health service computer.”
The popularity of Hobbes's masterpiece extended the meaning of “leviathan.” According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, capitalized “Leviathan” can be applied to “the political state” or “a totalitarian state having a vast bureaucracy.” Ryan Sager of Time cited one political writer as complaining that “the Republican Party has abandoned all pretense of being the party of small government and has instead embraced the Leviathan state – leaving the Democrats, the usual champions of the Leviathan state, in something of a bind.”
In all its meanings, the word “leviathan” describes large forms, either physical or imaginative. It was grandiosity of this eponym that made the US Navy rename the captured German cruiser and the world's largest ship, SS Vaterland, into SS Leviathan in 1917. It bordered on a paradox that Leviathan – Hobbes's ideal ruler – played a significant role in a “war of all against all,” also known as World War I.
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