Plato has been labeled as the first political scientist, due to his application of reason and inquiry to political systems in The Republic, his great work. A philosopher of ancient Greece who lived some 400 years before the birth of Christ, Plato founded his proposed system of government upon a carefully thought out ideal life, where government and governed would function together as a symbiotic community presided over by philosopher kings and united by the common conviction that this was the reasonable way to live. Niccoló Machiavelli was separated from Plato by two millennia and all the changes in government, society and philosophy that had taken place in the time between Ancient Greece and the Italian Renaissance. Far from being based on an idyllic society, the political philosophy of Machiavelli- whose name has passed into our modern vocabulary as a synonym for the ruthless application of power- was built upon his observations of what worked most efficiently in the real world. Since they start from two completely different premises, the conclusions of Plato and Machiavelli are naturally very different, yet despite- or perhaps because of- their differences, each finds in the other its complement.
In his thinking about politics, Plato wanted to get away from the prevalent idea that government could only be formed through a muddle of “fear and faith, indolence and improvisation” (Ebenstein 2). Instead he made the unprecedented suggestion that the functions of a government could be treated as a philosophical exercise, or even an art. Plato outlined and defended his idea of an ideal government, and the ideal society in which it would operate, through the dialogue of Socrates, Thrasymachus, Polemarchus and Glaucon in The Republic.
Founded on the basis of rational intellect, Plato’s ideas depended on the premise that rational philosophy is universal and that rational people would thus arrive at his conclusions and therefore present no objections. Plato’s ideal was a class-based society, with the ruling class bred, trained and dedicated to government, and the working class likewise born to the remaining functions of society. Power naturally lay with the ruling class, and was protected by a subclass of guardians or warriors whose function was the defense of the state. For Plato, power was a means to an end, namely the attainment of Goodness. This power was to be wielded as necessary to maintain order; education was afforded only to the ruling class, censorship was imposed by the wise rulers upon the courageous guardians and the hedonistic workers, dishonesty- in the form of the medicinal lie- was permitted only to the rulers (for all others it was a capital offense) and the force of the guardians was unleashed in the event that the “established order” of society showed any indication of deviation (7).
If Plato fit his system of government to a rationale that described the perfect society, Machiavelli tailored his political philosophy to fit with the observations of his time spent as a civil servant. Plato spent his life as a philosopher; he never held a position in public office. Machiavelli, on the other hand, was a Chief Secretary and a head of the Second Chancery in the Florentine Republic. His involvement in both domestic and foreign affairs gave him many opportunities to study his own government at home, and the political systems implemented by others abroad. Like Plato before him, Machiavelli’s own political treatise, The Prince, was a departure from common thinking; Machiavelli wanted a new theory that was unencumbered by static ideals and ethical codes.
Unlike Plato’s idealistic philosophy, Machiavelli’s description of government was of a practical, efficient machine that made its own rules to fit the situation at hand instead of abiding to laws, morals, or traditions. Every political thinker before Machiavelli treated the use of power as a means to an end; their differences lay in what they considered that end to be. Machiavelli considered the use of power to be an end in itself (145). The traditional government bound itself to some form of moral code. The only such code followed by a Machiavellian prince was the “acquisition, retention, and expansion of power,” and there were no limits placed on any activity enacted in the pursuit of this goal. Plato and Machiavelli both argued with the welfare of the state in mind, but their differences lay in the fact that Plato’s Good was absolute and universal and recognizable to any rational person, while that of Machiavelli tended to vary from prince to prince and was thus highly subjective. Machiavelli justified this tendency to amorality by calling it the reason of state, which he defined in The Discourses:
“For where the very safety of the country depends upon the resolution to be taken, no consideration of justice or injustice, humanity or cruelty, nor of glory or of shame, should be allowed to prevail. But putting all other considerations aside, the only question should be: What course will save the life and liberty of the country?” (145)
In other words, Machiavelli suggested that the prince do whatever it takes to “conquer and maintain the state.” If Plato was an idealist, Machiavelli was a pragmatic realist.
It is interesting to consider how Plato and Machiavelli might have reacted to one another, should they have been given the opportunity to debate their ideas. Perhaps Plato was aware that his state was only a perfect but unattainable idea when Socrates, addressing Glaucon, provides the following illustration to highlight the value of ideals:
“…We did not set out to show that these ideals could exist in fact… suppose a painter had drawn an ideally beautiful figure complete to the last touch, would you think any the worse of him, if he could not show that a person as beautiful as that could exist?” (49)
Perhaps Plato might have disagreed with Machiavelli’s stance concerning Goodness, but perhaps he might have conceded that his Italian colleague’s general approach to politics was more practical in a real world that was less than ideal. Likewise, Machiavelli dismissed Plato’s work as being concerned with the wrong goal in mind. Yet, perhaps he might have agreed that, in an ideal world where backstabbing and political intrigue were not necessary tools to get things done, Plato’s ideas would have worked.
Ebenstein, Alan. Introduction to Political Thinkers. 2nd ed. Orlando: Harcourt, 2001.
insightful and informative