Niccolò di Bernardo Dei Machiavelli has often been called the “father of modern political philosophy and political science.” He was an Italian diplomat, politician, historian, philosopher, humanist, writer, playwright, and poet of the Renaissance Period.
He was often brought up during my hours spent at university. He seemed to me to be both admired and disdained by the professors who stood before us at lectures. It was a strange alchemy of thought that sometimes confused—at least yours truly—while the professors both lauded and lambasted this strange purveyor of political presumption.
Always central to their lectures was Machiavelli’s most famous work, written in 1513—The Prince. This is a brief treatise on how to acquire power, create a state, and keep it. The book represents Machiavelli’s effort to provide a guide for political action based on the lessons of history and his own experience as a foreign secretary in Florence, Italy.
Most of my professors, even during those days of the early 1960s, lectured from the socialist perspective. The lectures hadn’t quite become the Marxist-oriented lies we hear being spewed today, but the anti-America-as-founded propaganda was plenteous, even back then.
